Mon -Ohio QOP: Do You Know Where Your Candidate Is?

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

A commander walks into a bar and orders everyone a round.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

Just Yesterday Steve Bannon Called Him "one of the greatest political thinkers since the Founding Fathers"

Jury selection is set for Monday in a trial that will determine for the first time how much Infowars host Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook Elementary School parents for falsely telling his audience that the deadliest classroom shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.

The trial in Austin, Texas—where the conspiracy theorist lives and broadcasts his show—follows months of delays. Jones has racked up fines for ignoring court orders and he put Infowars into bankruptcy protection just before the trial was originally set to start in April.

At stake for Jones is another potentially major financial blow that could put his constellation of conspiracy-peddling businesses into deeper jeopardy. He has already been banned from YouTube, Facebook and Spotify over violating hate-speech policies.

The trial involving the parents of two Sandy Hook families is only the start for Jones; damages have yet to be awarded in separate defamation cases for other families of the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

The lawsuits do not ask jurors to award a specific dollar amount against Jones.

Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, judges have issued default judgments against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

Just a Fun-Loving Rioter.  And She Didn't Even Run a Stop Sign.

Micki Withoeft is the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who joined a mob of thousands of insurrectionists on Jan. 6 to storm the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday, Withoeft spoke on Rudy Giuliani’s podcast about her daughter and the day she was shot by a Capitol Police officer.

In addition to referring to Jan. 6 as a “sham” and the House Select committee as a “farce of a committee,” Withoeft seemed convinced that her daughter was wrongfully murdered and agreed with Giuliani’s co-host Maria Ryan’s assessment that if Babbitt had been Black and the cop had been white, things would have turned out differently.

Lt. Michael Byrd, the 28-year veteran Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt, is Black.

Withoeft goes on to allege that the decision to withhold the officer’s name from the public “was a further attempt to insight racial division” and calls him simply a “bad cop” and her daughter an “American patriot.”

Withoeft described Babbitt as “a fun-loving, take-on-the-world kind of girl” who took dance lessons and participated in sports as a kid.

“She embraced life. She was a huge Donald Trump supporter, and she went to Washington, D.C., to protest a stolen election. And I feel like more Americans should have been there.”

Withoeft defended her daughter, who was “unarmed,” and falsely alleged that law enforcement did not render aid or allow the other insurrectionists to render aid.

Ohio QOP:  It's July 25th.  Do You Know Where Your Candidate Is?

Bill Cunningham, a fixture on conservative talk radio airwaves in Cincinnati for decades, told The Daily Beast that voters, party activists, and even statewide officials are telling him that Vance has been phoning it in. Vance is allegedly missing from many of the county fairs, party meetings, and campaign stops where candidates in this state are expected to be.

“The Republican faithful are telling me,” Cunningham said, “they can't find J.D. Vance with a search warrant.”

Others say it’s not just that they don’t see Vance—the anti-Trump literary celeb turned MAGA firebrand—pounding the pavement in Ohio. Privately, some aren’t even getting calls back from him, or his campaign, to discuss how they can help.

That group includes campaign donors whom Vance literally cannot afford to lose. The candidate’s fundraising has been anemic, and because he’s carrying debt from the bruising primary, Vance is in the unenviable position of asking donors to pay off those debts.

One GOP source in state politics said Vance’s lack of followup with some important donors in the state has been disappointing. “When the fundraising numbers came out, it’s full-on panic now,” they said.

“It’s a code red,” said Ron Verb, a longtime talk radio host in Youngstown, who has been sounding the alarm about Vance on his show. “I think he’s running the worst campaign that you could possibly run.”

Meanwhile, Republicans begrudgingly admit that the Democratic nominee, Rep. Tim Ryan, is perhaps running the best possible campaign from a Democrat in this increasingly conservative state.

Ryan has raised a staggering $12 million for his campaign so far. And he is using that war chest to blanket Ohio airwaves with ads touting his blue collar bona fides, amplifying his professed desire to break with fellow Democrats on key issues, like inflation and crime. (Notably, Ryan has been a reliable Democratic vote during his two decades in Congress.)

With Vance largely absent on the airwaves and the campaign trail, Republicans fret that Ryan is successfully defining himself before Vance is—and that time is running out for the Republican to right the ship.

