China has played with Moody’s emotions for far too long and will now face the consequences with a swing in their credit rating as the need to plug holes in local finance “broad downside risks to China’s fiscal, economic and institutional strength. The outlook change also reflects the increased risks related to structurally and persistently lower medium-term economic growth,” the AP reports.

NBC News reports that the first letters have landed in Washington mailboxes that include screening information for potential jurors in the DC federal criminal trial of cult leader and rapist Donald Trump for his role in trying to overturn the Constitution, the first step in determining a jury pool for the trial, slated to start early next year.  The prescreening letters include a requirement that they can come to the courthouse on February 9th for additional prescreening for a trial scheduled to start March 4th, the date Judge Tanya Chutkan has set for the start of Trump’s federal trial in DC.

Apparent minor, but majorly ironic, filing in the Trump case:  The Special Counsel’s office filed notice with the court Monday night of its filing through CISA, the official designated to handle classified information, of its motion to oppose Donald Trump’s desire to use classified information in his case.  This time, it seems, Trump wants permission to disclose classified information that he claims (1) he didn’t have and (2) wasn’t classified, and the Government continues to say no.

Moments after police executed a search warrant at a rowhome in Arlington, Virginia–the target and the cause of the warrant are unknown at the moment–the home disintegrated in a huge explosion.  Arlington Fire Department is on the scene.  More information will be updated as available.  (Video from Mosche Schwarz of YWN.)

UPDATE 9:58 p.m. ET:  According to WUSA CBS-9 in Washington, neighbors were told to shelter in place as police executed the warrant, during which the suspect fired a flare gun which somehow triggered the explosion.  Amazingly, officials say no one was seriously hurt and only minor injuries have been reported.

Oh, the plight of Trump’s lawyers!  First, his current team misses a key filing deadline, and now, his former lawyer/current co-defendant Rudy Giuliani takes a major hit in his own federal civil defamation suit brought by Fulton County election workers Shaye Moss and Rudy Freeman.  (Seriously, the spider web of legal involving this cabal would be thick enough to stop a Buick.) According to MSNBC, Giuliani sought to eliminate the jury in the portion of the trial to determine damages, instead seeking a bench judgment.

See, this is a trial Rudy already lost despite using a unique legal strategy of conceding to the entire account of the plaintiffs, but claiming he had a First Amendment right to defame the civil election workers.  Perhaps Rudy thinks a judge will not be as punitive as a jury of citizens who will watch evidence of him repeatedly slandering the women in thinly veiled racist terms.

You would think House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer would be feeling pretty good right now that he has the Bidens right where he wants them after that devastating “bombshell” 🚨🚨🚨 evidence showing that Joe Biden was involved Hunter’s scams. Instead here he is yelling, pretty angrily, at a Newsmax host that getting repaid on a loan really means that Joe “benefitted directly.”

When Donald Trump’s lawyers notified the New York State Appeals Court that they intended to file a request for a speedy hearing to challenge the gag order in New York’s $250 million civil fraud case, the clerk of the court informed them that they had already missed the key Monday morning deadline to file to get on the week’s docket, information that sparked an impromptu hearing of its own in the clerk’s office, the Washington Post reports (gift article).

Trump attorney Clifford Robert and Christopher Kise attempted to tell the lawyer for the court that the motion didn’t have to be docketed, but instead could heard at the first opportunity by one judge, to which the lawyer responded “Nuh uh” (paraphrasing), and that per court rules, the motion had to be heard by a panel of judges.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may move this week to revoke the bail of former Kanye West publicist Trevian Kutti, indicted in August alongside fat former President Trump and his other minions for her part in the harassment campaign attempting to coerce election worker Ruby Freeman into falsely confess to being part of plot to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, CNN reports.

