We are just asking, in the mob boss language these criminals understand.

. . . In related news, the Wall Street Journal has a big scoop on who actually gave the final go-ahead to slow down Starlink in Ukraine, so that it would be easier for Vladimir Putin to bomb, rape and murder Ukrainian babies and children and adults. 

Surprise, it was Elon himself, going rogue in service of Putin. Or was it? Yeah, it’s still kinda fucking unclear.

. . . Interesting that their sources include “US officials,” which means this is the Trump regime directly throwing Elon Musk under the bus, now that more and more Republicans are coming out, publicly and we are sure privately, to tell them how fucked up it is that Trump is turning on Ukraine and trying to force Volodymyr Zelenskyy to surrender.

. . . Trump has been furious with Zelenskyy for attacking Russia’s precious energy infrastructure, and so has Elon, because Elon is a fucking fascist troll who feels threatened by real men whose people support them without having to be coerced into it. Meanwhile, Trump is mad because Zelenskyy bombing Russian energy infrastructure is making it hard for his beloved Putin to win his murder war. Also, Trump is desperate to use Russian fuel resources to try to fix the problem he created with his stupid goddamned war in Iran.

. . . Anybody who doesn’t understand that there is a full-court press to help Vladimir Putin finish murdering every man, woman, child and baby in stroller in Ukraine, and that Donald Trump’s regime is directing it, is a fucking fool.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/53800661

Don't let a terrorist or a fascist paramilitary intimidate you into not voting, make your voice heard. (More Resources Within)

What to Do If You See ICE or Intimidation at a Polling Place

1. Tell a Poll Worker Immediately: Notify the chief election judge or poll inspector inside the voting location right away. Poll workers have the authority to enforce buffer zones and call local election officials to remove unauthorized disruption.
2. Call Election Protection (866-687-8683): Call while you are still near the scene so legal monitors can dispatch rapid-response attorneys and contact your county board of elections.
3. Document Where, When, and What Happened: Write down or safely record the exact polling site name and address, the time of day, agency vest markings or badge numbers, vehicle license plates, and what actions the agents or individuals took. Check your state's rules before filming inside a voting room, as many states prohibit photography inside the ballot area while permitting filming from the public sidewalk outside.
4. Never Leave Without Casting a Ballot: If there is any dispute over your registration or eligibility at the check-in table, demand a provisional ballot under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and report the issue to 866-687-8683.

National Election Protection Hotlines (Voter Intimidation & Poll Issues)

If you encounter voter intimidation, federal immigration agents near a ballot box, broken machines, illegal ID demands, or poll worker turn-aways, call or text these free, nonpartisan legal hotlines immediately:

• English Hotline (Call or Text): 1-866-687-8683 (866-OUR-VOTE) | Website: https://866ourvote.org/
• Spanish / English Hotline (Call or Text): 1-888-839-8682 (888-VE-Y-VOTA) | Website: https://veyvota.org/
• Asian Languages / English Hotline: 1-888-274-8683 (888-API-VOTE) | Website: https://apiavote.org/
• Arabic / English Hotline: 1-844-925-5287 (844-YALLA-US) | Website: https://yallavote.org/
• American Sign Language (ASL) Video Hotline: 301-818-8726 (operated by the National Association of the Deaf) | Website: https://nad.org/
• Disability Rights & Voting Access Hotline: 1-888-796-5627 (operated by the National Disability Rights Network) | Website: https://ndrn.org/

Voter ID Help & Free Transportation to the Polls

• VoteRiders (Free Voter ID Helpline & Legal Assistance):
  • Call or Text (English & Spanish): 1-866-432-8683 (866-ID-2-VOTE)
  • Website: https://www.voteriders.org/
  • What They Do: Provides free one-on-one help obtaining state-required voter ID, covers the cost of underlying documents (birth certificates, state ID fees), and arranges free rides to the DMV.
• RideShare2Vote (Free Rides to Polling Places):
  • Phone: 1-888-977-2250
  • Website: https://rideshare2vote.com/
  • What They Do: Offers free, safe round-trip rides to early voting sites and Election Day polling places, including wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

Official Voter Registration, Polling Place & Ballot Portals

• Can I Vote: (National Association of Secretaries of State):
  • Directs you straight to your official state election board to check registration status, find your exact polling place, and track your mail-in or provisional ballot.
• Vote.org (Nonpartisan Voter Hub):
  • Check registration, locate ballot drop boxes, view state ID rules, and sign up for election reminders.
• VOTE411 (League of Women Voters):
  • Enter your address to view a customized, nonpartisan sample ballot showing every candidate and ballot measure in your district.
• U.S. Government Official Voting Portal:
  • Official federal directory of state and local election offices.

