.@BarackObama criticizes my fellow GOP contenders @NikkiHaley and @SenatorTimScott for rejecting the Left’s myth of systemic racism. Sorry Barack, we’re not all prisoners of our skin color. Requiring minorities to adopt views about racism because of our own skin color *is*…

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) June 17, 2023

A diner safari story by the Associated Press reveals at least several formerly enthusiastic Trump voters who still love him and his “policies” but are ready to move on to another Republican nominee for 2024 because the Democrats, media, and “Deep State” just keep going after him, a tacit admission that the whole “witch hunt” thing has been actually pretty effective.

“I think we’re playing a game as a country. I think that damages any sense of justice or any sense of – should I even bother to vote? Why should I listen to the news? Or why should I care?” said small-town Iowa coffee shop patron Kathleen Evenhouse, adding “If you dig a hole and then you have to climb out, it’s going to be harder to do. And that’s where I think he is.”

“Right now I am a Trump supporter,” said Karen Szelest of Indian Land, South Carolina. “However, I think they’re doing everything they can to have him not run for president. And I think perhaps, for the betterment of the country, I may vote for somebody else because they keep going after Trump, going after Trump, going after Trump.” The AP didn’t specify in Szelest was in a diner.

“I love everything he stands for and I want his policies to be enacted. But they’ll just keep on going after him. So, I’m looking for someone else. Both things can be true,” said another Iowa Trump fan named Gina Singer after she watched Tim Scott speak to a crowd of about 200 voters.

• I know federal courts don’t typically televise trials, but to punch down conspiracy theories, it would be prudent in the Trump trial. If it won’t, it should at least provide an audio feed.  And NatZero should act it out it using sock puppets.
• After a series of subpoenas demanding compliance, a “soft” search of Mar-a-Lago that involved no weapons, and pampering at his arraignment that was done without a mug shot or handcuffs and for which he was allowed to surrender himself, MAGAts still claim Donald Trump is getting unfavorable special treatment.
• Parties that have a feasible agenda don’t try to censure an opposition legislative leader and fine him millions of dollars because he made a cogent, evidence-supported argument that your cult leader leveraged help from Russia to get elected.  And Parties with leadership don’t take that shit seriously.
• Jack Smith is likely investigating the handling of classified material throughout the Trump term.  If he was as careless with classified info while in office as he was after he lost the election, imagine what the Chinese delegation saw while he and Xi ate beautiful chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago as he detailed the US military’s capability to strike Syria.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXV”

It’s really amazing when Republicans deny something that was not only televised live, but also captured on video–and I don’t mean the 11 hours of testimony Hillary Clinton did before congressional committees. It was all caught and broadcast repeatedly on network television. But apparently, Ronna Romney McDaniel didn’t remember any of that.  And they claim Joe is feeble.

Kellye SoRelle–an attorney for the Oath Keepers, a leader of the Lawyers for Trump group, and imprisoned cyclopian nationalist Elmer Stewart Rhodes’ girlfriend–has been ruled incompetent to stand trial on her own set of charges stemming from the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, the Washington Post reports.

A federal judge ordered her trial postponed indefinitely until SoRelle could undergo long-term treatment at a facility to determine if her competence might be restored so she can stand trial.  Medical professionals from both the defense and the government found her to suffer from a mental condition that renders her unable to help with her defense or understand the seriousness of the situation during a trial, although they did not specify what that ailment is.

Saying the regulatory group should focus on performance-enhancing drugs, an NCAA committee recommended the group drop cannabis from its list of banned substances, allowing student-athletes who indulge to continue to compete, the Associated Press reports.

The NCAA started conducting regular drug tests on athletes in the 1980s as steroid scandals swept through sports.  With marijuana becoming legal in more states, schools on the Division II and Division III levels asked the association to revisit the issue of cannabis use meaning a ban on the athlete.

Democratic former New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio improperly used on-duty New York City Police officers as his personal security detail during his 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, a city government integrity board decided, Politico reports.

The city’s Conflicts of Interest Board ordered De Blasio to pay $474,794 to cover a $155,000 fine and the travel expenses for the police officers involved.  According to OpenSecrets.org, De Blasio’s campaign and affiliated SuperPAC raised just $2 million combined during the entire 2020 campaign.

The Republican-controlled Ohio State Supreme Court upheld a measure presented by the Republican-controlled legislature that would allow a special election in August for a ballot measure that would raise the required percentage of voters to pass a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution from 50% to 60%, NBC News reports.  Only a plurality of votes cast on the measure would be needed to pass it, just as only the four Republicans on the court used their slim one-vote majority to screw voters.

Conservatives rushed the plan for the special election after seeing support for an amendment to the state constitution enshrining the right to an abortion would get more than half the population, but perhaps not overwhelming support.  Knowing special elections tend to be low turnout, with conservatives typically the dominant voting blocs, Republicans saw the opportunity to get the most ardent partisans to reduce the rights of all Ohioans while the population enjoys the last days of summer before school starts.

