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ProgressVirginia reported Tuesday afternoon that the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee killed Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s electoral college-rigging bill, despite an offer by Carrico to amend the bill to award electors in proportion to the state’s popular vote. The vote was 11-4 against the bill, although it will not be official until the close of the committee meeting.

Judging just by the look on Trump's face, he's as puzzled by this one as the rest of us. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Tyra Banks or maybe Chrissy Teigen. Or perhaps another porn star that Trump slept with while Melania was pregnant.

Some very clever satire here, as that is Gary Petersen but is a reworked picture from another Trump artist, Al Manica. He presented a picture of Melania to Trump last year and tweeted about it in December.

Source: The Poke

It’s a sign of the unprecedented times we live in that some people still think Donald Trump ‘superfan’ Gary Petersen is the real deal.

That, and the incredible attention to detail that Petersen – @GaryPetersenUSA over on Twitter. He’s so good, in fact, that even as we write that we’re beginning to doubt ourselves.

We mention him because Gary has just gone viral again with this magnificent portrait of Melania which he may or may not – who the hell can tell anymore? – have presented to Donald Trump.

And the real deal or not (surely not one) it’s really, really funny, made even better by the vast number of people who still believe.

Petersen, who has done dozens and dozens of paintings of Trump on his Twitter page and website, posted his latest pièce de résistance yesterday.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that it is legitimate to attempt to prosecute Barack Obama over his acts as President if Trump's bizarre immunity claim fails at the Supreme Court.

Another day and another effort to defend Donald Trump from any and all prosecutions and criminal acts.

Q: Attorney General Paxton, on the off chance that the Supreme Court comes back and does not say presidents are immune from official acts, do you think your administration would pursue charges against, say, Barack Obama for the drone strikes and murdering of three American citizens?

Paxton: Yeah, so every state's different. I don't actually have the authority, unfortunately, in my state I cannot prosecute unless it's referred by a district attorney, but I certainly think that if there's no immunity, that that ought to be considered.

Paxton: That both sides ought to be treated exactly the same, and so if somehow Barack Obama should be prosecuted just like Donald Trump, they should be treated the same, and whatever the law is, it should apply equally to everybody.

Republicans are trying every trick to subvert Trump's culpability for any illegal and immoral act he takes.

The drone argument is laughable on its face (even though it is tragic), but that's all the MAGA cult has to work with.

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Hey there, procrastination nation! You know what today is? That's right, it's Anti-Procrastination Day. The day of the week when we're supposed to finally get around to all those nagging tasks we've been putting off.

We've got the perfect anti-procrastination activity for you progressive web surfers - celebrating 20 amazing years of Crooks and Liars by becoming a paid subscriber!

For two decades now, this fiercely independent liberal site has been serving up raw, unfiltered commentary while mercilessly mocking the cringeworthy hypocrisy of the far-right fringe. Led by the one and only John Amato, Crooks and Liars pulls no punches in dismantling bad faith partisan hacks and calling out the disinformation machine.

From skewering Fox News propaganda to elevating crucial stories the mainstream media buries, this platform has provided an invaluable voice of truth in an increasingly Orwellian political landscape. And they've done it all without bankrupting billionaire benefactors or shady backers - just grassroots support sustaining the resistance.

Now it's time for you to join the ranks! Stop procrastinating and take the plunge by becoming a paid Crooks and Liars subscriber today. When you do, you'll get an ad-free browsing experience across the entire site. That's uninterrupted access to all the scathing political commentary, multimedia takedowns, and must-see humor without any corporate ad disruptions.

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The evangelical Christian right MAGA movement has a hard time rationalizing their beliefs with actual scientific facts.

Kirk brought on Randy Guliuzza, President of the Institute for Creation Research to "educate" his followers about actual dinosaurs and claim that some made it onto Noah's Ark.

"How should we think about dinosaurs?" Kirk asked. As if that's a conundrum to ponder.

Guliuzza made sure to posit that there were real dinosaurs on the planet before he began.

Well, hopefully everybody believes that there are dinosaurs or were dinosaurs on this planet.

You can see fossils of them buried by the thousands and thousands all over the world.

They were different types of creatures.

I think the best evidence indicates they were not reptiles directly themselves, but they were very reptilian in behavior, in form, that they were created.

