I really enjoy this creator and how he has done this entire series on the Christian god and the inconsistancies of the bible and the figures in it. In this series the god is a self centered older teenager who only thinks of themselves and their needs/ wants. The full series starts out with a future highly technological civilization having graduates from school take a psychological test as them an omnipotent being and their assistant is actually their teacher in real life. But in this case “god” is so narcissistic it causes problems in the simulator they are all connected with. But the series does show how narcissistic and only thinking of their feelings, wants, and needs this Christian god is. Sadly the creator has moved on from making the series and the spin-offs from them as his main YouTube product but he still produces these videos which I am grateful for. But try to remember that God is a student and Jefferies is in reality his teacher still trying to teach him how to be a good person. Reverse the roles of the characters and you get the joke. Hugs.
For those worried about my health and my not eating, here is what I am going to try to eat for supper. Beer bean burritos and carrots with some soy sauce as I salt waste and some taco sauce because i love the taste. This is the second meal I ate today, at breakfast i couldn’t eat so had a supplement shake and for lunch a ham and baloney sandwich. So yes I am very tired and did not get the cartoons / memes / news post anywhere near done I am eating and getting better / stronger every day or three. Love to everyone, sorry i am such a sad sack pain in your butt, but i love you all. Hugs.
One good thing about trolling comedians, they always know exactly how to respond.
New York City Pride recently announced the Grand Marshals for its annual Pride parade, scheduled for June 28.
It’s quite a roster, featuring trans actress Dominique Jackson, drag star Peppermint, trans journalist and radio personality Bernie Wagenblast, activist group Gays Against Guns and SNL alum Bowen Yang.
Of course someone was gonna have an opinion on this lineup, and one of them tried to come for Yang in the comments of the announcement on Instagram.
And Yang, ever the seasoned comedian, had the perfect response. The troll demanded to know “why bowen,” and Yang didn’t miss a beat, quipping:
“showed hole to the board.”
(snip-embedded social post)
Perfect.
It’s a strange question in the first place: Yang made history when he joined the SNL cast in 2019.
In a statement, NYC Pride wrote:
“Bowen Yang became a household name as the first Chinese-American cast member on Saturday Night Live in 2019.”
“With that platform, he helped usher in an era of authentic queer humor in mainstream media, earning an Emmy® for writing and becoming the most-nominated Asian male performer in Emmy® history in the process.”
The better question is “why not Bowen?”
(🤣 🤣 🤣 snip-MORE ; lots of embedded social media posts; enjoy!)
This was expected, predicted, and used by the democrats in congress as a reason to block funding for ICE until they are required to remove their masks. No other law enforcement people run around masked. This is because Stephen Miller wanted an armed group unaccountable to the laws of the land to terrorize and remove nonwhite people from the country. He is deeply racist wanting a white ethnostate where white people are always the dominate demographic and always in charge. That is because he was embarrassed as a teenager going through puberty by having to move from a wealthy white majority school to a mixed race school where people talked in languages he did not understand and assumed the people using that language were insulating him. It is called stupid bigotry because others can do and understand things you can’t so you resent them. Hugs
Crimes involving fake ICE agents are on the rise and becoming ‘much more aggressive and violent’
A Noticias Telemundo investigation documented a marked increase in cases of people posing as federal agents to rob, intimidate and even injure or rape immigrants.
Q+A with one of the Broadview Six, who had all charges dropped against them after grand jury misconduct.
Marisa Kabas
For the last seven months, Kat Abughazaleh wasn’t allowed to go to Alaska. It’s not that she had any particular reason to, but being under felony indictment meant that she was only allowed to travel throughout the lower 48 United States. And forget leaving the country. But on Thursday, those restrictions were suddenly lifted when all charges against her were dropped.
Abughazaleh, 27, woke up Friday a free woman. The former Illinois congressional candidate was charged in October along with five others for conspiring to impede an officer near the Broadview ICE facility just outside of Chicago. In reality, Abughazaleh and her co-defendants were there to protest the federal government’s increasingly public cruelty and the human rights abuses happening inside Broadview specifically, and broadly by ICE. The Trump administration, not surprisingly, did not appreciate their very public pushback and responded with brutality and violence. But with all charges against them now dropped, the only thing they’re an example of is why fighting fascists is good.
