In an interview with local media outlet West Virginia Metro News, Senator Joe Manchin said that he is “seriously” considering leaving the Democratic Party and running as an independent in the 2024 election, although he didn’t specify if his run would be for president or senator.

“I would think very seriously about that. I’ve been thinking about that for quite some time. I haven’t made any decisions whatsoever on any of my political direction,” Manchin told the outlet. “I want to make sure my voice is truly an independent voice, when I’m speaking I’m speaking about the good the Republicans do and the good the Democrats continue to do.”

Manchin said he doesn’t believe a third party presidential candidate would disrupt American democracy.  “The bottom line is–will the middle speak up? Does the middle have a voice? If we can create a movement that people understand that we could have a voice. We could make a big, big splash and maybe bring the traditional parties, the Democratic and Republican Party, back to what they should be today but they’ve gone off the Richter Scale, both sides.”

New York Republican Nick Langworthy got immediately fact-checked on Fox–I know, right?–about the testimony by Hunter Biden’s former business partner, convicted felon Devon Archer and what was actually said.

When asked about the lack of any evidence pointing to Joe Biden taking bribes to change US policy, Langworthy was nonplussed, utilizing goalpost-moving to claim that what the GOP claimed about Biden being corrupt wasn’t actually what the GOP claimed:

Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg reports Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office has requested a January 2nd, 2024 start date for the prosecution of Donald Trump on the charges relating to his attempts to undermine the Constitution by overthrowing his legitimately-elected successor, Joe Biden, in January 2021.

Four Americans held on spurious charges in Iran have been moved from a prison to a halfway house in apparent preparation for a prison swap with the United States, CNN reports.  Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi, Morad Tahbaz, and a fourth unnamed person were moved from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison to a local hotel, a move the government has made to other foreign prisoners set for exchange.

Using Qatar and Oman as intermediaries, the Biden Administration has been working for years to free the prisoners.  Namazi has been held since 2015; Shargi, a businessman, and Tahbaz, an environmentalist, were detained in 2018.  It’s unclear what and/or who will be exchanged for the four people, but in previous arrangements, the US has released incarcerated individuals as well as released Iranian assets frozen in the United States.

In MAGA World, being a sexist pig is a feature, not a bug.  Donald Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, possibly Co-conspirator 6 in Trump’s plot to undermine the Constitution, groped a woman and her sister at a Scottsdale bar in 2021, the Arizona Republic reports.  The advisor for the court-designated rapist allegedly would not stop touching and pestering the two women in the early morning hours of October 10, 2021 at the Bottled Blonde nightclub.

“All night he’s been touching me and my sister, especially my sister. He kind of cornered her and grabbed her and is just making her super uncomfortable,” the 27-year-old victim told police, as recorded on the officer’s bodycam.

Epshteyn was charged with “assault touching,” “attempted sexual abuse,” “harassment-repeated acts” and “disorderly conduct-disruptive behavior or fighting.” In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty in to disorderly conduct and served probation, with the plea set aside–essentially expunged from his record–in January 2023.

Indicted felons Donald Trump and his henchman Waltine Nauta pleaded not guilty to the additional charges added in a superseding indictment issued by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury in Florida, ABC News reports.

The third co-conspirator in the Mar-a-Lago documents scheme, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira could not enter a plea because he still has not found suitable counsel to represent him in the federal court in Florida.

With lips firmly planted on Donald Trump’s backside, Florida Republican Anthony Sabatini has ridden his short MAGA-surfing political career from a rising wave in 2018 to a spectacular failure in a 2022 Congressional campaign.  But as the Daily Beast outlines, Sabatini’s credentials are at “Baruch College volleyball player”-level fraud, but it appears to be approaching it.

The 34-year-old University of Florida alum–who got degrees from both the undergraduate school and its law school–appears to have lifted entire portions of the paper entitled “A Profound Logic of The Blood” from Wikipedia and other sources.  The very first paragraph of the paper, available for review on a University of Florida online archive online, was lifted, nearly verbatim, from a 1992 academic review from the University of California.

Another paragraph of the paper replicates, nearly identically, a passage from Wikipedia, with only reordering phrases and inserted superfluous adjectives noted as changes.  Reviewing the work, a Stanford University professor ran the paper through services that check for plagiarism, finding “egregious” copying and duplication of others’ works without credit.

Cautious about the influx of mercenary Russian Wagner troops into neighboring Belarus, Poland announced it will deploy at least 10,000 troops along its 250-mile border with the Kremlin ally, ABC News reports.  It will start with shifting 2,000 troops to the region in the next two weeks.

The repositioning of Polish troops comes as NATO forces monitor the movement of Wagner troops between Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast, a disconnected portion of Russian territory sitting on the Baltic Sea but surrounded entirely by Poland and Lithuania. Polish and Lithuanian officials have expressed concern that Wagner troops were using their transit of the Suwalki Gap to infiltrate troops into the NATO countries.

First comes the form to complete listing the names you will allow your child to be called, including acceptable nicknames and reasons why their name may have changed.  Next up:  a list of books you must individually mark to allow your child to check them out of the school library.  Later:  a lengthy form listing what treatments you permit the on-site nurse or medical staff from aspirin to calamine lotion to bandages; it’s unclear if gunshot wounds were included.