Jack Smith’s investigation ain’t over.  The Special Counsel’s office filed a motion with the federal court in Florida seeking a protective order to limit the distribution of nonclassified information it will turn over to Donald Trump’s legal defense team, citing “information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which would compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals,” according to documents posted by Lawfare’s Anna Bower.

Among other items, the motion specifically looks to protect the identities and personal information of people named in the evidence, including those who may be cooperating witnesses, the name of whom Trump will undoubtedly feature in “truths” suggesting his followers do unseemly things to, but without mentioning their involvement directly.

“We know what to do.  Congress needs to act.  Let me be clear about something.  If this Congress refuses to act, we need a new Congress,” President Joe Biden states as he addresses gun violence at the Safer Communities Summit being held in Connecticut, eliciting cheers from the audience.  “And we need states to act as well.  Not every state has a governor as competent as [Democratic Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont], and I mean that.  But they can do a lot more.  Look what the Guv has done here in this state.  Less than two weeks ago here in Connecticut, Governor Lamont signed bipartisan legislation with more than a dozen measures to improve gun safety.”

Daniel Ellsberg, whose 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers exposed the futile nature of the Vietnam War, died at his California home at the age of 92, the Washington Post reports.  A Rand Corporation analyst who had worked with the Departments of State and Defense, Ellsberg and an associate photographed documents in 1969 that showed the Johnson and Nixon Administration knew the Vietnam war was a lost cause, but still kept pumping money into the defense industry and continued sacrificing the lives of young Americans.  The New York Times published the papers in 1971, leading to renewed energy in the anti-war movement.

Ellsberg recently reemerged into the public eye thanks to the HBO series “White House Plumbers” because the first operation undertaken by the bumbling secret team of G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, before the Watergate break-in, was to copy Ellsberg’s medical record from his psychiatrist after breaking in to the doctor’s office.  This was known as “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1” in Nixon aide John Ehrlichman notes, and it was reportedly unsuccessful:  the burglars ransacked the office, leaving evidence of a break-in for police but did not find Ellsburg’s file.  Ellsberg later told reporters he himself found the file in a pile of papers the burglars had thrown around the office; it appeared someone read through it, but did not understand what they were reading.

Ellsberg was indicted on stealing and retaining classified documents, but the judge overseeing the case ultimately declared a mistrail after evidence was presented that the Nixon administration had illegally tapped Ellsberg’s phone; had tried to steal his medical records; had tried to bribe the judge in the case with a promise of becoming FBI director; and finally had claimed it lost all the records pertaining to its illegal acts.

We’ll spare you the agony of viewing felony defendant Donald Trump’s 10-post video explosion on his failing social media site because, well, there’s really nothing newsworthy about anything he’s saying.  It’s the standard vacant accusations of unfairness and aggrievement we can expect from the septuagenarian manchild:  everyone’s out to get him; he’s being treated so unfairly; the election was stolen from him; the Democrats are going to steal the 2024 election by persecuting him; everyone he brought on to his Administration was “totally ineffective” in protecting him.  And of course, that by being accused of illegally possessing classified documents and obstructing the attempts by the National Archive to retrieve them, Donald Trump is somehow standing in the way of the oppressive federal government coming after YOU, even though it’s exceptionally unlikely his cult members would face a similar situation where they’ve illegally retained classified information.

Positioned after Trump posted a commercial about his Los Angeles golf club, the ten-post, 13-minute cumulative serial, was posted over about 20 minutes, looks to have been recorded in one sitting, but must have been split up as Trump stumbled over the words of his pre-written statement, or perhaps he swayed off-script and divulged more incriminating evidence.

In the first expansion of the Russian nuclear stockpile since the end of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin has confirmed the arrival of some of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, CNN reports.  Russian President Vladimir Putin says the placement is meant to ensure Russian national security, but it also places the weapons in an ally abutting Ukraine’s northern border, and Putin has not ruled out using nuclear weapons to support its invasion.

The news was largely greeted with a yawn by the Biden Admintration, with Secretary of State Tony Blinken noting Belarusan President Alexander Lukashenko is a bigger suck-up to Putin than Donald Trump.   “And as for Belarus itself, this is just another example of Lukashenko making irresponsible, provocative choices to cede control of Belarus’s sovereignty against the will of the Belarusian people,” said Blinken.

Members of the Teamsters voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against UPS starting August 1st, the latest step in the long-running labor tension at the delivery service, the Washington Post reports.  While 97% of the union’s 340,000 members voted to authorize it, the strike isn’t a guarantee:  it’s simply giving union leadership the authorization to order one.

