The first to fall in the 2024 presidential campaign:  faced with weak fundraising, no name recognition, and a continuing stream of ethical scandals relating to his ongoing business interest as he serves as Miami mayor, Republican Francis Suarez has announced he is “suspending” his campaign.  So, he’s quitting.

“While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains,” Suarez wrote in a lengthy post on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

Confronted by Andrea Mitchell about his legally-dubious claim that he says he discovered a previously-unknown reason Mike Pence could have legally rejected Electoral College votes on January 6th, 2021 (but which he’s yet to explain fully explain), GOP campaign rent-boy-for-the-optics Vivek Ramaswamy claims that the ploy only would’ve worked for him, not for any future VPs, because he’s special.

So I respectfully disagree, Andrea.  I stand by what I said in that interview, not what you just said that I said. I said that’s exactly what I would have delivered and then used that as an opportunity to heroism to reunite this country ’cause there are two preconditions for the health of our Constitutional republic.  One is the peaceful transition of power, the other is public confidence in our elections, and when those come into conflict, that was a rare opportunity for heroism that I think Mike Pence missed.

While the future time-share salesman claims Pence missed his “heroism” moment by not undermining the integrity of the election process by illegally and unilaterally rejecting the votes of hundreds of millions of America.  In fact, faced with an angry mob who sought to extinguish him, Pence fulfilled his oath of office.

The FBI announced it, working with European law enforcement agencies, have broken up a network of more than 700,000 computers that had been compromised by hackers to undertake denial-of-service and to insert ransomware into businesses’ systems, CNN reports.

The effort targeted a Russian-developed ransomware known as Qakbot that various groups have used to shut down healthcare and banking systems in the US and Western countries.  FBI programs were able to redirect the target of the attack to self-contained systems controlled by the FBI.  Good-guy developers were then able to turn the code on itself, ultimately shooting back code to the infected computers to delete the malicious code.

In the course of the investigation, the FBI and its partners were able to remove the virus from 200,000 computers in the US and another 500,000 around the world.  In addition, the FBI was able to confiscate more than $8 million in cryptocurrency from the hackers.

The Ukrainian military took out a cutting-edge $200 million Russian radar system and its anti-electronic warfare countermeasure equipment using a HIMARS missile attack.  Russia used the $200 million over-the-horizon PREDEL-E radar station, situated on the coast, to track Ukrainian movement on land and the sea.  Introduced in June, the state-of-the-art-for-Russia system can track scores of potential targets operating up to 300 miles away.

The losses for Russian forces mount up as Russian resources dwindle.  Ukraine has targeted Russia’s top-end military equipment being brought into the battle, with a number of elite Ka-52 attack helicopters destroyed in the past week.

A member of the self-declared “family values” and “law and order” Party, a Republican Ohio state legislator was arrested Tuesday night for violating a restraining order issued relating to domestic violence charges concerning his family members, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Police have not released details about the events that prompted Bob Young’s most recent arrest Tuesday.  He had previously been arrested on two counts of domestic violence and assault related to an incident in which he allegedly attacked two family members in July. Young had originally been charged with two felonies, but the charges were downgraded to misdemeanors by a Summit County grand jury; had Young been convicted of felonies, he would have required his ouster from the Ohio legislature.

During his July arraignment, Young said he attacked his family member because he’s been under stress and forgot what would Jesus do:  “Recently, I have undervalued Christ as a priority in my family’s life. I love my wife and my family, and they are most important to me. As a State Representative with a business, and a busy family of six, my life has been very stressful lately. On this particular evening at my home, we had some drinks and I acted poorly and said things I shouldn’t have. My behavior, while not criminal, was inappropriate and out of character. I apologize to everyone involved, including and especially my wife and children. I also apologize to my constituents.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Tuesday told Punchbowl News he’s been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer with a medium-ish survival rate, per the American Cancer Society.

“I have now begun treatment, which will continue for the next several months. I expect to work through this period and intend to return to Washington, continuing my work as Majority Leader and serving the people of Louisiana’s First Congressional District,” said Scalise who, judging by how he acted after the last time he nearly died in office, probably won’t suddenly start authoring a sweeping legislative package to help everyday Americans struggling with life-threatening cancers.

