“A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 AM on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” says fat former President Trump. This ought to be good.

The Putin Regime on Tuesday raised interest rates from 8.5 to 12 percent in response to a massive crash in the ruble’s value, Bloomberg reports.

Nice of him to at least acknowledge that he’s not the only one who got criminally charged over this shitshow. But what happened to “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls. We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment, and this election is closed out” like he said last weekend? Why isn’t he more excited about this and saying he just won big time?

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S Grant, Rutherford B Hayes, Chester A Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry S Truman, Dwight D Eisenhower, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama: 0 as of August 15, 2023. Carter, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama are the only former presidents who could (theoretically) be charged with felony crimes by dint of their status.

Donald Trump: 91 as of August 15, 2023.

Note: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G Harding, Franklin D Roosevelt, and John F Kennedy were excluded from this list because they didn’t have post-presidencies thanks to various illnesses and assassins’ bullets.

A Sunday Politico piece titled “Democrats’ climate law set off a wave of energy projects in GOP districts. A backlash followed,” checks in with folks in a number of places seeing new jolts to their local economies – and the “backlash” – a year after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.

One of them, Inola, Oklahoma diner owner and self-described Trump fan Bill McAnally, 68, was “ecstatic” when he found out that an Italian company, Enel, plans to spend $1 billion on a solar cell and panel factory in the town, which obviously would be big for him. “It’s a great deal. All it does is help my business,” said McAnally… just before a reporter informed him the company will take advantage of tax credits in the IRA to bring probably thousands of jobs to his town.

“I don’t support it now. The federal government doesn’t need to get involved. We all support bringing in green, but we don’t want to give them all this free money,” said McAnally, who evidently doesn’t want to expand his business and make more money because it’s somehow tainted by leftist Marxist something something. It’s worth asking just how much McAnally knew about the project’s funding before he changed his mind. The Politico article says he “was ecstatic when an Italian company, Enel, announced plans in May to spend more than $1 billion – the largest private investment in [Oklahoma’s] history – to build” the plant. Like was he totally in the dark that it was a government investment, or did he have some sort of vague, abstract awareness that the project had been spurred by something that he didn’t immediately make a connection to the Biden Administration’s signature economic initiative. The writing seems to maybe indicate the latter, but either way it’s a really excellent example of just how suicidally stupid and petty these people are. Who the fuck says this when the plant’s already being built and the money’s been spent no matter what? Would it be that hard to simply say “Hey, I wouldn’t have voted for it but I’ll take the extra traffic for my diner”?

Moments after 10 indictments were handed up in a Fulton County, Georgia courtroom likely including charges against Donald Trump, his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton made a live appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.

Well, it finally happened after much anticipation:  A Fulton County, Georgia grand jury has issued indictments with a total of 41 counts against former President and unsuccessful coup plotter Donald John Trump and 18 others for their efforts to undermine the votes of the citizens of Georgia by overturning the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.  

Trump was charged with:

• 1 RICO charge
• 1 count of Solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer
• 1 count of Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer
• 1 count of Conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree
• 1 count of Conspiracy to commit false statements and writings
• 1 count of Conspiracy to commit filing false documents
• 1 count of Conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree
• 2 counts of Filing false documents
• 2 counts of Solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer
• 1 count of False statements and writings

If convicted of all charges and sentences run consecutively, Trump could face as much as 55 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

With the retirement of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday, three branches of the US Armed Forces are operating without Senate-confirmed leaders for the first time in American history thanks to blocks put on the nominations of flag and senior officers by Republican Alabama Coach Tommy Tuberville, Reuters reports.

President Joe Biden has nominated Admiral Lisa Franchetti to take over for Gilday, but her historic elevation–she would be the first woman to lead the Navy–is one of more than 300 being blocked by Tuberville, who is holding a one-man protest of Pentagon policy to pay for the travel expenses of military members or their family members who need to travel to obtain a safe abortion.

Asked bluntly, “Would entitlement cuts be on the table?” Republican Florida bobblehead Ron DeSantis responded in a less-than-direct way.

I think what it would be is, promise made, promise kept.  I-I think looking forward in terms of future generations, people of, of our generation, you gotta sit down, you gotta work on a bipartisan way with, with the other Party.  You cannot do this with one Party.  I mean, when Reagan sat with Tip O’Neill, they were able to preserve Social Security f-for many more decades, and so you gotta be able to sit down, work across the aisle and develop the solution for the long term.

It was a yes-or-no question.  DeSantis took 88 words to not answer it.

Elizbeth B. Prelogar, the Biden Administration’s Solicitor General (whose name you’re not likely to see on National Zero again because… solicitor general), wrote Chief Justice John Roberts urging the Supreme Court to take up two cases with conflicting lower court decisions regarding the ability of social media companies to remove or limit controversial content, the Washington Post reports.

The 5th Circuit issued a decision in September 2022 overturning a lower court decision that blocked the Texas government from regulating how social media platforms moderate user content after conservatives claimed the law was needed because the little crybabies got posts containing false, defamatory and threatening removed from Facebook and they whined about political censorship.  A decision by an 11th Circuit panel of three Republican-appointed judges, however, went the other way in May 2022, striking down a Florida law that regulated social media companies, finding that the companies are covered by the First Amendment to self-determine what content the site would host.

The Solicitor General asked the Court to take up the court to clarify the matter, particularly given the upcoming campaign and election:  a swift Supreme Court decision would solidify the positions of social media companies and allow them to set policies.  The letter from Prelogar notes the Administration urges the Court to take the 11th Circuit’s position allowing social media companies to determine their own moderation policies.

