Wed: Is Jack Smith Going After Previous Guy's Piggy Bank?

This is Despicable, Even By Previous Guy Standards

Despite signing an agreement acknowledging he understands he may not "intimidate or attempt to intimidate a witness, victim, juror, informant, or officer of the court,” on Tuesday Donald Trump attacked Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, who is expected to announce this month what would be the fourth criminal indictment against the ex-president.

Speaking to supporters from a New Hampshire high school, Trump attacked Willis as "racist," and baselessly claimed she had an affair with a gang member.

Trump declared, "they say there's a young woman, a young racist in Atlanta, a racist. And they say, I guess they say, that she was after a certain gang, and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member."

"And this is a person that wants to indict me," Trump continued telling the audience. "She's got a lot of problems, but she wants to indict me to try and run for some other office. What's going on in this country is – and by the way, once you indict me for a perfect phone call, this was even better than my perfect call with Ukraine."

Deflation Nation

China's economy has slipped into deflation as consumer prices declined in July for the first time in more than two years.

The official consumer price index, a measure of inflation, fell by 0.3% last month from a year earlier.

Analysts said this increases pressure on the government to revive demand in the world's second largest economy.

This follows weak import and export data, which raised questions about the pace of China's post-pandemic recovery.

The country is also tackling ballooning local government debt and challenges in the housing market. Youth unemployment, which is at a record high, is also being closely watched as a record 11.58 million university graduates are expected to enter the Chinese job market this year.

Falling prices make it harder for China to lower its debt - and all the challenges which stem from that, such as a slower rate of growth, analysts said.

The QOP Keeps Doubling Down on Banning Abortions.  And They Keep Losing.

Voters in Ohio successfully thwarted a Republican attempt to make it harder to pass a November pro-choice ballot measure.

On Tuesday, Ohioans voted to defeat Issue 1, a ballot initiative to raise the threshold for altering the state constitution from a simple statewide majority vote to 60%. Although a simple majority has been the standard in Ohio for over 100 years, anti-choice Republicans in the state called for a special election to raise the vote threshold in a preemptive attempt to block the abortion-rights constitutional amendment that will be in front of voters in November’s general election.

“Ohioans’ support for abortion access and reproductive freedom was never in question,” NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement issued Tuesday evening. “From defeating Issue 1 tonight to submitting nearly twice the amount of signatures needed to get a measure protecting abortion access on the ballot in November, Ohio voters have made clear that they will settle for nothing less than reproductive freedom for all. Republicans should be ashamed of their efforts to subvert the will of voters.”

Despite many Republican claims that the special election was about protecting Ohio from out-of-state special interests, it was ultimately a proxy fight over abortion rights.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an outspoken anti-choice leader, was one of several Republicans who attempted to hide the real intent of Issue 1. He told the Washington Examiner last month that Issue 1 has “never been exclusively about abortion.” But as feminist writer Jessica Valenti pointed out, LaRose said earlier in the summer that Issue 1 “is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

Expect Ballot Measures on Abortion, Redistricting, and Pot in November.  Goodby Columbus.

“One thing that hurt us in the election was the length of time of the campaign,” state Senate President Matt Huffman said. “Until May 10, we didn’t know there was a campaign,” he complained. “So it took us a long time to put the campaign together to execute the campaign.”

It’s worth noting here that, by definition, the people who initiated the question—his people—had longer to plan and execute the campaign than the other side.

Uh Frank: You Initiated The All-Out Assault

DeathSentence Removes An Elected Offidial From Office.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) suspended the Orlando-area state attorney Wednesday, saying she was “clearly and fundamentally derelict” in her duty.

DeSantis removed Monique Worrell, a Democrat, from her job as the chief prosecutor for Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit Court at a brief news conference in Tallahassee. It’s the second time in a year that the governor, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, suspended an elected Democrat from office.

Just Do the Two-Step 2,000 Times

There's growing evidence that getting your steps in really does count, but you may not need to hit 10,000 steps a day to gain health benefits, according to a new study.

The number of steps a person needs to walk in a day in order to decrease the risk of heart disease is lower than previously thought, researchers found.

The new study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, is the largest ever to measure the positive impact of daily walking and step-counting and includes data from about 230,000 individuals from around the world.

Researchers found that walking about 4,000 steps per day is a good target because people who hit the 4,000 step-mark saw their risk of dying from any cause go down.

"The number of steps over which we might observe significant benefits seems to be lower than we previously thought," said Maciej Banach, one of the authors of the study and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

But health benefits do increase the more people walk, Banach said.