A Univision Chicago camera crew’s assignment reporting from the scene of a series of armed robberies on the 1200 block of North Milwaukee Ave got a little too meta early Monday when they themselves were robbed of their equipment and cash at gunpoint, the Chicago Sun Times reports.

A reporter and a cameraman were filming on the block when at least three men in ski masks jumped out of two vehicles and made off with what was probably some pretty pricey equipment. It does not appear Sun Times staff then visited the spot for their own reporting on the robberies, instead relying on accounts from the Univision crew, cops, and the president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians Local 41. But Fox News should definitely go check it out.

“It’s amazing that anything that happens that is bad, the first thing that many want to blame is climate change.  But if you look at the– I think we’re on the anniversary of Katrina today, one of the worse storms in history.  If it was climate change, if it’s continuing to get worse, then would you not see more and more or this storm being worse and worse,” Republican Georgia Representative said, as you see in his eyes how he realizes in the middle of his statement that yes, things are indeed getting worse.

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1696517659578487108

This tweet is actually kind of beautiful in its own way and it’s really hard to write a headline or expand on it other than just to link the story that he’s taking about right here.

A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia survey of Peach State Republican primary voters finds that 37 percent of respondents say they won’t vote for a candidate who’s been convicted of a felony while 41 percent said they would, and a fifth were undecided on the question.

“I think Trump’s legal problems are politically motivated and politically driven. They did it just to stop him. But I think it could damage him in the end,” Trump fan Mike Tucker told the Journal-Constitution, demonstrating an awareness of the danger few others in cohort possess. Donald still leads the Republican 2024 field in the state 57 percent to Ron DeSantis’s 15 percent.

Trump fans reacted and not well to DC Circuit Judge Tanya Chutkan setting the start date of the fat bastard’s federal trial on his post-2020 election attempt charges for Monday, March 4, 2024, just a day before “Super Tuesday,” which is typically the decisive day of the presidential primaries.

“The Supreme Court of the United States found in Nixon v Fitzgerald (1982) that the president has absolute immunity from civil damages actions regarding conduct within the ‘outer perimeter’ of their duties. The DA doesn’t have a leg to stand on” – The current top comment on the Breitbart article by some genius who literally used the words “absolute immunity from civil damages” in his own assertion that “The DA doesn’t have a leg to stand on” in a criminal prosecution. There’s also no “DA” in this case. The prosecutor will be a federal special counsel, Jack Smith, or a member of his team.

“Maybe one day the Trumpers will realize how badly they are getting played by the Dems and the Deep state. It’s so obvious to anyone with a brain that they desperately want to run against Trump” – Top comment on RedState.com’s article. We would much rather Trump have been convicted and sentenced to prison already than where we are now with the (decreasing) risk of his reelection.

“It couldn’t be any more blatant. The federal judge presiding over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Trump alleging interference in the 2020 presidential election set the trial date for March 4, 2024 – right in the middle of the GOP presidential primary calendar… SO it is now okay for a judge to insert herself and engage in the 2024 election interference” – Top comment on Fox News’s article. Weird how we don’t hear the same thing about Judge Aileen Cannon.

“It’s an insurrection when political opponents are prosecuted. It’s totalitarian. It’s a one-party system in the making……Thus, not the (used to be) American Way” – Top comment on OAN’s article.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was not invited to the funeral of the former pal he murdered, Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, for sort of obvious reasons, the Associated Press reports.

An attorney for MAGA attorney Ray Smith filed a waiver of the arraignment hearing scheduled for September 6th and entered “not guilty” pleas for the twelve counts his client faces in the racketeering case brought by Fulton County, Georgia, CBS News reports.  That makes Smith the first of Donald Trump’s dozen and a half co-conspirators to enter a plea.

A Cuyahoga County, Ohio judge on Monday sentenced Trump-loving former IRS lawyer James Saunders to three years in prison for voting twice in both his home state and Florida in the 2020 presidential and the 2022 midterm elections, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports on another example of a criminal justice system biased against all the voter fraud being committed by Republicans.