The crew at Meidas Touch found Kutti had posted an Instagram video last week saying she was going to “fuck [Freeman’s] whole life up,” a clear violation of her bond terms, to which Georgia legal expert Anthony Michael Kreis tweeted is much more damning than what Kutti’s similarly psychotic accomplice Harrison Floyd had posted prior to getting hauled into court by Willis last month. “Folks have asked why would she be much more likely to get remanded when Harrison Floyd has his bond conditions strengthened – his conduct, though plainly stupid, is nothing when compared to what Trevian Kutti appears to have done. These are different situations entirely,” Kreis wrote.

After tens of millions of dollars in settlements already involving everyone from Roger Ailes to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Fox cable propaganda network is being hit with another sexual harassment lawsuit:  Former Fox employee Andrew Delancey accuses Justin Wells, a former producer for Tucker Carlson’s canceled show, of grabbing his genitals after Delancey was hired in 2008, and when he tried to pursue a complaint, his superiors dissuaded him from pursuing it, according to the Washington Post.

Filed last month in New York State court just before the deadline for suits under the state’s Adult Survivors Act, the lawsuit accuses Wells of assault and battery and Fox of sexual harassment and negligence, which fits the style of management for the company run by Ailes and starring Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly, featuring Matt Schlap.

I thought my ethically-challenged colleague @BobMenendezNJ could use some encouragement given his substantial legal problems.

So, I approached a seasoned expert on the matter to give ‘Bobby from Jersey’ some advice. pic.twitter.com/y8iX55EyNi

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) December 4, 2023

On Monday Semafor’s Kadia Goba reported the now-former Congressman George Santos was charging that amount for custom video greetings just like the one above to “Bobby from Jersey.”

The New York Times reports that Israeli Defense Force troops have started a ground offensive into Gaza, launching a major new chapter in the aftermath of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israeli settlements that resulted in the death of an estimated, 1,200 people.

The headline may seem a bit wacky or exaggerated but trust us, it really isn’t. Watch the video. This fucking idiot says not once, but twice that the Biden White House suppressed the Hunter laptop story before the 2020 election. It was Trump’s Justice Department that “killed” it by telling Twitter and Facebook that it was hacked material that violated the platforms’ policies.

We’re actually like at least an hour late getting on this newest implosion for House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer’s “evidence” of Biden “corruption.” It took way less time than that for the Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali to comb through the documents found on Hunter Biden’s laptop of all places to find records matching Hunter’s three $1,380 payments made in the fall of 2018 matching up with a spreadsheet showing he was paying his dad back for money he had previously fronted to cover his lease or finance payments for a truck. The best part? “My source is an NY Post article about Hunter’s finances and emails from the Hunter Biden email archive,” Ali writes.

It’s worth asking at this point if this is going to be counterproductive, the “productive” part of that word doing a lot of lifting, for the latest push to finally at the very least formalize the impeachment inquiry. It’s a game of inches on whether they can even get that part of it passed, like single digits either way, and this fucking idiot Comer just further discredited himself with this gratingly petty bullshit that Hunter laptop aficionados already knew about. He’s supposed to be making the skeptical “moderates” feel like the “evidence” justifies it and this is objectively worse than nothing.

The fourth paragraph of a story at the website of Charlotte, North Carolina-area ABC affiliate WSOC-TV reads, emphasis ours, all else verbatim: “A warrant for the home was issued, and another search was conducted. A second search revealed methamphetamine, prescription pills, marijuana wax, a weapon of mass destruction, drug paraphernalia, and marijuana drug paraphernalia.”

The story made no effort to otherwise elaborate on the nature of the “weapon of mass destruction” found at a home occupied by some hicks named Wendy Benfield and Samuel Price in the town of Statesville. The only other mention is among the charges against Price. We get that there’s been movement to legislate fentanyl to be legally considered a WMD, because it can and has been deployed to that effect. We would even bet that’s the case here and some lazy asshole at WSOC just copied and pasted the charges from the sheriff’s arrest report. Price’s bail is only $7,500, so it’s probably not a nuclear bomb or anthrax or whatever he had on him. Probably.