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed his response to Donald Trump’s request to have a SCIF installed at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s members-only geriatric supper club and flop house.  While Smith defers to the CISO–chief information security officer–to determine what location would be best, Smith notes there are many reasons to ban Trump from putting the SCIF where he wants to:

In making this request for the creation of a secure location for his personal use, Trump continues to seek special treatment that no other criminal defendant would receive. In essence, he is asking to be the only defendant ever in a case involving classified information (at least to the Government’s knowledge) who would be able to discuss classified information in a private residence. And of course, The Mar-a-Lago Club is even less suited than most residences to host a secure location, because it is a social club. In addition to Trump’s residence and office, The Mar-a-Lago Club contains more than 25 guest rooms, two ballrooms, a spa, a gift store, exercise facilities, office space, and an outdoor pool and patio. See ECF No. 85 at 5. As of January 2021, The Mar-a-Lago Club had hundreds of members and was staffed by more than 150 full-time, part-time, and temporary employees.

Twelve prominent judges and attorneys including a man Donald Trump once considered for a Supreme Court seat have filed an amicus brief with the DC District Court calling for Trump’s trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election to commence with all due speed.

A witness before the House January 6th select committee, Judge Michael Luttig joined other prominent legal personalities including White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter and George W. Bush’s torture misprisioner Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in calling for an expedited trial, saying the facts of the case are clearly and plainly laid out, which should significantly reduce pre-trial delays.

“Accordingly, … a speedy trial on the schedule proposed by the United States government appears both practicable and to satisfy the former president’s constitutional and statutory right to a speedy trial,” the filing states.  “The former president is entitled to this speedy trial as a matter of law. He is not entitled to an unjust delay in his trial to serve his purely personal and political interests in the delay of his trial.  Such a delay would offend the constitutional and statutory right afforded the former president and frustrate the public interest afforded the American people under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

MSNBC’s Blayne Alexander reports what a lot of court watchers in front of the Fulton County courthouse are telling their audiences:  we don’t know when indictments will be handed down, but signs point to Monday night.  The courthouse doors are still open past the traditional 5 p.m. (local time) closing time.  A member of the security team told a producer that the doors will remain open as long as the grand jury is meeting.  Alexander also reports that the grand jury has heard from five of the ten scheduled witnesses, with the unnamed fifth witness having spent more than two hours testifying.

Little heard-of Trump attorney Jesse Binnall entered a motion Monday seeking to delay the civil lawsuit filed by the partner of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after being attacked and injured during the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

Asking for special treatment because he’s a former president and a candidate for the GOP nomination in the 2024 election cycle, Trump’s lawyer essentially claims he shouldn’t be liable to testify in two different trials simultaneously because he will likely plead the Fifth in the civil trial which, Binnall claims, would prejudice the multitude of other cases–both civil and criminal–Trump faces.

“Absent a stay, President Trump will be placed in the untenable position of fully litigating this case and risking his criminal defense, or pleading the Fifth Amendment and hampering his chance of success in this case,” the motion states.  “Such a dilemma should especially be avoided when it involves a former President of the United States and current frontrunner, presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2024.  Never in our Nation’s history have we seen the Department of Justice, overseen by a political appointee appointed by the sitting President, target the sitting President’s chief political rival with criminal charges. Thus, it is imperative that President Trump be able to defend the criminal case fully, without the burden of defending overlapping civil litigation.”

Asked if he echos indicted felon Donald Trump’s claim that his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where Trump asked him to create out of thin air enough votes for him to win the state was a “perfect call,” Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson backs away from his previous undying defense of the disgraced indicted felon while maintaining that the 2020 election was rigged.

“Well again, I-I-I’ll let the legal system figure that out.  What I do know is that there are all kinds of irregularities in the 2020 election.  That is indisputable,” Johnson asserts, apparently unaware of the actual definition of the word “indisputable.”  “I know that the media, I know the Democrats sweep all that under the rug[.]”

With students due back in school as early as this week in some districts, Florida public schools are experiencing an unprecedented number of vacancies largely thanks to the state’s GOP Governor Ron DeSantis’s ongoing war against civility and education, Newsweek reports.

The Florida Education Association counts 5,294 vacant teacher positions listed on various districts’ websites around the state, and another 4,631 education and support staff openings around the state.  Faced with state demands that teachers do not respect students’ rights and censor their subject matter to fit the political demands of DeSantis, teachers–and families–are fleeing Florida to make sure their children and students receive competent educations.

“Today, Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by an NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair,” Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign asserted in a statement hours after the candidate repeatedly supported a ban on abortions after 15-weeks of pregnancy during a Sunday interview at the Iowa State Fair.  The problem with the campaign’s response, though, is that Kennedy repeatedly stated his support for the ban.

Kennedy’s position opposes the Democratic Party’s official platform about abortion being the choice of the pregnant person, and the statement got immediate pushback from voters.  When asked about abortion by a reporter at the Iowa State Fair on Sunday, Kennedy replied, “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the woman during the first three months of life.”  Asked specifically if he would support a “cap… at 15 weeks,” Kennedy replied “yes” after a moment’s hesitation.

Two witnesses originally scheduled to testify before the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump and his cabal’s efforts to undermine the 2020 presidential election in Georgia appear to be speeding up:  two key witnesses who were originally scheduled to testify Tuesday have been called to the courthouse Monday afternoon.

According to MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin, both former Republican Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan and independent journalist George Chidi are now scheduled to appear before the grand jury Monday.