Reporting Federal Civil Rights Violations & Armed Intimidation

Under federal law (18 U.S.C. § 594 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965), intimidating, threatening, or coercing any person to interfere with their right to vote is a federal crime. Furthermore, DHS policy regarding "protected areas" and federal statutes (18 U.S.C. § 592) restrict armed federal troops or officers from stationing themselves at polling places outside of genuine public safety emergencies.

• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division - Voting Section:
  • Toll-Free Phone: 1-800-253-3931
  • Direct Phone: 202-307-2767
  • TTY: 202-305-0082
  • Online Civil Rights Reporting Portal
• **ACLU Voter Protection & Know Your Rights
• Brennan Center for Justice (Polling Place Intimidation Guides)

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/46057398

“Mom, there’s a shooter,” Michelle’s fifth grader said through the phone.

Something about her son’s serious tone was familiar.

“If you’ve ever gotten a call that a loved one passed away … that kind of tone,” Michelle explained.

She knew that tone.

The 40-year-old mother would later compare it to the sound of her principal’s voice echoing through the loudspeaker 25 years ago: “Lockdown! Lockdown!”

When she was in ninth grade, a former classmate opened fire at her high school in El Cajon, California.

Like then, she immediately knew in her gut the situation with her son was serious.

And Michelle was right. A former student had just shot through the glass doors of her son’s school, Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, and opened fire on a special needs classroom, killing a beloved teacher and three students.

CNN has agreed to withhold Michelle’s last name and the names of her family members for privacy concerns.

Michelle told her son she loved him, but that he needed to hang up immediately and remain quiet while she called 911.

As a school shooting survivor herself, she knew the importance of her son staying silent and not alerting the shooter to his location, she said.

Michelle immediately fled the Olive Garden where she and her mother had been eating lunch and called 911 as she ran, her mother trailing behind her. Emergency operators in Bend always answered immediately in her experience – but that didn’t happen this time.

“It was just ringing, ringing, ringing, and nobody was picking up,” she said.

No response breeds panic

Police cars and firetrucks crowded the streets as Michelle neared the school. Alarmed parents followed closely as she ran up to Silver Rail Elementary.

“What’s going on? Is someone hurt?” she frantically asked parents and police officers as she approached the front of the school. A police informed them the shooter was dead, though this offered little relief.

Michelle saw a kindergarten class sitting on the ground near the teacher’s parking lot. “They were all crying, which was really hard to see because they are tiny,” she said.

Even though she had heard from her fifth grader, Michelle’s mind raced with thoughts of her first-grade son who remained inside the school. She texted her first grader’s teacher, but did not receive a response, sending her “panic to 100.”

She had no other way to reach him.

Flashbacks from her own experience of the shooting at Granite Hills High School in 2001 crept into her thoughts, including brief recollections of the shooter, a boy she had sat next to in physics class. But these memories were quickly overtaken by the thoughts of her own children in their classrooms.

‘Were they safe?’ ‘What did they see?’ On a loop, her brain replayed ‘it was your kid’ who was shot.

Last Thursday “was just honestly the worst day of my life, much worse than when I actually went through it myself as a child,” she said.

At one point, she had to sit down on the pavement at her sons’ elementary school as she grew faint from the overwhelming emotions.

Lightning strikes twice

Michelle’s husband, alerted by her mother on the drive over from the restaurant, had also arrived at the school. The family was redirected to Journey Church, where authorities sent everyone to be reunited with their children.

As petrified parents filed into the warehouse-like church nestled in a strip mall and took seats on folding chairs, Michelle noticed a woman near the front, sitting alone.

The woman’s cell phone rang.

She answered the call, and soon broke down in tears, collapsing out of her chair. Other parents rushed to comfort her. Inferring what news the woman had likely learned on that call, Michelle stared at the dark screen of her own phone for the next three hours, praying it wouldn’t ring.

Later that day, a childhood friend reminded Michelle of her own reunification process decades earlier. After the SWAT team methodically cleared each room, she and her classmates were let out in a single-file line with their hands over their heads to a park where parents waited. All the kids around her were screaming “mom” and “dad,” so Michelle screamed her mother’s full name to stand out in the crowd and find her mom.

