• At this point, the GOP are the old, rich, white men on the Titanic trying to use buckets to stave off the inevitable disaster.  
• Remember all those MAGA personalities screeching about how the Fulton County charges were nothing?  “What’s a county prosecutor know?”  Well, two lawyers thought the cases brought by that county prosecutor were severe enough to motivate a plea deal.
• As Joe Biden was on a historic trip to Israel where he negotiated the delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza, Donald Trump was sitting at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom.  How that juxtaposition doesn’t decide the GOP nomination, if not the entire election, is beyond my understanding.
• Republicans seem upset that the violent threats that the far-right faction of the Party regularly uses against Democrats are now targeting them, and they find that shocking.  They fostered it when it was used to their advantage, but it’s completely unwarranted against them.  The Brownshirts thought the same thing in 1934.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXLIII”

Federal agents who raided an Ohio poultry processing plant found the company’s workforce included more than two dozen children, most from Guatemala, NBC News reports, in yet another example of companies exploiting undocumented immigrants.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI raided the Gerber’s Poultry plant in Kidron, Ohio, which produces Amish Farm Chicken, at around 9 p.m. last night, asking employees to produce identification and reviewed the plant’s sanitation.  Video posted to Tik Tok show some workers feared the raid was for immigration enforcement.

Federal law prevents anyone under the age of 18 from working in meat processing facilities.  Locals said minors work the second shift so they can go to school during the day.  Officials said they were investigating claims that the minors were being forced to work at the plant by non-related adults who were housing them and taking all their wages.

Caroline Wren, the probable love child of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jim Jordan, is laying out Steve Bannon’s hit list for the survivors in the Speaker pool he doesn’t agree with.  The puppetmaster’s apprentice slams into Tom Emmer, the House GOP whip who did too much to support Kevin McCarthy’s RINO agenda… or so she says.

In a move that will devastating to tens, maybe even dozens, of Republican presidential primary voters, former Michigan auto executive Perry Johnson has suspended his 2024 presidential campaign, announcing in a statement that he’s “said it before and I’ll say it again, the people should decide the next president of the United States, not the head of the RNC and her cronies. With no opportunity to share my vision on the debate stage, I have decided at this time, suspending my campaign is the right thing to do,” and blah blah blah whatever who freaking cares.

Having spent literally more than $20 million of his own money between his 2022 Michigan gubernatorial campaign and this presidential “campaign” to appear on the primary ballot in neither of them – the first one being because he hired a scam outfit to run the access petition drive – Johnson’s departure now further widens the “lane” for other hopefuls on the same tier such as Larry Elder, Asa Hutchinson, Ryan Binkley, and Will Hurd… Oh wait, fuck. Hurd dropped out 11 days ago.

With Jim Jordan’s latest spectacular public failure trying to secure the House Speakership, Republican leadership–well, what there is of it–have announced a new Speaker candidate forum scheduled for Monday, October 23rd, with the internal vote slated for the following day, per reporting from Jake Sherman.  Candidates must file their intent to run with Elise Stefanik by noon on Sunday.

New York Judge Arthur Engoron on Friday fined fat former President Trump a measly $5,000 for failing to remove a copy of his Truth Social post attacking Engoron’s court clerk from the Trump campaign website after Engoron had imposed a gag order on such invective earlier this month.

“Donald Trump has received ample warning from this Court as to the possible repercussions of violating the gag order. He specifically acknowledged that he understood and would abide by it. Accordingly, issuing yet another warning is no longer appropriate; this Court is way beyond the ‘warning’ stage. Given defendant’s position that the violation was inadvertent, and given that it is a first time violation, this Court will impose a nominal fine, $5,000, payable to the New York Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, within ten (10) days of the date of this order. Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him,” Engoron wrote in the sanction order.

🚨🚨🚨 BIG! 🚨🚨🚨 RED SIREN EMOJIS! 🚨🚨🚨 EXPLOSIVE! 🚨🚨🚨 The Federalist reports that the House Oversight Committee investigators have found that James Biden wrote a $200,000 check to his brother Joe Biden on the same day in 2018 that a failing healthcare company called Americore had wired him $650,000 because they thought James would be able to leverage his brother’s connections to find foreign investors for the company! 🚨🚨🚨 THIS IS HUGE! 🚨🚨🚨 IT CAME UP IN A TRUTH SOCIAL ALERT THAT HAD RED SIREN EMOJIS ON IT! 🚨🚨🚨 IT’S FUCKING MASSIVE! 🚨🚨🚨

Anyway the Federalist’s report details how in early 2018 James Biden had been having trouble financing repairs to Naples, Florida-area vacation home that had been severely damaged by Hurricane Irma in late 2017 and had taken out loans before they acknowledge a simple and not really that red siren-y of an explanation. “It’s possible that the home loan James Biden sought to pay back was to his brother,” they write – and then promptly go on to a “However” with some bullshit fantasy that we didn’t even bother to read. Maybe if we did we would’ve seen that somehow Fani Willis got the Kraken and Kenny Chesebro to plead guilty because she knew that the House Oversight Committee had obtained the check “implicating” Joe Biden in his brother’s stupid scam.

Trump Georgia lawyer Steve Sadow on Friday responded to the plea deals from his client’s co-conspirators Sidney “Kraken” Powell and Kenny Chesebro with the usual bullshit, telling the Washington Examiner’s Kaelan Deese that it “appears to me that the guilty plea to count 15 of the Fulton indictment was the result of pressure by Fani Willis and her team and the prosecution’s looming threat of prison time… Once again, I fully expect that truthful testimony [from Chesebro and the Kraken] would be favorable to my defense strategy,” whatever the hell that means.

Congratulations Speaker-designate @SteveScalise! pic.twitter.com/9k8KjYLn4W

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) October 11, 2023

Congratulations Speaker-designate @Jim_Jordan! pic.twitter.com/xAF8LMhJn3

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) October 13, 2023

The results of the House Republican conference’s secret ballot to determine whether spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan would remain the “Speaker-designate” after three failed full House rounds to try to get him elected are in: The caucus undesignated him, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports, adding that the “Margin was large” according to his sources in the room.

The search continues for another Speaker and MAGA terrorists can stop threatening to sexually molest the wives of the members who voted against the guy who would’ve pretended it didn’t happen. Sherman says Republicans are packing it in for the weekend and will reconvene on Monday.

“The deep state won,” Jordan ally Ralph Norman told Politico’s Olivia Beavers after the meeting.

ABC News reports that Hamas released two American hostages–a mother and her teenage daughter–they were holding in Gaza, Israeli Defense forces reports.  Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, are from Illinois and they were visiting Israel for the birthday of a relative.

In a statement, Hamas said the two were released “for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless.” The pair’s condition is not known.

Realizing there’s room for only one Republican-backed Black guy with the surname West to run a third-party spoiler campaign specifically designed to siphon African-American votes from Joe Biden this time around, Kanye West has thrown in the towel and will not run in 2024, Rolling Stone reports.

MAGA lawyer Kenny Chesebro will pleaded guilty Friday afternoon in a Fulton County, Georgia court, averting an anticipated trial and joining his would-be co-defendant Sidney “Kraken” Powell in turning state’s evidence against disgraced former President Trump in the case, Meidas Touch reports.

The plea deal came just as jury selection was getting underway in the trial, and leaves Chesebro with one felony conviction, upping the stakes for the remaining 16 defendants as the Kraken and her accomplice Scott Hall walked away with only misdemeanor raps. Chesebro is dinged with five years probation, $5,000 restitution, 100 hours of community service, apology letter to the voters of Georgia, testify truthfully in all trials against co-defendants, no communications with co-defendants, witnesses or media, (communication block in force until all cases settled). Chesebro must record a profer for the state (as a baseline for future testimony in case of perjury).

This is probably worse for the Orange God Emperor than the Kraken’s cooperation agreement as Chesebro was in the White House in the final days before the January 6th insurrection. The bad news is a live trial will not be happening over the next month or so, depriving us of testimony and evidence that potentially could have damaged the fat bastard politically in the nearer term.

Disgraced former President Trump on Friday apparently responded directly and wordlessly to New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s threats to jail him for negligently violating the gag order imposed after the fat fuck tried to dox Engoron’s courtroom clerk earlier this month, posting a Midjourney AI image of a courtroom sketch of him sitting and laughing with cops, almost certainly to imply that he has law enforcement on his side and they would resist a judge’s order to detain him… And one with an angry-looking white Jesus for the same effect, though that’s a re-run from last month. We guess the message is that Jesus and the cops will have their revenge on Engoron if he tries anything.

Florida MAGA Congressman Greg Steube was captured by an AP photographer carrying a draft resolution to vacate Speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry for God only knows what fucking reason he would want to do that at this point but he has it handy. House Republicans will meet once again at 1 pm EDT to scream at each other some more. “We’re in a very bad place right now,” Kevin McCarthy told reporters after the third failed vote to elect Jim Jordan to the Speakership.

Military officials on Thursday announced they had foiled an attempt by the disgraced former president to flee house arrest and escape in a helicopter over the border, CNN reports.

Oh yeah, the former guy is ex-Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum and he was trying to escape to Nigeria after the military took him down a few months ago. Who did you think we meant?

National Zero’s special live coverage of the House GOP’s inability to elect a speaker continues Friday as spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan continues his insane, desperate bid for Congress’s highest office twodays after his second failed vote. Let’s get this dysfunction started!

“Does anyone notice that the Election Rigging Biden Administration never goes after the Riggers, but only after those that want to catch and expose the Rigging dogs. Massive information and 100% evidence will be made available during the Corrupt Trials started by our Political Opponent. We will never let 2020 happen again. Look at the result, OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED,” writes disgraced former President Trump in a Truth Social post on Friday, clearly reacting to coup attempt lawyer Sidney “Kraken” Powell’s guilty plea in Georgia, which was not good for him.

Infuriated by disgraced former President Trump failing to remove a copy of his Truth Social post doxxing his court clerk that was automatically re-published at his campaign site and spotted by Meidas Touch’s Ron Filipkowski on Thursday (and quickly deleted thereafter), New York Judge Arthur Engoron threatened to have the fat fuck jailed for violating the gag order Engoron had imposed earlier this month after the initial clerk post and demanding that Trump’s lawyers explain why their demented client should remain free, the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery reports.

“In the current overheated climate, incendiary comments can and in some cases already has, led to serious physical harm and worse. I will now allow the defendants to explain why this blatant violation of the gag order would not result in serious sanctions, including financial sanctions and/or possibly imprisoning him,” said Engoron, per the Beast’s full report which said any sanction is TBD.

Unhinged Fox News contributor Leo Terrell’s website reports in an article copied and pasted word-for-word from the Gateway Pundit that some right wing asshole on Twitter claimed that “House Republicans had to cancel a major hearing scheduled for next week that would have featured key material witnesses to Biden family corruption, narrating new documentation, due to the ongoing turmoil over House Speaker,” without specifying anything about the witnesses and documentation.

Call us cynical but maybe, just maybe, that since they couldn’t even name which committee would be running the hearing that there wasn’t actually going to be one at all and this might be bullshit meant to increase pressure on the House GOP holdouts to switch their support to Jim Jordan.