Possibly because he doesn’t want to be berated on the world stage or maybe because he fears he’s losing strength at home, but Russian President Vladimir Putin will skip the BRICS conference of economic leaders, CNN reports.

The leaders of the four other member nations–Brazil’s Luiz Lula da Silva and India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa–are all expected at the Johannesburg summit.  While China has supported Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, the other nations have spoken out against the Kremlin’s aggression.

A 66-year-old southern California boutique owner is dead after a man walking by her shop in Lake Arrowhead, California took offense to a rainbow flag she had in a display on her storefront and shot her Friday, killing her, KABC in Los Angeles reports.

Laura Ann Carleton, a wife and mother of nine children, was shot by a man who stopped at her store, Mag.Pi, and “made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store before shooting Carleton,” according to the sheriff’s department.

Police arrived to find Carleton with at least one gunshot wound; she was pronounced dead at the scene.  Police were able to track the unnamed shooter and confronted him, where he was shot and killed after threatening responding officers.

Starting in the weeks after he took office as Florida governor in 2019, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis undertook a fundraising plan that allowed donors and lobbyists to pay tens of thousands of dollars to his fundraising operations to spend hours with the public official on golf courses and at sporting events in a literal “pay to play” operation, the Washington Post reports.

“I could sell golf for $50k this morning,” DeSantis’s primary fundraiser in the 2018 campaign, Heather Barker, wrote weeks after DeSantis was inaugurated as the team circulated a list of nine high-dollar prospects and their clients.  The list included the sources for the fund that the targets could approach, from influential Florida residents to business owners to major corporations.  One of the targets on the list was Disney, which DeSantis has targeted for state government retribution for opposing his “Don’t Say Gay” dictum.

“METHODS FOR FIRMS TO DELIVER SUPPORT: Golf, lunch, meetings, dinner, tours, events, etc. — Each have a threshold (ex. Golf $25k per person, which is a deal),” the document outlined, noting the ways wealthy donors could get in personal discussions with DeSantis to influence his policies.

Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, one of the seven Republican Senators who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, says the charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith are “almost a slam dunk.”  Cassidy goes on to say, “If that is proven, then we’ll have a candidate for president who was convicted of a crime.  I think Joe Biden needs to be replaced, but I don’t think Americans will vote for someone who’s been convicted.”

A new survey by CBS News/YouGov finds disgraced former President Trump leading heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by a massive 62 to 16 percent for the 2024 GOP primary among Republican respondents, with amoral fascist yuppie Vivek Ramaswamy in third at 7 percent, former Veep Mike Pence at 5 percent, and the rest of them at whatever who cares because it’s low.

It’s Trump’s largest lead yet. Another hilarious finding in the survey is that 56 percent of Trump 2020 voters expect there to be a recession next year versus 32 percent overall, like the assholes actually want there to be a slowdown so their Orange God Emperor has a better chance of winning vs Biden.

Even better is how 71 percent of Republican respondents said it feels like evrything Trump says is true, versus 63 percent saying “Friends and Family,” 56 percent “Conservative Media Figures,” and only 42 percent “Religious Leaders,” which is just what the fuck is wrong with these people.

Disgraced former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told investigators with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team that the twice-impeached loser ex-President had not once ever declassified any of the documents he had stolen after leaving office, ABC News reports.

Meadows is now co-defendant with Donald in the Georgia coup RICO case, but so far has escaped any sort of federal prosecution for his involvement in the Orange Tyrant’s presidential crime spree.

Whilst begging fat former President Trump to show up for the first primary debate in Milwaukee, titular Republican Party leader Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel last month warned the disgraced loser that he might end up giving President Joe Biden an excuse to skip the 2024 general election debates in the very likely event that they’ll end up facing each other, the New York Times reports.

The warning, which has pretty much gone unheeded since it’s all but certain now that Donald will in fact skip the debate, underscored another divide between Trump – whose minions see the general debates vs Biden as an absolute must-have – and Ronna – who has worked hard to try to undercut the Commission on Presidential Debates and force an outside alternative. The best part is the whole reason why she did it was because Trump melted down on stage so badly at his first debate against Biden and then did poorly in the second and final debate. Now Biden has all the leverage and can goad Trump into an official sanctioned debate with “unfair” moderators like Chris Wallace again.

Already some Dems are playing into the leverage. “I think the fact that Trump is utterly irresponsible and turns every event into a circus and a platform for disseminating disinformation is the basis for saying: This isn’t worthwhile,” former Obama Administration and campaign political strategist David Axelrod told the Times. Axelrod said it was also “valid” to question whether Biden could or should ultimately deny voters another showdown with Trump however, saying “whether you feel in a close race you could get away with that – and whether the public would accept it – is another question.”

Russian space agency Roscosmos on Sunday said its Luna-25 probe completed a near-perfect landing on the surface of the Earth’s barren satellite world, the AP reports citing official statements.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” said Roscosmos, being kind of glass half empty about it since they did make it to the moon. “During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” the agency wrote in a Telegram post, really being too hard on themselves for a little mess-up.

It’s not clear yet if the Roscosmos personnel responsible for the failure ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the pavement outside of a tall government building.

In a court filing, Mark Meadows claims that he should not be charged in Fulton County, Georgia claiming things like executive privilege, asserting that he was serving the Office of the President and therefore is immune from charges:

As a federal official at the time of the charged conduct, he is immune from state prosecution under the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution. The State’s prosecution of Mr. Meadows threatens the important federal interest in providing the President of the United States with close, confidential advice and assistance, firmly entrenched in federal law for nearly 100 years, and gives rise to precisely the sort of state interference in federal affairs the Supremacy Clause prohibits.