The flying ones were created on day five, land ones created on day six, just as the Bible says, that they coexisted with humans up until the time of the flood, of which the vast, vast majority of them were destroyed.

They probably weren't destroyed by some asteroid or hitting the planet and killing mostly just the dinosaurs, but not many other creatures.

So the vast majority were destroyed in the flood.

Some were obviously taken onto the ark by Noah, brought there.

They populated the earth, many parts of it, post-flood.

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CNN's Donie O'Sullivan featured Rachel Powell, the infamous Bullhorn Lady in his hour-long documentary “MisinfoNation: The Trump Faithful." We've done a few posts on her at C&L as well. On October 17, 2023, Powell was sentenced to 57 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release. (The good Christian grandmother had used an ice pick to break into the Capitol building and later assaulted police officers.) Powell began serving her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Hazelton on January 9, 2024. According to O'Sullivan, she's entirely unrepentant for her actions.

And who knows, she may get her wish if the American public decides they've had enough of the democratic experiment and opt for Trump instead. He's said he'll consider blanket pardons for all the January 6 insurrectionists.

Source: Mediaite

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Sarah Matthews, a former Trump assistant press secretary, slammed Trump and the dissenting conservatives who still kiss his ass, saying “a lot of Republicans” that she has spoken to, including top elected officials, “will bash him privately, but many of them will not even say it publicly.” Via The New Republic:

“A lot of times what they often say is that they’re supporting him because of the policies, that they want the conservative agenda. And where I get really frustrated is that they’re treating this like it’s a normal election, a normal Republican candidate, and a normal Democratic candidate. Well, this couldn’t be anything further from the case,” Matthews said Monday night.

But when push comes to shove, conservative policy arguments don’t matter when the GOP presidential nominee is someone who refuses to acknowledge that he lost the last election, and who has not set aside the possibility of utilizing mob violence for his own political gain in November. For that reason, Matthews explained, she will be voting for President Joe Biden.

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The Justice Department said yesterday that it had recommended easing restrictions on marijuana in what would be a major change in federal policy. Yes, it will take a while and no, it won't make it legal, but it's movement. Via the New York Times:

Even though the move, which kicks off a lengthy rule-making process, does not end the criminalization of the drug, it is a significant shift in how the government views the safety and use of marijuana for medical purposes. It also reflects the Biden administration’s effort to liberalize marijuana policy in a way that puts it more in line with the public as increasingly more Americans favor legalizing the drug.

[..] It could also lead to the softening of other laws and regulations that account for the use or possession of cannabis, including sentencing guidelines, banking and access to public housing.

People familiar with the recommendation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland planned to tell the White House Office of Management and Budget that the government should change the drug’s categorization. After the office assesses the recommendation, it will still face a long road before taking effect, including being subject to public comment.

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As bad as the things he admits to are, the ones he won't admit are even scarier. Because it means he knows people will hate him for it, he just doesn't care. Mika Brzezinski talks about Trump's Time Magazine interviewL

"The former president was asked about his stance on abortion issues and he mostly dodged the questions," she said.

"He was asked whether women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone. Trump said he has an opinion on that, but would not explain, adding that he has strong views and that he would probably release it over the next week. Trump was then pressed further on the issue, who highlighted that some of the former president's allies want to use the Comstock Act to block the mailing of abortion drugs.

"Trump replied, quote, 'I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days.' He also avoided giving an answer on whether states should monitor women's pregnancies, so they can know if a woman has had the procedure after they are banned in a state. Trump said, quote, 'I think they might do that again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. The former president then said it was irrelevant whether he was comfortable with women being prosecuted for getting abortions after a ban, because states are going to make those decisions. Good Lord," Brzezinski said.

"The Biden/Harris campaign released a new video this morning in response to Donald Trump's comments about abortion to Time magazine."

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Before there was Fox News, before there was Rush Limbaugh, before there was the sprawling rightwing ecosystem of fake news and vicious smears we so enjoy today, there was the National Enquirer.

For most of our lives, the Enquirer stared up at us from the checkout aisle of our local supermarket. Somehow, we never made the connection that its readers would one day fit the stereotype of the Trump voter — under-educated, gullible, malleable, easy targets for disinformation.

The Enquirer nurtured those targets over many decades, got them to believe virtually anything, and helped lay the groundwork for the sort of know-nothing insurgency that brought Trump into all our lives.

Decades ahead of its time, the Enquirer was peddling fake news long before it was fashionable. It appealed unapologetically to humanity’s baser instincts, the ones most of us try to rise above. It was always flamboyantly sleazy, and always there in plain sight, something we could dependably look down on.

The Enquirer has owned that supermarket space for as long as I can remember, yet I never stopped to think what impressions were being made on impressionable people, people simply standing on that line, reading the covers.

Each cover featured screaming headlines, dripping with innuendo and smarm, dedicated to the proposition that celebrity scandal is a basic food group. Even if you never bought the paper, even if you never looked inside one, you still saw those headlines. You might not believe them, but you couldn’t un-see them.

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You Might Notice a Trend: The threat of Trump's atrocities.

The Mahablog: The unwise men who need correction.

Dispatches from a Collapsing State: J.D. Vance, the right, and the center.

The Cottage: The great divorce, evangelical style.

Finally, for May Day (which is Labor Day or Workers' Day in some countries), Billy Bragg's version of "The Internationale."

This installment by Batocchio. E-mail tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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Yesterday, in making a pitch for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Bernie noted that “while it is critically important we do everything we can to defeat Donald Trump, it is just as important we work to elect progressives this November.” Amen!

And it’s what Blue America does.

Our endorsement page for incumbents is skimpy this cycle. But two members who have lived up to their promise AND who need the help, Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) are both on that list.

The two of them are the primary target of the pro-genocide lobby, led by AIPAC, which recruited and is lavishly financing 2 genocide-friendly candidates.

Back to Bernie for a second. He wrote that “Today, the US House of Representatives has a stronger progressive presence than at any time in modern American history. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has nearly 100 members, including dozens of very strong progressives, who are taking on powerful special interests every single day.” That’s a low-key acknowledgement that not all the members are “strong progressives.” The chair, Pramila, deputy chair, Ilhan and whip, Greg Casar, are.

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The collection of mooks that make up the current MAGA roster is what many of us saw coming years ago. It's been a long death spiral, highlighted by "I'm not a witch" and "2nd Amendment solutions," "palling around with terrorists" and "s*thole countries."Most recently, a puppy killer.

So in principle it's not shocking to know that irritable bowel syndrome spokesperson Matt Gaetz so personally targeted a GOP colleague, Rep. Tony Gonzales, that the latter felt compelled to go on tv and go after him for "minors" and "sex" and "drug parties." And, oh, yeah, he had more to say. A lot more. You should really watch the video...

I have no love for Gonzales, who is awful like virtually every elected Republican (a few are only mostly awful). But Gaetz, who led the ousting of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, is a boy serving in a role best handled by a man or woman. He takes it to a different level. He's special.

So MAGA is at war with itself, with the fire of petty feuds burning among many of its membership. Get ready for us to hear a lot more talk like what Tony Gonzales said. B/c as one might say of a movie sequel, among this group of ill-mannered children fighting over the playground swing, "this time, it's personal."

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Adolf Hitler, who rose to power on the backs of anti-Semitic scumbags, crackpots and German nationalist zealots finally ended his reign of terror by killing himself.

On April 30, 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.

Hitler also poisoned his dog Braun, which seems apropos since it's all the rage with Kristi Noem.

The rise of Hitler and the Nazi party eerily echoes the rise of Trump and his MAGA fanatics.

Just saying...open thread y'all.

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The second week of the Donald Trump criminal trial testimony began with a bang!

First up, a ruling on the gag order. Trump was found in criminal contempt and fined $1k for each of the 9 violations. He was also ordered to remove the offending 9 posts by 2:15pm (which he complied with) AND warned that he will be incarcerated (maybe) for future violations.

Reminder: there is a 2nd gag order violation hearing scheduled for this Thursday morning.

BREAKING:

Judge Merchan threatens Trump with jail time for further violations of his gag order.

"Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will…

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 30, 2024

BREAKING: Donald Trump has just complied with the order from Judge Merchan to remove social media posts from his Truth Social page and his campaign website that the judge deemed in violation of the gag order.