“How can lightning strike twice? How can I go through this and then my children go through this?” she asked.

Knowing her oldest was safe, Michelle texted her fifth grader to see if he had seen his little brother. Communicating through the tiny screen on his Apple watch, he said he had. Michelle asked her son again, to which he confirmed his brother was alive, but Michelle’s thoughts still spiraled.

“What if he saw a kid in a blue shirt and thought it was (him)? I was still worried,” she said.

Finally, after three grueling hours waiting in the church, Michelle was reunited with her two sons. Her oldest had heard the gun shots and the sound of people screaming in the school. As she picked him up and gave him a hug, the first thing he said, through tears, was “Mom, can I be homeschooled? I never want to go in that school again.”

Some hours after the shooting in the safety of their home, adrenaline waning, Michelle’s mother turned to her and said she better call the Olive Garden to pay the bill they ran out on.

“Mom, I think Olive Garden is gonna be OK,” replied Michelle.

Enduring trauma

Later that evening, Michelle spotted her 11-year-old on his iPad reading a news headline that several people had died at his school.

For the first time, she told her son about her own survival story.

“This happened to you?” he asked, his eyes wide, and wondered if anyone had died at her high school.

Three students and two teachers were wounded in the shooting at Granite Hills. No one died.

Michelle reassured her son, but he didn’t want to talk about the incident. She told him she would be there to talk when he was ready.

In 2001, Michelle remembers hiding under her desk and hearing helicopters circling over her school. After roughly an hour, when the shooting was believed to be over, but still locked down in their classroom, her teacher put on a movie to pass the time. It was “The Karate Kid.” Then, cell phones were rare among students. Michelle recalls her teacher letting students use his computer to email their parents while they waited.

During a work-related meeting this past Monday, Michelle kept thinking of the 18-year-old shooter from her high school. The recurring image of his face clouded her thoughts while she tried to focus.

For Michelle, the trauma of enduring a school shooting has meant never feeling safe in her school or in public spaces again, finding herself always looking for the nearest exit in case of emergency, and later developing panic attacks. Well before last week’s shooting, she said she got a pit in her stomach every time she dropped her children off at school, which she previously chalked up to anxiety and her own trauma.

“What if that was just intuition? And I think that’s probably pretty ridiculous. But like, I was just in shock,” she said.

Now her oldest son seems to be facing similar feelings of dread at the thought of public spaces. The Red Cross and other organizations held a gathering over the weekend for Silver Rail students and families.

“I don’t want to go because what if a terrorist comes and shoots us all?” her fifth-grader asked Michelle. They did not attend the event.

Avoiding the school

Michelle doesn’t see a path forward at the elementary school at this point and is seriously thinking about home schooling both of her boys, and says other parents are considering the same.

“I feel like it happened to me twice. Who’s to say it’s not going to happen a third time?” Michelle said.

In the week since the shooting, she now avoids driving near Silver Rail and opts for different roads instead. She did go to the makeshift memorial on Saturday to put down flowers but tried not to look too closely at the school.

She said seeing the building brought back flashbacks of the excruciating helplessness she felt running up to the school last week but not being allowed inside, which triggered memories of desperately searching for her own parents in a crowd in 2001.

Earlier this week, at a secure FBI location, Michelle retrieved the belongings her children left behind at the school. The process for picking up the items was very well-organized and offered comfort items like therapy dogs, stuffed animals and snacks. Michelle told the FBI agent that they didn’t have anything like this after her experience in a school shooting.

“And then (the agent) kind of said to me, ‘Unfortunately, we’ve had 25 years to perfect this process.’”

Baby steps forward

But her family is also taking small steps toward healing, each processing the incident in their own way.

On Sunday, Michelle invited a therapist to their home to chat with her boys.

With the therapist and his mom present, Michelle’s 11-year-old finally started to open up about some of the questions on his mind. “Why did this happen?” he asked.

He also wanted to know who the victims were. After they told him, he got his yearbook out and looked at their pictures and explained some of his memories with them. Then he sat in front of the TV, the yearbook still in his hands, for “quite a while,” Michelle said.

He left the house on Monday for the first time since the shooting to get his favorite ice cream.

Michelle’s husband visited the memorial Monday night, after the kids were asleep, and found himself praying and processing his own grief surrounding the tragedy.

The family has set up a “free toys and books” bin in their yard where neighborhood kids could grab sensory toys and books, with a friend ordering books tailored to help children process this kind of traumatic event.

Her youngest rode bikes with some friends in the neighborhood and asked his mom to schedule playdates.

Michelle is working to cope with the recurring US epidemic of gun violence on school campuses. In the meantime, she’s focused on reassuring her boys.

“I went through this. I’m OK. You’ll be OK,” she told them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53497470

We are just asking, in the mob boss language these criminals understand.

. . . In related news, the Wall Street Journal has a big scoop on who actually gave the final go-ahead to slow down Starlink in Ukraine, so that it would be easier for Vladimir Putin to bomb, rape and murder Ukrainian babies and children and adults. 

Surprise, it was Elon himself, going rogue in service of Putin. Or was it? Yeah, it’s still kinda fucking unclear.

. . . Interesting that their sources include “US officials,” which means this is the Trump regime directly throwing Elon Musk under the bus, now that more and more Republicans are coming out, publicly and we are sure privately, to tell them how fucked up it is that Trump is turning on Ukraine and trying to force Volodymyr Zelenskyy to surrender.

. . . Trump has been furious with Zelenskyy for attacking Russia’s precious energy infrastructure, and so has Elon, because Elon is a fucking fascist troll who feels threatened by real men whose people support them without having to be coerced into it. Meanwhile, Trump is mad because Zelenskyy bombing Russian energy infrastructure is making it hard for his beloved Putin to win his murder war. Also, Trump is desperate to use Russian fuel resources to try to fix the problem he created with his stupid goddamned war in Iran.

. . . Anybody who doesn’t understand that there is a full-court press to help Vladimir Putin finish murdering every man, woman, child and baby in stroller in Ukraine, and that Donald Trump’s regime is directing it, is a fucking fool.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53434160

In other news, last night Trump continued his pre-ejaculatory gushing over Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted’s ass. 

“I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course.”

“But I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs. I said, ‘His ass, shit, it’s like—it’s like a pile of muscle,’” Trump continued. “Then I looked at his legs, and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’ Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand. He’s like a piece of steel.”

His ass … shit, it’s like — it’s like a pile of muscle! 

Thing is, Trump wasn’t even in Ohio. He was telling people this in North Carolina, where the firmness of Jon Husted’s reportedly delicious ass is not even on the ballot.

He apparently also told the same story about Michael Dukakis twice in 30 minutes, so that’s cool. 

And of course bragged about acing his dementia test.

DO YOU WANT TROUBLE?

Evan Hurst 29 minutes ago

Does this woman even exist? Not if Politico says she does!

Wonkette does not want trouble, so we will not unquestioningly repeat what all these news outlets have been saying about how there’s big fuckin’ Susie Wiles drama (allegedly!) in the Trump White House. Have there been rumors that Donald Trump is going to fire White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, for reasons, or because he’s looking for somebody to blame for how hilariously shittily everything is going for him? No comment, and you’ll get trouble if you say otherwise!

Axios reports on a letter received by Politico — talk about a game of follow the bouncing access journalism bootlicker, Jesus — from the White House Counsel that says it better retract its stories about big fuckin’ Susie Wiles drama (allegedly!) in the Trump White House, or else gonna be trouble!

The letter screams about Politico publishing “demonstrably false and defamatory articles in an apparent effort to manufacture a narrative of dysfunction and infighting in the White House.” 

Dysfunction? In this White House? 

Among the charges: “Sensational falsehoods”! “Fanciful fiction regardless”!

Priss priss priss! 

And here we were completely about to forget to write about all these stories about big fuckin’ Susie Wiles drama (allegedly!) in the White House, before we saw a headline about this melodramatic letter. 

They are upset about the October 15 Politico Playbook headlined “Trump’s Ice Maiden is under fire” (LMAO), which claimed WRONGLY AND BADLY that Trump has been calling around asking people what they think of Susie Wiles, the way he always does when he starts getting jitters in his underpants about somebody. They had four sources and a Republican operative who said, “She’s burned a lot of people.” Reached for comment, Trump stuck by Wiles, but he always does that until the very second he fires somebody.

“TOTAL FAKE NEWS Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism — it’s why I kicked them out of the White House!” the president said. “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff — there is a reason for that. She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

‘Kay. 