Indicted felon Donald Trump’s attempt to upstage the “establishment” Republican debate to be aired on the Offical Network of the RNC™, the Fox cable propaganda network on Wednesday night will consist of a pre-taped interview with disgraced former Fox host Tucker Carlson.   No one’s sure where it will appear:  on Trump’s failing social media platform or on Carlson’s stream on the more widely used trans social media platform now known as “X.”

Per the Washington Post, the interview is already “in the can,” as the Hollywood kids say, having been recorded last week while Trump continued his “will he or won’t he” pantomime regarding showing up at the debate.  With all the confusion on Wednesday, it might be a great time to sneak into the Fulton County jail to be processed… if only you didn’t insist on flying around in a jet with your name emblazoned on the side.

In what is likely to be one of many “basketful of deplorables” moments in his campaign, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis called the remaining supporters of Donald Trump’s reelection attempt “listless vessels,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.

“If all we are is listless vessels that are just supposed to follow, you know, whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement,” DeSantis said in a taped interview with the conservative website The Florida Standard.  “Ultimately, a movement can’t be about the personality of one individual.  The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people.”

“Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment means exactly what it plainly and clearly says, specifically as you just read.  Any person who previously has taken the oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and to then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the United States and the Constitution of the United States shall not thereafter hold, in this instance, the office of the Presidency of the United States.  That language in the Constitution, Jim, simply could not be any clearer,” conservative retired federal judge Michael Luttig, a short-lister for the Supreme Court when George W. Bush was in office and one of people who prepped Clarence Thomas for his Senate confirmation hearings, says about Donald Trump’s availability to hold office if convicted in the DC January 6th case.

As it was preparing to enter into an orbit for its planned lunar landing, the Russian unmanned Luna 25 lander experienced an “emergency situation on board” and its control crew is reviewing the situation to see if the lander can make another attempt, CNN reports.

“During the operation, an emergency situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post.  “The management team is currently analyzing the situation.”

The mission would have been the first Russian craft successfully landing on the Moon since 1976, and it was thought to be a needed publicity boost for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who experienced a faltering invasion in Ukraine and a military coup attempt.

Two decisions handed down Friday confirmed voting rights advocates’ arguments that Republican-pushed laws in Georgia and Texas instituted unnecessary hurdles and barriers to harass voters.  Per CNN, Trump-appointed federal judge J.P. Boulee struck down two aspects of a controversial Georgia law:  rejecting portions that bar people from handing out food and water to people in line to vote, and another requiring voters to write their birthdates on the exterior of the ballot envelope.

“Given the evidence presented, the Court is simply not persuaded that eliminating the Birthdate Requirement risks introducing fraudulent ballots or threatens election integrity,” Boulee said, essentially saying the Republican state lawyers arguing the case didn’t show people missing yet-another step in a secure process intended to defraud the election.

In Texas, Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a GW Bush-appointee, struck down a portion of the state’s much-derided SB1 law that instituted overly-strict requirements for voters to complete information on mail-in ballot requests and on the absentee ballots themselves.  Plaintiffs successfully argued that trivial errors should not cause an otherwise-legitimate ballot to be voided.  In 2022, more than 40,000 ballots were nullified due to voters incorrectly filling in their information on mail-in voting documents.

Katie Rinderle, a veteran teacher with 10 years’ experience in the Atlanta suburb of Cobb County was fired by the county school district for reading a book supporting children’s journey to coming out as LGBTQ, the Associated Press reports, with the school board saying her decision to read the book to her fifth-grade class violated district policy.

Last March, Rinderle read “My Shadow Is Purple” by Scott Stuart at Due West Elementary School.  The picture book is one of a series of books by Stuart, written for children betwen the ages of four- to eight-years-old that describes a child’s understanding of gender.   The child notes their mother has a shadow “as pink as a blossoming cherry” and their father’s is “blue as a berry,” but theirs is purple.

The board made the decision, on a Party-line 4-3 vote, even though a panel of education professionals including retired teachers from the district recommended against firing Rinderle.  Cobb County School District has a policy against teachers “espousing personal political beliefs.”  The district’s lawyer said “the Cobb County School District is very serious about the classroom being a neutral place for students to learn. A one-sided viewpoint on political, religious or social beliefs does not belong in our classrooms.”

Fires are sweeping through western Canada, with official in British Columbia declaring a state of emergency an at least 15,000 people ordered evacuated, while on Maui, search crews found more bodies in the ashes, bringing the death toll to 114.

The Washington Post reports the Canadian town of Kelowna, with 150,000 residents, has been placed under a state of emergency as fires burn on the outskirts of the city.   “We are facing the worst wildfire season in our province’s history,” British Columbia’s Premier David Eby said Friday. “In just the last 24 hours, the situation has evolved and deteriorated quite rapidly. … If you get an evacuation order, please leave,” he said. “The situation is unpredictable right now, and there are certainly difficult days ahead.”

With the wildfires on the island nearly completely contained, officials on Maui are now sifting through the rubble attempting to identify bodies, per CBS News.  In an address Friday, Democratic Hawaii Governor Josh Green said more than 2,200 had been destroyed and other 500 damaged, with between 1,100 and 1,300 unaccounted for.

• Trump’s irrefutable proof will join his health plan, his wife’s visa explanation and his infrastructure program as things we’ll never see.
• Something feels different about the Fulton County indictments.  While I know there will be more federal indictments from Jack Smith for January 6th, the Fani Willis-led indictments are the first judicial action that’s summarized the points of the plot to overturn the voters’ choice.  
• Is Botox a performance-enhancing drug for professional poker players?
• George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should have been indicted for misleading the world before the Iraq invasion.  Reagan before them.  Nixon before them.  And, likely, at least a handful before him.  I honestly don’t know if any of them would’ve been convicted, but democracy demanded the trials.  We’re at this point because we didn’t do the hard things before.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXXIV”