“You know, he was behind ISIS.  He didn’t do a darned thing to wipe ISIS off the planet.  He, he ignored the threat of ISIS and you could say he was behind the creation and actual elevation of ISIS, and thank god for President Trump to go in an wipe out ISIS and do it quickly. And Obama is responsible for terrorism around the globe with the funding of Israel…. And so to watch him, in such a weakened state–I look at this guy and I think, how on earth were so many people tricked by him. This is a guy who really should either keep his mouth shut over this because he is to blame for much of the problems, or he should apologize to embolden terrorist around the globe.”

Talk about lacking an ounce of self awareness…  That’s right, ladies and gents, Arizona conspiracy nutter, perpetual candidate-in-the-making, and perpetual losing candidate-in-the-making Kari Lake says the Commander-in-Chief at the time bin Laden was nothing did nothing to stop the rise of ISIS… except get al Qaeda out of the way.  (And ISIS is not wiped out, Kari.  It’s still operating.  He lied to you, like he did about finishing the Wall.)

An old axiom in the legal realm:  If you can’t win on the law, hit the facts.  If you can’t win on the facts, hit the law.  If you can’t win on the facts or the law, hit the table.  Not if you’re Sarah Palin, though.  Half-term governor and failed realty TeeVee star who also failed at her fallback career again Sarah Palin is attempting to revive her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, which at one point mistakenly linked her campaign to the shooting of then-Democratic Arizona Senator Gabby Giffords, by claiming the required malice standard upheld by the courts doesn’t matter.

According to Politico, the goal is to bring a case–perhaps this one from Palin–to the Supreme Court to overturn the Sullivan standard for defamation in the media, a move that is meant to cripple establishment, mainstream media outlets by assaulting them with thousands of defamation suits in the age of social media, real-time posts by reporters.  A decision removing the requirement for the plaintiff to show the media outlet knew the information was incorrect but printed it to harm the plaintiff has been the cornerstone requirement for defamation suits by celebrities since the Sullivan decision.

While Palin’s lawyer argued the standard was now outdated, the judges from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals told the lawyer that the case is likely going nowhere because the lower court ruling was binding and lower courts are bound to adhere to precedent.  She’d have a better shot at arguing she was never really a person of any import.

California Dem Congresswoman Sara Jacobs on Monday introduced a resolution censuring bald asshole Florida MAGA Congressman Brian Mast for his speech to House last week in which he said “I think when we look at this, as a whole, I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians. I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians,” Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders will officially endorse her former (but really current boss) Donald Trump at a rally in Florida on Wednesday, NBC’s Jonathan Allen reports.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on Monday filed his team’s opposition to his bloated orange prey’s bullshit “presidential immunity” motion to dismiss the federal conspiracy charges against him for his post-2020 election coup attempt, with Smith writing in the intro:

“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct – sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity – when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans. The defendant’s motions cite cases that, upon examination, undermine his arguments rather than support them, and he improperly challenges the Government’s anticipated trial evidence at this stage. The defendant also claims that he could not have known his actions were criminal because, in the past, others who have questioned, challenged, or protested election results were not prosecuted. But the defendant stands alone in American history for his alleged crimes. No other president has engaged in conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately retain power. The indictment squarely charges the defendant for this conduct, and the defendant’s constitutional and statutory challenges to it are meritless. The defendant’s motions (ECF Nos 113 and 114) should be denied”

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday announced a recall of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets made by Tyson Foods due to possible metal contamination, KTVB reports. The nuggets, composed of the shredded flesh of the evolutionary descendants of the monstrous reptiles who once ruled the planet eons ago, may have been sold by distributors in Alabama, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. Consumers who purchased the dino meat are urged to examine the packaging – mostly plastic, which is a petroleum product and thus made from the putrified remains of dinosaurs – to see if batch numbers 2483BRV02 07, 2483BRV02 08, 2483BRV02 09, or 2483BRV02 10 are present. If so then please discard them immediately.

Disgraced former President Trump continued melting down on the witness stand during his testimony Monday in the $250 million fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against his corrupt business empire, crying specifically about Judge Arthur Engoron’s summary judgment against him before the trial, saying the judge “called me a fraud and he didn’t know anything about me… It’s a terrible thing you’ve done. You know nothing about me. You believe this political hack [AG Letitia James] back there, and this is unfortunate,” MSNBC reports.

Heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s failing presidential campaign on Monday sent fans an email asking them for $25 if they want the link to the livestream of the evening rally where he’ll be endorsed by fellow Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Florida Politics reports.

“Right before Ron DeSantis heads to Miami to take the stage at the next GOP debate on Wednesday, we will be hosting one of our most exciting events yet (Monday) night. With your help, we are going to put on an incredible night. RUSH IN $25. We want you at this event. Chip in what you can now and we’ll send over your link to LIVE STREAM the rally tomorrow night! Get ready for something big.”

Actually the email didn’t say that DeSantis will be endorsed by Reynolds at the rally, just that it would be “something big.” A bunch of news outlets already scooped what it was on Sunday. Great job by Ron turning a somewhat legitimately big deal in Iowa into something sad and pathetic.

Republican former Michigan Congressman Peter Meijer on Monday launched for the Senate seat to be left open by retiring Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow next year to a tepid response from the NRSC, worried that a guy ran out of Congress for voting to impeach fat former President Trump would split the “moderate” GOP primary vote and hand the nomination to former Detroit Police Chief James Craig rather than establishment-preferred candidate what’s-his-face, Politico reports.

“Peter Meijer isn’t viable in a primary election, and there’s worry that if Meijer were nominated, the base would not be enthused in the general election,” an NRSC memo says.

On a related note, the Detroit News’s Craig Mauger caught the Michigan GOP breaking their batshit QAnon freak chair Kristina Karamo’s promise not to get involved in the primary, tweeting “Peter Meijer voted to impeach President Trump. Remember that” only for the tweet to be quickly deleted after he pointed it out. Later the party put out a press release saying “The Michigan Republican Party remains neutral and supportive of all Republican Primary candidates. Unfortunately, an over-zealous intern posted a negative comment regarding a candidate that does not reflect the position of MIGOP. This matter has since been dealt with and the post removed. Our sincerest apologies.”

Disgraced former President Trump’s testimony to the court in the $250 million fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against his corrupt business empire is going about as well as you would have expected, with Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron having to tell the fat fuck’s lawyer Chris Kise to control his client, multiple sources present in the courtroom report.

“Mr Kise, can you control your client? This is not a political rally… maybe you need to have a talk with him right now,” Engoron told Kise, per MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin. Ten minutes later, again it was: “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can,” meaning Engoron will increase the pain if the Orange Toddler won’t behave.

https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/1721545965402726734

Douchebag MAGA influencer Steven Crowder went all politically correct on Monday in sharing images supposedly leaked by members of the Nashville Police Department of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto, using the “cr*ackers” in place of the anti-white “slur” cracker.

Now we were told by the fanboys that this manifesto was 100 percent guaranteed to be a trans person’s declaration of jihad against the cisgender world. Instead it’s just white-on-white class hatred. Hale, unambiguously a sick evil fuck, even used “faggots” to refer to the victims in this scribbled bullshit. This isn’t anywhere close to as damning for “the left” as we were promised.

A 21 year-old rural Connecticut man is facing probably at least a decade in prison after cops acting on a tip searched his home and found dozens and dozens of “dog food-sized bags” of psychedelic shrooms with an approximate street value of $8.5 million being stored there, Boston 25 reports.

Weston Soule, of Burlington, CT was charged last week with operating a drug factory and possession with intent to sell/distribute. Details about how the hell this guy was able to grow that much psilocybin, which we were to understand is only found sprouting on cow shit randomly – and thus doesn’t lend itself to such massive quantities – weren’t included in the report, nor was whether Soule was tripping balls when the cops raided. That would’ve sucked for him even more.

“Getting ready to head to the Downtown Lower Manhattan Courthouse to testify in one of the many cases that were instigated and brought by my POLITICAL OPPONENT, Crooked Joe Biden, through agencies and surrogates, for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE. This is the first time this method of cheating in an election has been so blatantly used in the USA as a POLITICAL WEAPON!”

“Mostly done in Third World Countries. Got a really Biased, Nasty, Club controlled, but often overturned, Judge, a Racist, Evil, and Corrupt Attorney General, BUT A CASE THAT, ACCORDING TO ALMOST ALL LEGAL SCHOLARS, HAS ZERO MERIT. A dark day for our Country. WITCH HUNT!” says disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social, just about an hour or so before he has to take the stand on Monday to testify in his defense against the $250 million lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against his corrupt and benighted business empire.