With the trial scheduled to begin just after Memorial Day, US district judge April Perry called an emergency hearing Thursday to discuss missing pieces of the trasncript from the grand jury proceedings where DOJ lawyers convinced jurors to indict Abughazaleh, her campaign field director Andre Martin, Michael Rabbitt, Brian Straw and two others who had the charges against them dropped earlier.
The case was already on the decline, with prosecutors dropping the felony charges against the remaining four in April as questions about the grand jury transcripts popped up. They still faced a full trial on misdemeanor charges and up to one year in jail. But Judge Perry ruled the DOJ’s handling of the grand jury and subsequent redactions constituted grave misconduct, making it impossible to move forward.
I spoke with Abughazaleh by phone Friday morning about right wing fuckery, ridiculous rumors, and how she plans to reclaim her life after the federal government tried to destroy it. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
MARISA KABAS, THE HANDBASKET: How did it feel waking up this morning?
KAT ABUGHAZALEH: I had to get up at like 5am to go on Morning Joe, but I woke up and I was like, oh yeah, I don’t have to go to trial this week—which is not a statement I thought I’d have to say ever in my life.
KABAS: Walk us through what you thought the next week or so was supposed to be like before yesterday’s hearing.
ABUGHAZALEH: I was supposed to have not just trial prep with my lawyers, but having to get my clothes dry cleaned. Going to get a manicure because my nails always always look awful. I spent way too long at a Nordstrom Rack picking out shoes that I thought looked fashionable but also modest and wouldn’t make jurors think I was a bitch. On Tuesday we were supposed to have jury selection. On Wednesday we were supposed to have opening arguments, which is a shame that we don’t get to hear our lawyers spit absolute fire. But yeah, it’s nice not to do it in the first place.
KABAS: Absolutely. So what do you think you’re gonna do instead?
ABUGHAZALEH: I have a 12-hour live stream tomorrow to raise money for our legal funds because, despite not having to go to trial, we’re still picking up the pieces of our lives both emotionally and financially. Every single one of us as co-defendants, we have very real fears of bankruptcy and being in debt for the rest of our lives because of this. And then, I don’t know, sleep a bunch. Get my passport renewed, something that I couldn’t do for the last seven months. I couldn’t even go to Alaska.
KABAS: Are you serious? Could you go to Hawaii?
ABUGHAZALEH: No, just the lower 48. Couldn’t even go to Puerto Rico.
KABAS: So this has really restricted your movement as a human being for the last seven months.
ABUGHAZALEH: Yeah, and it’s something that’s really scary, especially as the government gets more and more aggressive, just being like, oh, you’re stuck here no matter what happens.
“Kat” Abughazaleh speaking after today’s crazy developments in the “Broadview 6” case
KABAS: So when did you get a sense that things might be changing this week?
ABUGHAZALEH: So we’ve been requesting to see the grand jury transcripts or just have the judge look at them for months. And ahead of trial Chris Parente—Brian Straw’s lawyer—just asked the judge, “Can you just look at the unredacted version?” And her understanding was that the redactions were referring to some IT issues, and the prosecution had never corrected her. So she looked at the unredacted transcript and then called a hearing the next morning. And it was sealed. Now the transcript is public.
She was saying “I’m not sure that the charge will get dismissed without prejudice because there’s not a lot of precedent for that, especially for a misdemeanor.” And then we broke for an hour for the government to talk it over, and then they came in. I remember one of my lawyers looking at me as one of the government’s lawyers [Andrew Boutros] started talking, and she just turns to me and says, “Congratulations.” And I went, “What?” And then Boutros said, “dismissed with prejudice.” [Meaning the case was permanently closed.] And it was just surreal. Absolutely surreal.
KABAS: Did you have a sense of where things were heading or were you totally shocked by the outcome?
ABUGHAZALEH: I truly did not think it would get dismissed yesterday. I did not want to get my hopes up. I thought that we were going to trial for sure, just because it’s very unusual to try a federal misdemeanor. I knew we would win in that case, but I was completely shocked.