That article said there have been replacement names floated, like maybe Unfuckable Satan Hitler Incarnate himself, Stephen Miller. Three other possibilities from that article? “Trump is also considering Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Kevin McCarthy[.]”

Steve Witkoff who called Vladimir Putin a “humanitarian” this week? Bill Pulte, Trump’s yapping French bulldog who thinks he’s a pit bull? Kevin McCarthy, who is Kevin McCarthy? Hahahahahahaha.

The letter goes on to bitch that the reporting in that article is “prefabricated, supported only by anonymous sources,” a statement that contradicts itself, but this White House is full of goddamned morons, no reason why the White House Counsel’s office should come off any smarter. 

THEN, the NEXT DAY, they followed up and said Trump had a “freakout” about the original article! No freakout! No freakout! You are the freakout!

“This too was false, and obviously so,” says the letter. Obviously. Trump is notoriously cool, calm and collected, especially with the press.

And THEN, the SAME DAY, Politico published an article that said — WRONGLY, OF COURSE — that “Susie Wiles helped set up Fox News interview ahead of press secretary’s exit.” Politico had originally reported that Wiles had been instrumental in setting up that fateful interview on Sean Hannity when last week’s press secretary Katie Zacharia was exposed (again) as an idiot so bad that she needed to get fired. This was funny because it suggested that Wiles’s nasty underhanded trick to get Zacharia out of there was to … book the new press secretary on the Fox News TV show of one of Donald Trump’s most fervent and devoted asslickers.

Ya tricked! Whoa if true!

But apparently Politico might have boned that one a bit — or they’re saying they did — because they’ve updated the story and headline to say that Wiles had simply “offered positive reinforcement” for Zacharia doing that interview, which turned out to the final nail in the coffin of her embarrassing 24 seconds of employment.

“POLITICO’s follow-up reporting indicates she did not play a direct role in setting up the interview,” explains Politico. She just “offered positive reinforcement,” according to “senior White House official” dictating the new terms of the story, while the White House Counsel’s office is busy drafting yell-y, shout-y letters. 

Susie Wiles did not set it up. Susie Wiles did not do Katie Zacharia dirty, by tricking the press secretary of America into going on television for a softball interview with a real-live dumbass.

Anyway, you can read the rest of the bitchy letter here. In general, what comes across is that this White House seems to be under the impression that if it issues an official denial to literally anything, that should be the end of the story, as if the building isn’t full of pathological liars and fascists, led by one of the most notorious liars in world history. Also as if the building isn’t full of backstabbers who will tell journalists the real scoop and/or stab each other in the back as long as they are credited as “senior White House official” or “person close to the White House.”

It’s not clear what the letter is threatening Politico with, but Axios reports that a “White House official” told them that “all options are on the table” and that Trump’s lawyers are “uncharacteristically enraged.” 

There’s also this:

Sounds legit, Politico is a foreign op trying to influence American elections. They’re probably about to steal the midterms, by winning the morning! You betcha.

(Notably, the Trump administration is currently brazenly interfering to help the fascists win in Brazil, because it’s OK when they do it, or when America’s enemies do it to America on Republicans’ behalf.)

This of course is happening against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s fascist media ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, which is currently being litigated. They’re still banned from the Oval and Air Force One, though a judge required the White House to let them back on the grounds a week and a half ago. 

But anyway, drama! BUT NOT ABOUT SUSIE WILES! There is no such thing as Susie Wiles drama! Susie Wiles is so drama-free that she is actually classified as ASMR!

Meanwhile, voting is getting going around the US, and Republicans are clearly already looking for people to blame for what hasn’t even officially happened to them yet.

Politico reported (FAKE NEWS) earlier this week that the knives are already out and they know whose fault everything is, and it is each other:

Everyone is bracing for President Donald Trump’s ire if the party loses big in November. House Republicans are planning to accuse the Senate side. Trump political aides have taken to directly calling campaigns they feel aren’t performing well enough. National GOP operatives are quietly furious at lackluster candidates who didn’t do enough to prepare for a tough year despite early warnings. And some GOP candidates are pointing the finger back at their own party committees.

It’s a vicious cycle, according to more than a dozen top GOP operatives and lawmakers who spoke to POLITICO, some of whom were granted anonymity to candidly discuss private conversations.

So that’s fun.

Everything in this post has been a lie, except for the parts that were not, and the final say on which is which goes to Dear Leader Donald Trump, AKA Señor True Stuff.

trump is blocking countries (Germany, Spain) from transferring their Patriot missiles to Ukraine because he’s a bought-and-paid-for puppet of the Kremlin.

