In a pre-recorded interview that aired on CNN Sunday, lying piece of shit Republican Long Island Congressman George Santos told CNN’s Manu Raju he was not ruling out a plea deal with prosecutors on the dozens of felonies he’s been charged with, which is different from saying he’s completely innocent and that all the charges against him are a Deep State conspiracy.

Orange Man is going to get mad. Very mad over this, especially the part where Zelensky said Trump doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about when he stupidly claims he could end the war in 24 hours. Zelensky then said “we are not ready to give our freedom to this fucking terrorist Putin.”

A new New York Times/Siena College poll finds President Biden leading disgraced former President Trump 47 to 45 percent in Wisconsin in the 2024 election… Oh and Trump leads in every other swing state, 52 to 41 percent in Nevada, 49 to 43 percent in Georgia, 49 to 44 percent in Arizona, 48 to 43 percent in Michigan, and 48 to 44 percent in Pennsylvania. The poll also found Biden leading Trump with voters under 30 by 1 percent in the six swing states surveyed, which is soooo devastating.

The only explanation the Times can muster for the disparity is “in a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six,” which we’re not sure really cuts it.

Wisconsin, really? What the fuck? The actual tipping point state for 2020 is the only one Biden leads in and by a margin significantly wider than his win there that year? We would’ve ignored this poll out of discouragement if not for the Chesseheads being the outlier. It’s obviously not great news for Biden, but that finding is just friggin weird and calls the whole thing into question.

All that said, if you do want to credit this polling of registered voters – one that does not include Robert F Kennedy Jr as an option – a year out from the election, you should check out the crosstab on likelihood of voting vs choice: 58 percent of those who said they support Biden were “almost certain” to vote while 51 percent of Trump fans said the same, which works out to a bare 51 to 49 percent lead for Biden. On the opposite end of the spectrum, among those “Not at all likely” to vote, Trump leads by a staggering 72 to 28 percent. How’s that for MAGA “enthusiasm”?

An ultra-conservative member of Israel’s Cabinet was suspended Sunday after speculating to the media that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might use a nuclear weapon to destroy Gaza, Politico reports. Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) Party, said in a radio interview that the use of nuclear weapons “was a possibility” in Gaza because there are “no non-combatants in Gaza.”  Eliyahu later claimed he was speaking metaphorically, even though he was specifically asked about the use of nuclear weapons non-metaphorically.

A report Saturday in the Washington Post stated more than 400,000 non-combatant civilians are still trapped in northern Gaza unable to leave the combat zone because of restrictions by Israel, Egypt and Hamas.  Israel has faced increased international pressure to conduct military operations in a disciplined method to limit civilian casualties in densely populated Gaza City.  The leader of Israel’s opposition coalition, Yair Lipid, called for Eliyahu’s immediate removal, calling it a “shocking and crazy statement by an irresponsible minister.”

This is your annual reminder that clock-switching is fucking bullshit and should be done away with entirely after next March when we “spring forward.” That should be the end of it. The United States has already extended daylight saving time (or daylight savings time if you’re a douchebag) repeatedly, with the most recent expansion in 2007 adding a week at the end from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November, and moving up from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March. Congress came tantalizingly close to making it year-round in 2022 with the Senate passing the bill almost accidentally, only for Nancy Pelosi to fuck off on it for reasons we do not understand. Very lame of her. It’s time for Congress to try again, because this is fucking stupid.

Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Main Streamiest of Main Stream Media outlets the Washington Post, has named William Lewis, the one-time CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal to be the CEO and Publisher of WaPo, the paper announced Saturday night.

Lewis was head of WSJ from 2014 to 2020, when he left to run a non-partisan company working to get news to young people on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.  Prior to joining WSJ, Lewis spent his entire career in journalism within Rupert Murdoch’s British empire, working as a reporter at the Daily Telegraph before moving to News Corp.

“As I’ve gotten to know Will, I’ve been drawn to his love of journalism and passion for driving financial success,” Bezos said in an e-mailed statement to staff announcing the appointment. “Will embodies the tenacity, energy and vision needed for this role. He believes that together we will build the right future for The Post. I agree.”

For some reason, a Virginia judge has ruled that the lawsuits brought by the Newport News elementary teacher shot by a six year-old-boy who brought his parent’s semi-automatic handgun to school can continue with her lawsuits against the school district and administrators, CNN reports.  And it’s not “For some reason,” like, “Why did the judge rule this way?”  It’s for “Why did the judge have to rule on this at all?”

The $40 million case brought by Abigail Zwerner centers on the fact that the school and the administration had been alerted to many warning signs about the student’s history of violent acts and threats.  The school board, however, attempted to argue that getting shot by a first-grade student is all part of the job for a Virginia teacher, so the case should fall under Virginia’s worker’s compensation laws.  The judge disagreed:  “The danger of being shot by a student is not one that is peculiar or unique to the job of a first-grade teacher in a class,” Circuit Court Judge Matthew Hoffman said.

Two fires in the mountains of North Carolina have forced authorities to call for evacuations of some communities, with a 200-acre blaze breaking out near Hendersonville and an uncontrolled 675-acre fire burning at Collette Ridge, which apparently started more than a week ago, WNCN CBS-17 in Raleigh reports.  Multiple other fires were burning across the state as around 90% of the state is currently experiencing below-normal rainfall and half the state is technically in a drought.  We guess the Republican-dominated forgot to budget to rake the forests.

Hundreds of demonstrators surrounded Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem on Saturday to demand he resign immediately and face criminal charges for the failures which led to the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack which killed more than a thousand civilians and soldiers with hundreds more taken into captivity in the Gaza strip, Reuters reports. The protest came on the same day a poll found an overwhelming majority – more than three quarters – of respondents agreeing that the on-and-off prime minister of more than two decades should fuck off for good.

“What the mainstream media is saying about the indiscriminate fire and the actors – I mean you literally have paid actors who are pretending to be killed” said far right Republican Florida Congressman Cory Mills to the “Faith and Freedom” conference in Kissimmee, Florida on Saturday.

It was 2:30 AM on November 4, 2020 when Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States took the podium in the East Room of the White House to triumphantly declare victory in his reelection bid against Democrat former Vice President Joe Biden after a long and grueling campaign marred by an ongoing pandemic and civil unrest. It took about 30 seconds into the speech for Trump to start bitching and complaining, variously going back-and-forth between confidently claiming he had won and complaining about a massive conspiracy against him underway at the time.

This outcome was still up in the air at this point as it took approximately 83 more hours from this moment for the major networks to call the electoral college for Joe Biden, but you can tell he already knew he was doomed – and this was when the long-prophesied MAGApocalypse began.

Often in 2021 and 2022 we would write some version of “not a single day has gone by since the 2020 election that we haven’t in some way covered something related to Trump and his minions’ inability to accept that they lost.” Thaaaat’s probably not true by now in 2023. Surely there’s been a day or two here or there when we didn’t pick up a story about the Capitol insurrection or the criminal cases or some stupid election conspiracy theory or whatever. It’s still been by far the dominant story here for the last three years and will continue to be so for at least another 366 days.

Independent exile outlet the Moscow Times reports that Russian state media outlet TASS’s general director Sergei Mikhailov was quietly fired in July for failing to cover the Wagner mercenary group’s failed mutiny against the Putin Regime in a way favorable enough to the Kremlin goons – and for allegedly having fled the capital as the rebellious mercs surged north before abruptly breaking off.

Mikhailov claimed to the Times he stayed in Moscow, saying “I was in my office during the mutiny and only left work in the morning.” A source called bullshit on that, but said that Mikhailov was already out of town for the weekend when the mutiny broke out. Whatever the case may’ve been, Mikhailov should avoid tall buildings. Accidents happen. And they’ve been happening a lot lately.

Nancy Mace previews House hearing on AI deepfakes https://t.co/ZcJ0TzCQZr

— Fox News AI (@FoxNewsAI) November 4, 2023

• Democrats aren’t focusing on an important part of the last jobs report:  yes, jobs grew, but wages also went up more than inflation.  Net pay raises.  
• The Trumps are definitely those defendants who hired a “jury consultant” who told Ewic and Junior to wear soft, non-threatening light and pastel colors to signal to jurors that they’re not a threat, because their entire personae are based on 1980s schlock pop psychology. 
• God help Sam Bankman-Fried’s cellmate.  That white-collar criminal is going to do his time the hard way:  hearing about Sam Bankman-Fried 24/7.
• Reportedly, Lauren Boebert is trying real hard to be taken seriously as a politician.  She claims she’s concentrating more on issues with her constituents and wants to be a “serious leader.”  You can wipe off the clown makeup, but there’s always the video…
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXLV”

The Special Counsel’s office is not hitting a Happy Hour on Friday night, as they’re also filing notice in federal court in Florida that they want evidence of the bad lawyer’s advice he’s been talking about and he’s likely to use as a defense in his upcoming case. So Smith et al is asking for that bad advice Trump is relying on, throwing attorney-client privilege in doubt, and smartly, heading off future motions/delays.  (Why anyone would want to be a Trump lawyer is unknown because you have to know you’re the one he’s going to throw under the bus.  After Eric, I mean.)

The Government moves for pretrial notice of defendant Donald J. Trump’s intent to assert an advice-of-counsel defense and disclosure of any discovery related to it.  Defendant Trump (hereinafter “defendant”) has claimed publicly that he believes that the law allows him to “do what I want” with classified documents and further that he was “told” legal precedent did not require him to return them.  The Government is not aware of any valid basis for an advice-of-counsel defense, but, if asserted at trial, it would require inquiry into any attorney communications on which it is based, and, under precedent in this District, would require disclosure of any such attorney-client communications. Accordingly, in order to prevent disruption of the trial, the Government requests an order requiring advance notice of any advice-of-counsel defense and timely production of any associated discovery so that any legal issues can be fully resolved well in advance of trial. In filing this motion, the Government does not concede the appropriateness or viability of an advice-of-counsel defense, or that a jury instruction will be warranted.

Relying on highly technical legal arguments, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office filed opposition to a coalition of networks’ effort to force the court to allow networks to televise the DC federal trial of Orangina Idiot Donald Trump for betraying the nation on January 6th, 2020 (and other occasions).  First, Smith argues the networks don’t have standing to sue, but then gets into court rules on who can and cannot decide what federal proceedings must/may be televised.  Basically, he argues the networks don’t have standing to move to have the proceedings televised; the court is the only one that can, and even the court’s power to decide to do so is limited by existing rules.

In a split decision, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Illinois recently enacted gun ban, consolidating conflicting decisions from other courts and handing Democratic Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker a victory for a law passed in the wake of a 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park.

The law makes a differentiation between guns used for personal defense and those that can be used by “trained professionals” such as assault weapons like the AR-15. “There is a long tradition, unchanged from the time when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, supporting a distinction between weapons and accessories designed for military or law-enforcement use and weapons designed for personal use,” Judge Diane Wood said in the opinion. “The legislation now before us respects and relies on that distinction.”

Per the Associated Press, the case unites four suits from the Southern District of Illinois, one from Chicago, and one from a Naperville gun shop owner being supported by the National Association for Gun Rights.  The panel concluded that the plaintiffs in this case were not lucky to succeed in overturning the state ban on high-powered weapons.  In their case, NARG and gun store owner Robert Bevis made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to block the implementation of the law, but the Court declined in an unsigned notice.

Montana Congressman and haute bourgeoisie who misses his flag Ryan Zinke has drafted a bill that would expel all non-legal resident Palestinians from the United States, a petty move of bigotry directed at the people exercising their First Amendment rights.

“This legislation keeps America safe. I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States,” Zinke said. [Curiously on his website, Zinke has “Zinke said” in bold.]   “This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved. Given the circumstances, the threats to our immigration system and the history of terrorists abusing refugee, asylum and visa processes all over the world, the requirements in this bill are necessary to keep Americans safe. This bill does exactly that.”

The move is clearly a conservative attempt to shut down Free Speech, particularly from Palestinian students and refugees in the United States.  Obviously, this is another conservative who doesn’t understand First and Fourteenth Amendment rights for Free Speech and Equal Protection extend to all people, not just citizens.