According to the New York Times, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s culture war on anything that doesn’t comport with a straight, white, “Christian” male’s view of American history has led to millions of parents across the state now faced with dozens of forms to dictate specific things schools are allowed to do.

The problems are obvious and multiple:  schools must now put systems in place to accommodate myriad parental instructions, specific to each child, instantaneously or the school faces potential legal action by the parent, thanks to DeSantis’s new parental rights policy. 

Since he came to the Supreme Court under fire for various accusations of malfeasance, Clarence Thomas  has not slowed down on his grift and perceived corruption.  According to ProPublica, the list of gifts goes way beyond the $5 million allegedly given to him by sponsor Harlan Crow.

“At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast,” the non-profit outlet wrote Thursday.

Thomas other patrons include oil baron Paul “Tony” Novelly, AutoNation and Waste Management bigwig H. Wayne Huizenga, and Teton Capital Chair David Sokol.  Each one of their business were directly or indirectly impacted by cases Thomas voted on from the bench.

At least 36 people have been killed in the raging wildlifes that struck the Hawaiian island of Maui on Thursday and consumed the former royal capital of Lahaina, the New York Times reports.

Orcas attack boat off the coast of Portugal for 30 minutes, sailor sets off emergency alert https://t.co/CxRRKcggjF

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 10, 2023

Remember the good ol’ days when Hunter Biden had a plea agreement with the US Attorney in Delaware where he was going to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors, pay all past due monies and then join a diversion program to wipe a gun charge off his record?  Y’know, before all that went into the shitter?  Well, turns out that last part of the plea deal might not be needed at all because the conservative Fifth Circuit voided 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), the law that bans anyone in possession of, addicted to or using a federally controlled substance from possessing a gun, the Washington Examiner reports.

Turns out, the famously conservative judges in the Texas-dominated circuit want Hunter Biden to be a free man, because they decided the law Hunter would’ve pleaded to violated the Second Amendment because–to summarize–it’s illegal to bar a sober person from possessing a gun, regardless of their past (or future) substance use/abuse.  You can argue the constitutionality of the law and the Fifth’s decision, but you can’t argue with the Judicial Branch now joining the Soros-funded plot to ensure Hunter Biden not only skates on the charges, but ultimately becomes the host of a re-booted Celebrity Apprentice.

“And the whole think, I think, was a laugh and a wink and a, trying to make a mockery of the fact that– remember Dan Goldman said that the only thing that Joe Biden talked about with Hunter Biden and all his business partners was the weather and so I think this is a secret signal to all of the business partners that we’re gonna stick with the story about the weather and if you get asked anything about it, if you get hauled before a committee in Congress, just say we talked about the weather.”

Charlie Hurt, a poor man’s Bradley Whitford, isn’t just spreading new conspiracies about how Joe Biden secretly communicates with his gang; he’s also denigrating the Weather Channel, a competitor to the new venture of his parent propaganda network, Fox Weather, which minimizes climate change in its reporting. … ’cause, y’know, when you want to learn about the weather, you don’t want to hear about climate change, lib.

Asked at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire if he would retain decorum when dealing with Donald Trump’s rudeness, former GOP New Jersey governor and man who used traffic as torture Chris Christie quickly. responded, “No,” going on to explain Republicans tried that tactic once and it didn’t work.

“Let me tell you why. Because we tried that with him in 2016, all of us ignored his insults,” Christie continued, USA Today reports. “We said, ‘We’re not gonna respond to that, we’re gonna go high and talk about other things and just let him do what he’s gonna do.’”  Christie added the candidates will “have to fight him on the truth. … When he lies, we need to fight him. Because to ignore him is to assent to his lies.”

A candidate running on an anti-corruption platform in the Ecuadorian presidential election was assassinated when a gunman reportedly approached the vehicle Fernando Villavicencio had just entered after a campaign event and opened fire, CNN reports.

Villavicencio had campaigned against the “political mafia” and said Ecuador had become a “narco state.”  President Guillermo Lasso has called an emergency Cabinet meeting to decide how to proceed with the election, the first round of voting for which is scheduled for August 20th, ten days away.

Trump’s Wednesday interview with Fox reject Eric Bolling was more of the same: whining, lies, more whining, more lies. And with a sprinkle of defamation against the prosecutors pursuing justice relating to Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy.

Ron DeSantis’s hand-picked choice to poorly educate the children of Florida, the state’s Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., has pulled out of a public appearance in a predominantly Black community in Miami-Dade County where he was going to expound on the state’s newly rewritten history of African-Americans, who now learn that their ancestors benefited from generations of slavery to primarily white masters.

According to the Miami Herald, more than 1,000 people has signed up to attend the town hall with Diaz in Miami Gardens on Thursday.  Now, nope:  on Wednesday, Diaz announced he would not participate. “The governor and commissioner are bold enough to put forth these policies but not bold enough to face these people,” Democratic State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a co-organizer of the event, said.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday banning US investment in some sectors of the Chinese semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries and restricting it in others, Reuters reports.  The action is made in an effort to prevent American investment in Chinese efforts to improve military technology.

The order bans or restricts investment in Chinese companies operating in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and certain artificial intelligence systems.  The Treasury Department has a proposal available for public comment, and it will oversee enforcement of the order.

The Chinese tech sector was once a target for US venture capitalists, who invested more than $30 billion in Chinese-backed start-ups in 2021, only to see that amount drop to $9 billion last year.