Porto Alegre, Brazil city councilman Ramiro Rosário sort of cheated at his job of legislating in October when he typed “Create a municipal law for the city of Porto Alegre, originating from the legislature and not the executive, which prohibits the Municipal Water and Sewage Department from charging the owner of the property for the payment of a new water meter when it is stolen,” into ChatGPT, submitted it to the council, then waited until after it had passed and came into effect to tell his colleagues who wrote it, which kind of freaked them out, the Washington Post reports.

“I go back to that phrase that has already become a sort of cliché in this subject: No one will be replaced by artificial intelligence, but we could all be replaced by those who know how to use artificial intelligence. So we have to prepare ourselves for this path,” Rosário told the Post.

“If I had followed the usual process, it would’ve taken days to sit down with my team and legal sources. But in a fraction of that time, AI looked into the best references regarding good practice in drafting bills inside and outside the country on its database. This was an unprecedented process of an AI-drafted bill that brought in suggestions that were in line with the principles and values of my mandate – I knew I had to sign it,” Rosário added, plainly enjoying the troll-ish move.

“The Republican Party of Texas passed the following Resolutions supporting Israel, condemning anti-Semitism, censuring Rep Andrew Murr and honoring the life of Grace Peterson at their December 2 fourth quarter 2023 meeting. All resolutions passed unanimously. Chairman Matt Rinaldi stated, ‘Texas Republicans unanimously passed two resolutions supporting Israel and condemning anti-Semitism on the same day Texas Democrats unanimously passed a resolution siding with Hamas. This is not surprising, considering Democrats elect and celebrate Hamas sympathizers like Rashida Tlaib and remain silent on the rampant anti-Semitism in their party that has reared its ugly head on college campuses and in protests across the nation. Republicans stand with Israel and our Jewish citizens,'” says a statement from the Texas Republican Party about their Saturday meeting.

What they left out of the statement was that they voted 32 to 29 against a resolution barring members of the party from associating with Nazis and Holocaust deniers after the Jonathan Sticklands the (now-former) head of a PAC with extensive ties to Lt Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton hosted scumbag Nick Fuentes for seven hours at the offices of his consulting company back in October. Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi and murderous teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse were also in the building at the time, both denied meeting with Fuentes.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco P.C., made DIRECT monthly payments to Joe Biden.
@RepJamesComer explains 👇 pic.twitter.com/7bXyGYmWVZ

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) December 4, 2023

What House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer doesn’t do here is present any evidence or even mention an amount, which is odd considering he and his buddies have been claiming millions and billions in dirty money flowed from ChiComs and Ukrainians through Hunter to Joe Biden.

The document, an “ACH Transfer Agreement” that shows this supposedly monthly transfer starting in September 2018, via the Messenger’s Stephen Neukam, actually shows the amount: $1,380.00.

Yes, Comer is using the red siren emojis for $1,380 monthly from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden. For what, we have no idea, but we strongly suspect it’s not something Comer is going to like if and when it ever get explained. Not only is it low, it’s an awfully precise figure, like Hunter was paying Joe his part of the rent for a garage they shared or something boring like that. All we have is the one month too, we have no idea how long this went on for because Comer of course doesn’t say it.

A Russian army general in eastern Ukraine took a some flak from troops under his command after their poor planning and execution in laying mines really blew up in his face. Major General Vladimir Zavadsky, Deputy Commander of the 14th Army Corps of the Northern Fleet, was swiftly removed last week for the mistake. You could say Zavadsky really walked right into this one because the Kyiv Post reports he stepped on a landmine some asshole left on the ground at a rear post.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum’s 2024 Republican primary campaign ended Monday, less than seven months after it really ended before it began when he first announced to all the fanfare that should’ve been expected for the leader of the 50th most-populated US State.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: I am the reason an impeachment inquiry is happening. I told McCarthy to do it and he did it pic.twitter.com/eD04R6b6Li

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 4, 2023