Negotiations have led to a number of concessions from the company including ensuring new delivery vans have air conditioning and assuring self-driving vehicles and drones won’t replace human drivers, but the two sides are still far apart on key issues like minimum wages and benefits.  As noted in the Post story, a nine-year UPS employee in Los Angeles is making just $18 per hour, less than needed to maintain a minimum standard of living in his community.

Combining two separate stories due to the overriding theme of recognizing the impact of bigotry:  A Pittsburgh jury found Robert Bowers, the shooter who killed eleven people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, guilty of the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in US history, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.  He could be sentenced to death for his crimes.

And the Department of Justice issued one of the most obvious opinions possible:  an underlying culture of racism and discrimination against Blacks, Native Americans and other minorities in the Minneapolis Police Department led to the murder of George Floyd by department officers in 2020, ABC News reports.

“As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis Community, and our country and on the world. His loss is still felt deeply by those who loved and knew him and by many who did not. George Floyd should be alive today,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday in a statement from Minneapolis, demonstrating that the Justice Department is not only pursuing Trump’s malfeasance, despite the obsessive claims of subservient Republicans.

A friend of alleged recreational drug enthusiast Donald Trump Jr. filed a motion in a lawsuit he brought against a previous employer to exclude from the suit a series of emails exchanged among college friends showing Trump and the group tossing around racial slurs, the Wall Street Journal reports. (A non-firewall story is available at Raw Story.)

Gentry Beach, a friend of Junior’s from his days at the University of Pennsylvania and a groomsman at Junior’s first wedding, wants to shield emails in which he referred to having “jews for dinner” and called migrants “wetbacks.”  Junior was slightly less offensive, saying he heard “The Jefferson’s” theme song after Beach said he was moving to Harlem, a Manhattan neighborhood.  Junior also went on a rant against immigrants in the email string that ran from 2005 to 2008.  “Encourage the Mexicans to come to the US and give them another excuse to not learn English,” Cokey wrote. “When I have to speak to my grandchildren in Spanish, at least I know I will have you to thank.”

For 15 years, Beach has been suing his previous employer, Touradji Capital Management, for part of a $90 million payout he believes he’s entitled to, although a court has disagreed ruling that a lower New York State court improperly barred the fund from mounting a relevant defense.

One-time proposed Speaker of the House Byron Donalds amazingly undermines his own assertion of practicing tolerance while claiming that his Republican compatriots are exceptionally tolerant except for when they see anything that may trigger their unstable sexuality or gender identity.  As a sign of his “tolerance,” Donalds explains he doesn’t want to “engage” with anything that reminds him of things he doesn’t entirely condone when he leaves his home.  (And note that he slides in that conservative slur that LGBTQ people are living a “lifestyle” that “they choose to do.”  No, Byron, a “lifestyle” is toting a handgun or an assault rifle into a coffee shop or to a Little League game because you’re paranoid.)

Jim Trusty, one of Donald Trump’s expansive and yet stretched legal team, notified the court that he will no longer represent indicted accused felon Donald Trump in Trump’s baseless $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN,  Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.

Trusty wrote a 27-page letter for Trump threatening to sue CNN for using the words “racist” and insurrectionist” when describing his speech and actions, as well as comparing him to Adolf Hitler; the lawsuit was filed in December 2022.  Given that Trusty withdrew from the Mar-a-Lago documents case a week ago, it’s unclear which, if any,  of Trump’s multitude of ongoing cases Trusty remains active in.

“Hopefully by, like, Fall, Comer will have that information.  They can move forward in the committee process to investigate it, bring the information before the American people and I think we move forward with an impreachment proceedings,” MAGAt Florida Congressman Greg Steube asserts amazingly given neither he nor committee chair Jim Comer have presented any evidence of any crime–and Comer admits they haven’t spoke to their key witness in three years. But thankfully, Fox’s resident dupe Maria Bartiromo prepared a graphic showing members of Biden’s family, claiming they all allegedly illegally profited from a scheme for which Republicans have nothing to support their claims.

But that didn’t stop the Fox Business host, known best for repeating information about the 2020 election she was told wasn’t true, thereby costing her employer a whopping $787 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.  After noting the impeachment effort will fail because Democrats in the Senate won’t vote for it, Bartiromo ends with, “You’ve got Democrats completely ignoring it, and the media completely ignoring it.  The media will not cover this story, even though these are the most serious allegations ever leveled against a president,” ignoring the previous administration’s insurrection attempt.

In a brief interview with a local TV station earlier this week, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger challenged disgraced former President Trump to debate on the integrity of the state’s election system, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. “Well, maybe it’s time that he and I get together. Well, I would say why don’t he and I go out to the Reagan Library? We’ll have a debate. I’ll bring a copy of my letter to Congress and I’ll bring a copy of my book, ‘Integrity Counts’… And we’ll debate the issues point by point, because the facts on my side and he doesn’t,” said Raffensperger.