VOTE. WRITE. CALL.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53387362

No mention of Epstein either

via

via

That must be one hell of a pee tape.

After seven straight days of flying across America and spewing obvious lies and incoherent nonsense at hate rallies coast to coast, Preznit Fuckwit and his bunny-boiling diaper nurse took Sunday off, and played patty-cake while holed up at his vermin-infested Florida golf motel.

So we were spared hearing yet another eloquent soliloquy on the magnificence of Jon Husted’s ass. 

Unfortunately for us, however, Donny didn’t take a break from crapping out pro-Russian bullshit all over his crappy app.

What in the actual fuck? Goddammit, how am I supposed to make this shit funny?

So, basically, Donny is going to reward Putin, and lift economic sanctions against Russia, because “Russia is doing very little” to help Iran, “compared to what they could be doing”?

That’s the rationale? It could have been worse? Russia could have helped Iran kill moreAmericans than they already have?

Why does everything that seeps from Donny’s rancid anus-mouth sound like something an abuser would say? ‘It could have been worse’ is probably how he explained away Jeffrey Epstein’s treatment of Motel-a-Lago ‘spa girls’

**Donny has been inflicting himself into politics for ten long years now. In all that time, he’s taken Russia’s side in every conflict. *****Why? *****It can’t simply be because Russia helped him win in 2016. **Donny’s not that loyal to anyone.

I’m still waiting for Dear Leader to collude with America, even just once. That must be one fuck of a pee tape, that Putin’s got locked away in his safe. 

Donny keeps taking about how Canada should be our 51st state, when in reality he’s already turned the United States into Russia’s 47th province.

Even the uber-conservative National Review is all ‘are you fucking shitting me?’'

The Review demands an answer to the question we’re all asking right now: Why is Donny throwing our actual ally, Ukraine, to the wolves, while slobbering all over Putin’s ass?

President Donald Trump is giving [Putin] aid and comfort.

Congress has become a laggard even when it is in session. Now, it’s the political season, so it is inconceivable that midterm campaigns will be suspended to do the nation’s vital national security work. Yet in a properly functioning republic, there would be immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump–Putin alliance.

Look at that: the National Review, actually being on the correct side of an issue. William F. Buckley must be churning in his urn.

Meanwhile, has the United States ever had a more useless Secretary of State than Marco Rubio? He’s a feckless idiot. He is absolutely devoid of feck. 

Can you name one thing that Liddle Marco Big-Shoes has accomplished in his almost two years on the job? No, you cannot. Ask him to take a stand on anything, and he’ll homer-simpson himself right into that hedge.

So when a reporter asked Marco to explain how the Space Nazi’s Starlink satellites came to mysteriously stop functioning properly, leaving Ukraine unable to defend itself, just as Russia was initiating a missile attack, of course his answer was ‘fuck if I know.’

“Nobody ordered that Starlink speed to be slowed down. It sorta happened.”

‘It just sorta happened.’ Stunning answer. It calls to mind Harry S Truman’s famous saying, ‘the buck sorta stops somewhere.’

Marco Rubio is useless. He’s absolutely useless. He’s as useless as a marzipan dildo.

Oh, please. If Starlink technology is truly that dodgy, that stuff kinda sorta happens, all on its own, then why is the United States using it for its own military operations?That’s the question the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press should be asking Marco.

**Of course, the Starlink satellites didn’t just mysteriously *****kinda sorta ***anything. Someone ordered that shit to happen, and perfectly timed it — either the Space Nazi, or Donny, or the two of them working in cahoots. 

By the way, according to Reuters, the order to dick with the satellites came from within the White House.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two US officials and a Western official briefed on the matter.

This should be a huge fucking scandal right now — because once again, Dear Leader is throwing Ukraine to the wolves. 

Oh, look who agrees with me — once again, it’s those commie rat bastards at the National Review.

Immediately, Congress should hold hearings, demanding testimony under oath from Defense Department and other administration officials about the chain of events that led to restrictions that facilitated Russia’s suspiciously timed attack.

And if Marco Rubio can’t come up with a better lie than ‘kinda sorta who even knows,’ then he should resign in disgrace. 

After that, we all need a palate cleanse — so here comes the part where we all throw our heads back in laughter. Ready?