KABAS: How do you think this will change or impact anti-ICE protests and prosecutions in the future?
ABUGHAZALEH: I hope that it does have impact. It was meant to intimidate us into silence, and none of us took a deal. None of us sold each other out (not that there was anything to sell each other out on.) But, you know, we were charged with conspiracy. We were facing like 10 years in prison.
(snip-there is MORE, but this is already a long post, and I’m a free subscriber to Handbasket, and don’t want to just lift their work. Click on through!)
We have read George Orwell since the beginning of Trump’s first administration. Studied him through the eyes of experts like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose scholarship is in the field of authoritarianism. But nothing makes his relevance as plain as living through history in 2026.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
On Friday, NBC’s Ryan J. Reilly and Kyla Guilfoil reported that “The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing the charges against hundreds of individuals who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot from its website.”
DOJ was not ashamed of the reporting on this development; instead, they responded to a tweet claiming they were “quietly” deleting the information by bragging:
Nothing “quiet” about it.
We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.
As acting Attorney General Todd Blanche continues his long, slow audition to get the nomination for the permanent job, there is apparently no service the Justice Department he leads will refuse Donald Trump. That includes the effort Trump launched on day one of his second term in office to erase the insurrection. It began with the pardons of Rudy Giuliani and the fake slates of electors. As Ed Martin put it, “No MAGA left behind.” It went on to include virtually everyone who was present at or involved with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including those charged with insurrection, some of whom received clemency because even Trump, apparently, didn’t believe he could get away with outright pardons.
Blanche was in place at DOJ as Pam Bondi’s number two, overseeing the firing of prosecutors and agents assigned to work cases and leads in the January 6 investigation. Then, as we discussed last week, he signed off on Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” the repurposing of taxpayer dollars Congress allocated to DOJ’s judgment fund as reward payments to Trump friends and allies who “suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
Blanche declined to exclude even defendants convicted of violent offenses in connection with January 6 from eligibility for payment out of Trump’s slush fund. The crescendo of outrage that began with Democrats swelled to include a handful of Republicans. But not all of them. In a mark up meeting before they left town for Memorial Day, every Republican member voted against a measure proposed by California Democrat Mike Levin that would have excluded members of Congress from filing to receive a payout from the fund.
Lawsuits have been filed, and we will be watching to see how quickly the federal judiciary might move to block the payouts from going into effect. Among the lawsuits so far:
A lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (“CREW”), which alleges that “The Slush Fund is a jaw-dropping act of presidential corruption. And it is brazenly illegal. Unlike prior victim compensation funds, it was not authorized by Congress. Nor was the Fund the product of a judicially approved, arm’s length legal settlement.” The complaint is here.
A lawsuit alleging that the “anti-weaponization” fund discriminates against a group of plaintiffs who were mistreated by Republican officials, because it only permits redress of conduct by the Biden administration. You can read the complaint here.
A lawsuit filed by current and former Washington, D.C., police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, arguing the plan should be enjoined because the payouts are illegal and could potentially finance violent insurrectionists and paramilitary groups. You can read the complaint here.
The success of Trump’s effort to rewrite history is not a foregone conclusion. But pushback will require our focus. In January of 2025, the Brennan Center’s Michael Waldman, author of The Briefing with Michael Waldmanwrote, “It was an insurrection. Pardoning the perpetrators won’t change that.”
On Friday, former Attorney General Pam Bondi will testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Although the topic at hand is her mishandling of the release of the Epstein Files, Bondi could easily face questioning about the origins of the slush fund plan and will undoubtedly be asked about Trump’s single-minded effort to rewrite history to repaint his own efforts to take down democracy.
It’s up to us to make sure Trump doesn’t get away with rewriting our true history. This is an important awareness to carry with us into the weeks and months ahead, especially as we approach the 250th Anniversary of the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, this July 4. In the words of Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
As I wrote to you last week on the day we first learned about Trump’s creation of a slush fund he could use to divert taxpayer funds into rewards for his friends, we are at a crisis point. It’s a crisis for many reasons, among them the president’s comfort with outright abuse of public funds and his party’s unwillingness to step in and outlaw their use in the absence of a congressional designation of them for this purpose. Trump, the would-be autocrat, is again trying to enlarge the circle of presidential power he can exercise and it will be up to the judicial branch to tell him no, for now, and the voters to do it resoundingly in November. It’s time to pay close attention to developments this week.