Saunders was found guilty in a bench trial last week by Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court Andrew Santoli, who called the MAGA asshole’s actions “purposeful, intentional and cavalier,” whilst sticking Saunders with the maximum sentence plus a $10,000 fine. “You violated a fundamental right of this country that every person speaks with one vote and one voice. I can think of no greater crime of a felony of the fourth degree than a crime perpetuated against every single person in this country,” said Santoli. Records also indicated that Saunders had also voted twice in the 2014 and 2016 elections, but prosecutors did not pursue charges for those years due to the statute of limitations.

CPAC asshole Matt Schlapp attempted to settle the sexual assault lawsuit brought by Republican operative/Herschel Walker campaign aide Carlton Huffman earlier this year but the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement on the amount of the settlement, the Daily Beast reports on what would’ve amounted to an admission by Schlappy that he did indeed get shitfaced and try to grab a younger man’s cock while begging him to come upstairs for some special romance as was alleged.

The Beast’s report, coming hot off the heels of a Washington Post story alleging the Georgia cock grab incident was not an isolated case, seems to be part of a leak campaign designed to finish the sexual predator’s time leading the right wing fan-con promotion off for good. All of it just goes to show that Schlapp’s not a star. Because when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

“Let’s go over some of the issues, though,” secret Trump advisor Sean Hannity says to GOP presidential candidate and dude who just wants to shake up the Establishment Vivek Ramaswamy.  “Y’know, you said aid to Israel, our number one ally, the only democracy in the region should end in 2028 and that they should be integrated with their neighbors–”

“That’s false,” Ramaswamy says with an audible rattle of his head.

“I have an exact quote,” a newly-reliant-on-facts Hannity responds.  “Ya want me to read it?”  Ramaswamy uses some weasel words–claiming he’s giving an “exact quote,” which he wasn’t–to say it would be a “mark of success” to ween Israel off US aid in five years.  To be fair, neither are being completely honest about Ramaswamy’s quote.

With its absentee father, Ron DeSantis, visiting for the week, Florida is preparing for impacts from two separate storm systems, one hitting from the Gulf of Mexico and the other skirting its Atlantic coast, the Miami Herald reports.

Hurricane Franklin, which just hit Category 3, is sliding north off the Atlantic coast too far for its rains to impact the United States, but with enough power to impact tides along the East Coast.  Hurricane Idalia is slated to hit Florida from the Gulf side on Wednesday, perhaps as strong as a Category 3.

Storm surges could hit as high as 11 feet, with the Tampa metro area experiencing surges of four to seven feet.  DeSantis, visiting the state to placate people at the site of a racially-based mass murder in Jacksonville, told residents to be prepared because this is “going to be a major hurricane.”

Jesse Watters just continues to self-own himself.  Here he is trying to convince his Fox propaganda network audience that Donald Trump is really, really popular among Black Americans–or, at least the one single Black American Jesse Watters claims he talks to:  his garbage man.

But the Democrats Soviet-style tactics have alienated their most loyal voting bloc.  The mug shot has breathed new life into the Trump campaign and broadened his appeal to Black Americans.  Over the weekend, with the help of mug shot merchandise, the Trump campaign raked in over $7 million. Today my garbage man told me he’s going to buy mug shot t-shirts for everyone he knows this Christmas.

Checking here:  Jesse Watters owns a $2.8 million, 10,000 square foot home on 5.5 acres in swanky Bernardsville, New Jersey.  While it surely doesn’t need to be said, Jesse Watters has never spoken to his garbage man about anything, let alone Trump t-shirts.

Republican political dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy must find a new introduction song for his rallies after rapper Eminem–reportedly Ramaswamy’s favorite musician–barred the tech entrepreneur from using his music on the campaign trail, USA Today reports.

Ramaswamy “spontaneously” performed Eminem’s 2002 hit “Lose Yourself” during an appearance at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, and he frequently used the song as his “walk out” music during appearances.  Music licenser BMI sent the campaign a letter removing Eminem’s catalog from the songs available to the campaign.