Trump had less than 30 minutes to go, as the deadline to remove the… pic.twitter.com/BDJWnq1PSR

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Punishing women is the Republican way, so it's not too surprising that former President Donald Trump, who was found liable for sexual abuse, said in 2016 that women should be punished if they get an abortion procedure. He hasn't changed much, only his tone on abortion until he gets into office -- a thing we hope will never happen. Trump is very proud of overturning Roe and spends quite a bit of time bragging about it.

In a lengthy interview with Time, the former President doubled down.

"He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans," the outlet reports. "He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn't carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding."

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Fox finally got around to reporting on puppy-killer Kristi Noem, and but not without this ridiculous whataboutism from The Five's Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters. It was radio silence over on Fox for at least three days after the story about Noem exploded, and I guess they decided they couldn't ignore it any longer, so they finally ran a few segments like the one above discussing the dog shooting incident in Noem's memoir.

Gutfeld started things off explaining the gruesome tale and asked Dana Perino to weigh in. Perino had no defense for what Noem did and commented that maybe she should have hired some better editors for her book if this incident didn't raise a red flag for them. Gutfeld had another theory, which was followed by Judge Box-O-Wine going on the attack against Noem.

GUTFELD: I think there's a story behind the story. The story about killing the puppy was already out there, and so she wanted a vice signal ahead of time to try to control it, because she knew it could ruin her chances.

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Democratic strategist Donna Brazile responded calmly to an animated Sarah Isgur, a former Trump administration official, after she accused liberals of not caring about free speech.

The confrontation came during a Sunday panel on ABC's This Week program. Isgur criticized President Joe Biden, who has said he decided to run in reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

"Look, I am upset!" Isgur began. "I'm horrified that Joe Biden, who said he ran because of the Unite the Right rally, won't say the same things about what's going on now that he did then."

"Because what we're seeing is the right and the left, a large minority of both of those political movements, rejecting liberal values like free speech, like persuasion," the panelist continued.

After several minutes of ranting against pro-Palestinian protesters, Isgur concluded with a challenge to Brazile: "And where are the people on the political left saying the same things that us on the political right were saying about the Unite the Right rally, about the anti-liberal values on the right?"

"Where are they now, Donna?" she demanded.

"On campus, trying to lead the dialog," Brazile responded calmly.

"A dialog!" Isgur exclaimed. "Can you imagine dialoguing with the Unite the Right rally, folks?"

"Let me just tell you something," Brazile pressed on. "I'm on those campuses every week. "I'll be on another one tomorrow. And it is important that we engage in civil dialogue."

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The New York judge presiding over former U.S. President Donald Trump's trial for allegedly falsifying business records on Tuesday held the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee in criminal contempt for repeatedly violating a gag order, fined him $9,000, and threatened to jail him if he does it again.

Judge Juan Merchan ordered Trump to pay $1,000 for each violation of the gag order and directed him to remove eight offending social media posts.

"Defendant violated the order by making social media posts about known witnesses pertaining to their participation in this criminal proceeding and by making public statements about jurors in this criminal proceeding," Merchan wrote in his 8-page decision.

Trump is "hereby warned that the court will not tolerate continued willfull violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment," the judge added.

Note: Judge Merchan warns Trump that if he continues to violate the order, the Court “will impose an incarceratory punishment.” pic.twitter.com/psvkiOwNWx

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Donald Trump spoke to the media before his court trial by claiming he never defended Neo-Nazis at his infamous "good people on both sides" presser.

The Neo Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017 left Heather Heyer dead. Trump said there were good people on both sides.

[Biden] said he ran because of Charlottesville. Well, if the people that know Charlottesville, when you extend the statement, it's a big hoax what they say was said. And they understand that. And Charlottesville is peanuts compared to what you're looking at now.

One has to be a sociopath of the highest order to lie like that. A few minutes later, Traitor Trump whined about the freezing courtroom.

So I'm going to go into this trial. I'm going to sit in a freezing cold ice box for Eight hours, nine hours or so, they took me off the case.

Here's a hint ole' diminished one, you can dress accordingly if you are cold.

Whiners gotta whine, and liars gotta lie.

Here's the video of Trump defending white supremacists.

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