(Note Please that this is not a dig on Byron Allen per se. It’s about the vast difference in material. I’ve watched “Comics Unleashed”, and “Funny You Should Ask,” both are fine, but are not what people are used to at night; I’ve watched them while doing my 10AM jog on the trampoline, instead of a game show that may be on. Of course, well, viewership’s been dropping in that nighttime time slot, so. Clay explains how Byron Allen makes it work.)
Replacing Stephen Colbert with Byron Allen would be like replacing Pat Oliphant with Garfield
Daryl Cagle distributes more political cartoons than any other syndicate in the business, and each week he publishes the top ten cartoons from his service that are being published by his newspaper clients. I normally don’t look at it because it makes me sick.
This is not meant as a criticism of Cagle, even though I believe he’s doing everything in his power to destroy our industry just to make a nickel, nor is it a criticism of the cartoons that make his top ten list. A lot of cartoonists who draw hard-hitting cartoons often draw something nice, or even bland, on occasion. It doesn’t mean that they’re not good cartoonists. Although there are cartoonists who do nothing but draw boring, bland, generic, copy-and-paste cartoons, like Dave Granlund. (snip-MORE, and he gets to the point)
The only weaponization of the Justice Department that comes to mind is that which has been committed by Donald Trump and his goons. Going after goons who attacked the capital is not weaponization. Going after Donald Trump for sending those goons or for stealing classified documents is not weaponization. Going after people who try to overturn the election is not weaponization.
The $1.8 billion slush fund that Donald Trump is going to give to the so-called victims of the so-called weaponization of the Justice Department under Joe Biden is bogus. It’s not for victims as much as for political allies who would do Donald Trump’s bidding. Trump isn’t trying to reward people who work for him; he’s recruiting them. When he pardoned the J6 terrorist, it was to recruit them.
Polls on the slush fund have not come out yet, but I expect them to next week. And I also expect that they are going to be very negative about the Donald Trump slush fund. I expect public opinion to be very much against the slush fund. The slush fund is so unpopular that even some Republicans are speaking out against it, and not anonymously either. (snip-MORE)
And this is why I do not want to live in a red state or a red congressional district. I don’t want to live in a place where the majority of people are so loyal to Trump that they will punish a man for not protecting pedophiles. It’s bad enough that the blue city I live in now borders what we affectionately call Spotsyltucky.
Even while he has the lowest approval ratings of any president in the history of approval ratings, Trump’s MAGA base will go to any lengths to serve him, even if it means ousting a guy because he would not protect pedophiles.
Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky had been a thorn in Trump’s side for a while, even though he was a staunch conservative. It’s not like Massie wanted equal rights for black Americans, for women to be free to make health decisions regarding their own bodies, or that he wanted free lunches for children in poverty.
Massie voted against Trump’s signature tax-and-spending package and moved to rein in his war powers over Iran, but the final straw was his leadership of the bipartisan effort to release the Epstein files, in which Trump is mentioned thousands of times. Republicans spent $33 million to defeat Massie in a primary. This was $33 million to defeat one of their own. This was $33 million spent on a safe red seat. And they invested all of it in a failed state Senate candidate, whom many believe is dumber than a doorbell. (snip-MORE)
for their constituents (or are supposed to!), and not posted as a dig on the National Weather Service, which is doing what it can with what it has, and has very little leeway to talk about why they don’t get everything done as they used to in the Before Times.
TOPEKA — U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids expressed frustration Friday with the National Weather Service’s failure in the last month to launch three-fourths of the balloons typically sent aloft in Kansas to assess atmospheric conditions and assist with weather forecasting.
Davids, a Democrat representing the 3rd District in eastern Kansas, said publicly available records indicated NWS didn’t conduct on 25 of the past 30 days the standard 7 a.m. weather balloon flight dedicated to collecting atmospheric data in Kansas.
“That’s unacceptable,” she said. “Kansans deserve transparency about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what’s being done to fix it. Kansans deserve confidence that the systems meant to keep them safe are fully operational during tornado season and meteorologists deserve the reliable data they need to do their jobs.”