Here’s a perfectly normal billboard that’s currently up in Brownsville, TX, in the district where Republican Eric Flores is running for Congress. 

There’s Eric, giving a thumb’s up, next to Dear Leader, who is also giving a thumb’s up. Perfectly normal stuff, except for the part where Flores is suing to have that billboard taken down — because it was put up by the Democratic incumbent, Vincente Gonzalez. 

The letter says the sign “fraudulently purports to be on behalf of” the Flores campaign. Across the bottom, it says it was paid for by the campaign of Rep. Vicente Gonzalez — the incumbent Democratic lawmaker running for reelection in the battleground district.

That’s how toxic Donny has become. No Republican currently running for office wants to be associated with him. 

Donny has in fact endorsed Flores, on his crappy app.

But Flores doesn’t want you to know that — he’s already scrubbed any reference of Dear Leader from his campaign material.

Congratulations, Donny. You’re such an utter fucking embarrassment that no one want your fat, waterlogged face on their ads. You built that! 

This entire article is gold:

• The bird is called Bebe
• Bebe was fine. He was there for 15 minutes, and there was a lot of practice, safety, and care. Bebe is also used to shenanigans of all sorts
• The submarine is called the Bebosphere
• 'Stephen Lawyer, who really is a lawyer'
• His wife is called Cher
• People do the most beautiful unhinged shit with paintball cylinders
• Bebe answers phonecalls
• Bebe's other hobbies include indoor cycling, outdoor cycling, and skydiving
• Precisely none of this was AI

What a treasure to be the person writing this story, congratulations Mr. Moran

Video here

https://washingtonian.com/2020/04/13/were-short-on-healthcare-workers-why-doesnt-the-u-s-just-make-more-doctors/

Many Americans may not know that the number of doctors is essentially set by Congress. Each year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, provides payments to hospitals to hire their residents—the crucial bridge that medical school students must take to becoming licensed physicians. Because the number of residencies is tantamount to the final number of doctors, the federal government has enormous leverage over the number of new physicians that enter medicine each year.

But the number of new residencies for which the federal government pays has not budged in twenty years. In 1997, Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act, a bipartisan effort to cut back on spending. The act put a cap on the number of annual residencies CMS would support, and froze the funding at 1996 levels.

Within years, medical experts began warning that a doctor shortage was in the offing. Since 2007, a bill to increase the number of residencies has been introduced in every Congress—including five times by Joe Crowley of New York, who was later defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—but never passed. Last year, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2019 was proposed by Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, which would increase the number of residencies by about 3,000 for five years. It also grants the Secretary of Health and Human Services flexibility to determine to which regions those residents will go, since geography is a key aspect of the country’s shortage.

Sewell’s measure would make a big dent. But the aggregate increase in doctors would only amount to about 15,000. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges—the country’s leading advocates for lifting the residency cap—the shortage of total physicians by 2032 is projected to be between 46,900 and 121,900. At least half of that shortage is expected to be among primary care physicians alone.

another schadenfreude mint, Mr. Creosote?

It is wah-fair thin!

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2501213/tiktok-permanently-suspends-the-musk-film-ad-account-raising-suppression-fears-exclusiv

video here: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=IQxZ9Sv68Jg

Or, here, if you’re nasty: https://youtu.be/IQxZ9Sv68Jg

“I call him Mohamed Al Fayed. And uhhhh— His name is— Abdul, but I think I— call him Mohamed Abdul Al-Sayed.”

This fucking idiot can’t even get the GOP’s infantile smear campaign right. El-Sayed’s full name is ‘Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,’ and Republicans use that full name as often as possible, because I guess that’s supposed to make him sound more like a terrorist — you know, like that other famous terrorist, Barack Hussein Obama.

But Donny’s too demented to get it right. The name his collapsed cortex shits out instead is ‘Mohamed Al Fayed.’ 

If that name’s familiar, it’s because Mohamed Al Fayed was a billionaire who, during his life, had over one hundred credible rape accusations made against him, his youngest victim being 13 years old at the time. Great guy, right? Well, there was one person who actually thought Al Fayed was a ‘great guy.’

You’ll never guess who it was: Preznit Fuckwit.

Donald Trump gushes over ‘great guy’ Mohamed Al-Fayed’ in resurfaced interview

You know, most of us manage to go through life without having even one dead pedo bestie. Dear Leader has at least two and counting. What a strange coincidence, am I right? Every time we turn around with this guy, new shit comes to light.

via