A GOP source in state politics said it’s a “widespread trend” that Republicans officials are hearing in their networks about Ryan’s crossover appeal. “People who are Republicans are saying, ‘that Tim Ryan guy, he’s alright, I like the way he sounds,’” the GOP source said.

That’s why Vance’s mid-campaign venture to Israel especially rankled some Republicans. “Tim Ryan is talking about kitchen-table issues, and J.D. Vance is out there going to fucking CPAC in Israel,” said a veteran strategist with deep ties to the state. “Republicans are like, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ This isn’t some fucking book tour, dude.”

Cunningham, the Cincinnati talk radio host, said he has been speaking regularly with Vance. He shared with The Daily Beast his advice to the candidate: “I told J.D., ‘This race is yours to lose, and at this point, you’re losing it.’ Your staff won’t tell you, but I just did.”

Previous Guy Wanted Another Medal He Didn't Earn

Former President Donald Trump complained that he couldn’t give himself the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award to recognize valor in military combat.

Trump gave a speech on Saturday at the Turning Points Action conference in Tampa, Florida, where he lashed out at his political foes for the umpteenth time while going on several long-winded tangents. In one of these off-script ramblings, Trump recalled a chapter from his presidency when he flew to Iraq on Air Force One to assess the battle against ISIS, and he spoke of how they had to dim the lights on the plane to avoid detection.

Trump went on and on about the “central casting” pilots who fly Air Force One, and then went into a dramatized retelling of how he sat with the pilot in the dark cockpit as the plane began its descent.

“I said ‘Captain, we’re pretty low.’ I don’t see any runway. I don’t see anything,” Trump said. Recalling how the plane got closer and closer to the ground, Trump kept on expressing concern that he couldn’t see the runway, and he recalled “I told my wife how brave I was.” This included an aside where he mocked MSNBC’s Brian Williams over his Iraq War story fabrication.

“Captain, what the hell is going on?” Trump claimed he said as they got increasingly low. “You wanna pull up, Captain?”

In the end, the landing went fine, so Trump said he asked “how did I do, Captain? Wasn’t I brave? I didn’t think you were gonna land.”

“In fact,” Trump went on, “as president, I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor but they wouldn’t let me do it. I’ve always wanted that, but they wouldn’t let me do it. They said that would be inappropriate.”

The Medal of Honor is awarded to servicemen in the armed forces who distinguish themselves by going beyond the call of duty and risking their own lives to advance America’s military operations.

OAN Slithers Off to Die

Verizon Fios will no longer carry One America News (OAN) at the end of this month, dealing a major blow to the far-right television network that has become a hotbed of misinformation.

Verizon was the largest pay-TV provider still carrying the OAN, according to the Daily Beast, which first reported the network was getting dropped. Verizon and OAN were unable to reach an agreement to continue providing the network and customers will not be able to access the service after 30 July.

The development means that OAN in effect will not have a major television platform in the US. DirecTV, a major revenue provider for OAN, announced that it was dropping the network in April.

The only network still carrying the channel is General Communications Inc, available in a little over 100,000 households, the Daily Beast reported. OAN is also still available on two little-known streaming providers.

“One America News Network will be left without a major carrier to spread its often harmful and dangerous disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories,” said Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group that urged Verizon to drop OAN. “This is a welcome change but long overdue.

“No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy.”

Common Cause and other civil rights groups have pressured carriers to drop OAN.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

Today's Most Talented Elephant in the World




Sunlight + CO2 = Jet Fuel

A collaboration among the ETH Zurich and a few other Eurpoean organizations built a plant that, uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into aviation fuel. This is the first time anyone has ever done this.



A solar tower fuel plant for the thermochemical production of kerosene from H2O and CO2
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 152

Fighting

Ukraine’s military reported that Russian forces were paving the way for an assault on the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region and were continuing efforts to assert control of the area around the Vuhlehirska power plant, 50km (31 miles) northeast of Donetsk city.

Russia has charged 92 members of Ukraine’s armed forces with crimes against humanity and proposed an international tribunal backed by countries including Bolivia, Iran and Syria, the head of Russia’s investigative committee Alexander Bastrykin said.

Russia likely continues to struggle to extract and repair thousands of combat vehicles damaged in action in Ukraine, the United Kingdom’s defence ministry has said.

Ukraine’s military has said 66 Russian army personnel were killed in fighting over the past 24 hours, according to the Interfax news agency.

Diplomacy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian missile raids on Odesa were blatant “barbarism” that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement the grain deal.

The United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy condemned the attacks.

Pope Francis said he yearned to visit Ukraine, in his efforts to try and bring an end to the war.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has advised Ukraine and the West not to cede any Ukrainian territory occupied since the start of the war to Russia in any future peace negotiations to end the conflict.

Economy

Germany was back on the path of decent gas-injection levels, and the task was now to reach its target of 75 percent gas-storage levels by September 1, Klaus Mueller, the head of the country’s regulator said.

Ukraine could export 60 million tonnes of grain in eight to nine months if its ports were not blockaded, an economic adviser to the Ukrainian president said.

The Russian Central Bank is projecting a 4 to 6 percent recession in 2022, compared with its pre-war forecast of 3-percent growth. The bank expects the economy to return to growth by 2024.

Whom Do You Trust?

Ukraine said it has used US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems to destroy 50 Russian ammunition depots since receiving the weapons last month, while Russia has claimed its forces destroyed a HIMARS ammunition depot in Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region.

Moscow has previously said it has destroyed several of the high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) supplied to Ukraine by the West, in claims denied by Kyiv.

Some Speculation

Ukraine’s big counteroffensive might actually happen toward the southeast away from Kherson, which would (along with blowing a few strategic bridges) cut off Russian forces from supply lines everywhere between Kherson and Melitpol (and beyond).



The Orks are building a pontoon crossing in the area of the Daryiv bridge across the Ingulets River in the Kherson region. The bridge itself was recently damaged as a result of the work of our soldiers. Rashists seriously think that a pontoon crossing will help them.

Russians know Kherson bridge can be easily destroyed and large force on the Kherson side of Inhulets River will be trapped if this bridge is out. But a few GMLRS can destroy the pontoon. Typical Putin. The outward display of a plan just reveals incompetence.

Russian Craftsmanship





Which Might Explain This



Let Me Take You Where the Action Is.  Not a Lot of Explosions in Donbas.  A Lot in the South



Is Putin in Trouble?

Putin's rule is weakening.

We now regularly hear now from people aside from Putin (for example former prime minister and president Dmitri Medvedev) about the meaning of the war, the catastrophic consequences that await Ukraine and the West, and so forth. This is a sign that Putin is losing control. 

Usually the news coverage of such pronouncements focuses on their content. It is tempting to get caught up in the Russian fear propaganda. But the real story is that people aside from Putin now feel authorized to make such proclamations. Before the war there was less of this 

The doom propaganda serves a couple of purposes. On the surface, it shows loyalty to Putin. At a time when Russia is losing, the best hope is to convince the West that Russia is somehow unstoppable (which it isn't – like the U.S., its history is littered with defeat in war). 

At the same time, the doom propaganda is rhetorical preparation for a power struggle after Putin falls.

Full thread

Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe, who is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
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Terrible Messaging





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The Media Isn't Pumping Up This Story

The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline plunged 32 cents over the past two weeks to $4.54 per gallon.

Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the continued decline comes as crude oil costs also fall.

“Further drops at the pump are likely as the wholesale gasoline price cuts continue making their way to street level,” Lundberg said in a statement.

The average price at the pump is down 55 cents over the past six weeks, but it’s $1.32 higher than it was one year ago.

Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas was in Los Angeles, at $5.65 per gallon. The lowest average was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at $3.90 per gallon.

According to the survey, the average price of diesel dropped 22 cents over two weeks to $5.55 a gallon.
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Just Common Sense

Shops in France will be ordered to close doors when using air conditioning and limit neon lighting in a bid to cut energy waste, a minister has said.

These rules, already in place in some areas, will be rolled out across France, Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

Energy costs in Europe have spiralled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

She will issue two decrees on energy waste in the coming days, she told the Journal du Dimanche.

"The first will widen the ban on illuminated advertising, whatever the size of the city, between 01:00 and 06:00," she said.

"The second will ban shops from having their doors open while the air conditioning and heating are working."

The ban on neon signs is already in force in areas with a population under 800,000. Airports and stations are exempt.

Didn't You Dad Ever Tell You, "Close the Door!  Do You Think We Own the Electric Company?"
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