In the past year, Davids and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, have raised questions about staff shortages and other issues at NWS bureaus in Kansas.
Moran recently said staffing problems persisted despite Congress appropriating sufficient funding for 24/7 operation of Kansas weather offices in Topeka, Wichita, Dodge City and Goodland.
Davids said she requested explanations one month ago from NWS about disruptions in gathering data after an outbreak of severe weather. NWS didn’t respond to the inquiry, the congresswoman said, despite seven more tornadoes touching down in Kansas last week.
NWS has an obligation to be transparent with the public about data collection failures, Davids said.
“These are not abstract bureaucratic problems,” Davids said. “You don’t get to quietly scale back something this important without transparency, especially in a state where severe weather can turn deadly fast. The administration owes the public answers and immediate action to address these reported failures before tragedy strikes.”
Davids said weather balloons provided forecasters real-time measurements, including temperature, humidity, pressure and wind conditions useful in anticipating storm intensity. Missed launches limited information available to meteorologists, she said.
She previously asked NWS to share details about reasons for missed balloon launches and how missing data contributed to delayed tornado advisories.
“For decades, 7 a.m. weather balloon launches have been a standard part of how we track severe weather and protect communities. If that standard has changed, the National Weather Service owes Kansans clear answers about why and the science and data behind that decision,” she said.
It was actually some Canadian-made little-kids’s science TV show on The Learning Channel (when it actually was!) that first got me acquainted with Dr. Suzuki, then I read more in a “The Nation” interview. I’m glad he’s still out here kickin’.
Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki — an author, environmental A-lister and original host of CBC’s long-running documentary series The Nature of Things — marked his 90th spin around the sun at a star-studded gala Friday night in Vancouver. Jane Fonda and Al Gore were among the VIPs who flew in to show the old tree-hugger some love and enjoy performances from Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and even a surprise set from Neil Young.
Dr. Suzuki may not be a household name outside of Canada and maybe Japan but he came in a solid fifth place in a big CBC contest back in the early aughts to name the best Canadian ever, ahead of the more problematic Don Cherry and Wayne Gretzky, the only other living finalists to make the top 10.
Imagine if Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sir David Attenborough had a baby and you’re on the right track. The hot ticket event was livestreamed for free but hasn’t yet been uploaded anywhere, presumably to cut down on the footprint from permanent data storage, so we may never know if he had anything interesting to say about attending a lavish celebration of his life’s work when it has widely fallen on deaf ears.
He was pretty blunt when asked about his hopes for the future in a recent interview with Piya Chattopadhyay where he said hunkering down in communities is our best shot at survival now that we’ve reached the point of no return:
For years I was told on The Nature of Things, “you can’t say that, that’s too depressing.” So I’ve been held back from telling the truth. And now, when the science has said “we have passed a tipping point, we cannot go back,” people are going “oh well, what the hell, it’s too late.” It’s true we are now headed for a catastrophic way and it’s unavoidable. The science is telling you that. So do you just throw up your hands? If you have children or grandchildren, you can’t do that. So you have to hunker down and say “it’s coming.” Because when the emergency comes, we don’t know what it will be. Government won’t be able to respond with the speed and the scale that you’re going to need so get your act together. The reality is the science says we’ve come to that point, and so I believe that the unit of survival is going to be your local community.
This is coming from a father of five who watched Justin Trudeau sign the Paris Climate Accords to limit the rise of global temperatures and then turn around to buy a new frickin pipeline two years later. And now the new prime minister has essentially declared war on the environment by tossing regulations aside to fast-track new projects because Donald J. Trump poses a more immediate threat to the country than Mother Nature does.
Mark Carney recently announced plans for a potential new bitumen pipeline from Alberta to somewhere in the Pacific, with construction expected to begin as early as September 2027 if they can find anyone to put build it. “This is Canada working, this is co-operative federalism, this is Canada building,” he told reporters at a press conference with Alberta preem Danielle Smith. “In effect, it creates an energy transition — all aspects of energy — but really sets the stage for an industrial transformation.”
Scottie's Playtime 