Rolling Stone reports that Trump and his lawyers plan on “intentionally trying to provoke the judge into a nuclear-level overreaction” and get the fat fuck thrown in jail for a night, thinking it would be a good thing for him politically and legally. “When a defendant honestly believes he can’t possibly get a fair trial from the judge, one of the tactics is to antagonize the judge to a point of causing reversible errors,” Alan Dershowitz told Rolling Stone about the “strategy.” Should be fun.

Having gotten a shit ton of clicks from other outlets on Sunday linking to their story about their 2024 presidential poll of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – showing Biden holding a lead in only the last one, the New York Times on Monday printed a follow-up story saying, verbatim, “If the former president is convicted and sentenced – as many of his allies expect him to be in the Jan 6-related trial held next year in Washington, DC – around 6 percent of voters across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they would switch their votes to Mr Biden. That would be enough, potentially, to decide the election.”

And yeah, they hid this from the crosstabs published on Sunday too. Fucking assholes. At a Trump 48 – Biden 44 average across the six swing states this would work out to Biden 50 – Trump 42. They don’t break it down by state. Again, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that most of these respondents are lying to the pollsters and/or themselves. That’s still a fairly big shift contingent on an highly probable legal outcome and for the Times to wait 24 hours to add that important asterisk after happily playing up the “Biden is too old” angle in their initial reporting was pretty cunty.

An anthropologist was perusing the remains of the Halloween section of a North Fort Myers, Florida thrift store on Saturday, coming across an awfully realistic-looking human skull which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be an actual human skull, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office tells CBS Miami.

The store’s owner said they had found the skull in an abandoned storage unit they had purchased a few years ago in one of those auctions they used to have on reality TV. Florida law makes it a felony to “knowingly offer to purchase or sell… any human organ or tissue for valuable consideration,” with the key word being “knowingly,” so it’s unlikely the store owner will face charges. Cops are however trying to determine whose skull it might be and if it’s connected to a crime.

After weighing his options between remaining in power and abdicating his permanent dictatorship thus making himself vulnerable to prosecution or worse, Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to stick with staying in office until at least 2030, Reuters reports in an “exclusive.”

Rolling Stone doesn’t even believe porn is wrong, so why do they care about this?

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) November 5, 2023

The headline was almost “Convicted felon doesn’t see what the problem is here,” but silly Jenna Ellis’s moronic response just barely loses out on the real lede: That far right Evangelical Christian Speaker of the House Mike Johnson installed the “Covenant Eyes” porn blocker software on his devices – and that he and his son are “accountability partners” when it comes to digital smut.

Summarized in a Washington Post article (available through gift link here), the MAGA cabal’s plans to exact revenge on Donald Trump’s enemies and, presumably, on anyone else they personally feel wronged them, with Trump himself creating a list of people he will direct the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to investigate and harass.

According to people who have heard the plans from the friends and advisors Trump has outlined these plans to, Trump intends to target people including his former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, his former Attorney General William P. Barr and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb who has made a number of cable news appearances pointing to Trump’s guilt in various investigations.

The vision for a Trump second term is being farmed out to a group of far-right think tanks, according to the WaPo story, with some calling for Trump to immediately call for martial law to mobilize the military after his inauguration to quell the expected massive protests that would dwarf the January 21, 2017 Women’s March peaceful demonstrations in Washington, DC, just like the Women’s March dwarfed a certain compensation-needing wannabe dictator.

Speaking to the crowd at that insane Faith and Freedom conference on Saturday, Florida state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis – a guy who would have the title of “comptroller” or similar in another state but Florida just has to go with “CFO” – said his state’s taxpayers should help foot disgraced former President Trump’s legal bills, Meidas Touch reports on some culty bullshit.

“Imagine if we could fix the double standard of justice at the federal level. If we could fix the double standard of justice that doesn’t lock up a Hunter Biden but does everything possible to prosecute a President Donald Trump. So, here’s where I’m going with this. I think we need to set up a new legal defense fund for any Florida presidential candidate to use when they are targeted by politically motivated prosecutors,” said Patronis, who then went on to explain how to make it happen.

“We need to fund this. Our state right now is in the best fiscal health we’ve ever been in the history of the state, so it wouldn’t hurt to take a little bit of our budget surplus, set it aside. We can use this to protect any Floridian who wants to defend themselves and make sure these politically motivated prosecutors don’t magically appear during election cycle,” Patronis continued, of course making it technically about “any” Florida presidential candidate so it would pass legal muster.