WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling President Joe Biden “an authoritarian dictator of the most reprehensible kind,” Fox News has accused him of using the power of the federal government to improve the country.

“Joe Biden came into office claiming that he wanted to be the President of all the people,” Sean Hannity said. “Now, however, his real agenda has become clear: he wants to increase Americans’ life expectancy.”

“How long one lives should be a personal choice,” Hannity continued. “But not if Joe Stalin-slash-Biden has anything to say about it.”

Tucker Carlson agreed, arguing that Biden’s push for a $3.5 trillion spending package “is no more and no less than a totalitarian dictator’s plot to raise the nation’s standard of living.”

“To those of you who think I’m being an alarmist, let’s learn a lesson from history,” he said. “This is exactly like what happened in Germany under Angela Merkel.”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/fox-news-accuses-biden-of-using-federal-government-to-improve-country

Once they finish finding voter fraud in the presidential election, and they will find it, the Cyber Ninjas should rappel down the Tomb of the Unknown Ballot Box and turn their considerable auditing skills to the real estate acquisitions of Patrick Byrne, Sarasota County's newest resident-in-hiding and conspiracy-spewing kook.

You know, just to see if someone who holds a Ph.D. in mathematical logic from Stanford University actually purchased six properties in our area – four homes, a condominium and a medical building owned by a Venice gynecologist – for $10.4 million, overpaying the current market value by $6 million in the process.

Just to ascertain if a woman in Nevada state prison for document fraud is actually the signed representative for the company Byrne used to buy the aforementioned properties.

Just to determine if the document that ties Byrne to the properties is a recently filed Sarasota County voter registration form, which would mean he is now registered to vote in two states, though in Utah he listed his business address as his primary residency.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/09/09/conspiracy-kooks-flocking-sarasota-county/5749142001/

The Sarasota corner of southwest Florida seems to be the latest area to attract prominent RWNJs. But then the Sarasota Republican Party awarded Trump "Statesman of the Year" not once but twice, and gave the award to DeSantis this year, so that's probably part of the appeal.

Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune

"Its vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement," the judge wrote.

TALLAHASSEE – Another of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policy priorities has been blocked, with a federal court Thursday stopping enforcement of his so-called anti-riot law that opponents said was riddled with constitutional defects.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker agreed with arguments made by several civil rights organizations which pushed to stop the law. It had gone on the books in April after DeSantis signed it flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers at an event in Polk County.

The Republican governor proposed the measure in the weeks following nationwide protests last year which stemmed from George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. DeSantis called it the “strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country.”

Walker, however, said in his order that the law was a threat to the constitutional rights of Americans: “Its vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement against any group who wishes to express any message that the government disapproves of.”

Read more: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/state/2021/09/09/desantis-another-court-loss-time-anti-riot-law/8261112002/

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DeSantis will appeal, of course. Weaponizing enforcement of this law is something that has great appeal to Republicans.

Californians on Tuesday will vote on whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). The Republican front-runner in the recall election is Larry Elder, a longtime talk-radio host who has been emulating former president Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

One way in which Elder, 69, is following Trump’s playbook is by repeating false and misleading claims. We rounded up several, on California’s economy and wildfires, on coronavirus vaccinations for children and on the 2020 election.

“They asked me about the way this governor has shut down this state … only half the jobs have been recovered as opposed to two-thirds the national average.” (“Media Buzz” on Fox News, Sept. 5)

The United States experienced a two-month recession in the spring of 2020, and a sharp rise in unemployment, as states entered lockdown mode to contain the spread of covid-19.

But Elder’s figures were somewhat outdated by the time of this interview. At the end of July, California had recovered around 58 percent of the jobs it lost during the coronavirus recession, as his campaign acknowledged when we sent questions. The United States had recovered three-quarters, not two-thirds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/09/larry-elders-false-misleading-claims-california-recall-race/

Elder gets awarded four Pinocchios for his lies.

RICHMOND (The Borowitz Report)—After a statue of Robert E. Lee was removed from Richmond, Virginia, Donald J. Trump offered to buy the monument for his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s a beautiful statue of a beautiful man, and, quite frankly, there’s no one I’d rather wake up to every morning,” he said.

Stating that the removal of the statue “should never have been allowed to happen in this country,” Trump said that he had offered Virginia a statue of himself in return.

“I can’t think of a better person to take Robert E. Lee’s place than Trump,” he said. “I’ll even throw in free shipping, like that loser Bezos.”

Asked why he had decided to place the Civil War statue in his bedroom, Trump said that his wife, Melania, had asked him to put it someplace where she wouldn’t see it.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-offers-to-buy-robert-e-lee-statue-for-his-bedroom

The random discovery of an unlit star thought to be more than 10 billion years old could show us a whole new side to the universe.

The Milky Way galaxy just got a lot weirder. More to the point, our understanding of how weird the galaxy is got a lot better.

It’s possible the Milky Way is positively teeming with a startling number of dead stars, some of which might be nearly as old as the galaxy itself.

We have an amateur stargazer to thank for the discovery. Dan Caselden was playing the video game Counter-Strike late one night back in 2018 when a custom software program he’d created for analyzing data from a NASA star survey found something odd.

A huge cold object in space, moving fast 50 light-years from Earth. “The system enthusiastically pointed me to a place in the sky that had absolutely nothing interesting there at all,” Caselden told The Daily Beast. “But in the bottom left corner, there was a faint object just screaming across the screen.”

Because he’d found the object without really trying, Caselden named it… The Accident.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-very-weird-accidental-star-could-help-reveal-the-secrets-of-the-cosmos

“I don’t know why the masks have politics around it,” said the governor who has made a name for himself by railing against mask rules.

Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who sells anti-mask merchandise on his campaign website, now wonders why masks have become so political.

Despite the spiking COVID-19 death toll in his state, which has been hardest hit by the Delta variant, DeSantis issued an executive order this summer blocking local schools from implementing mask mandates to combat the virus spread.

A Florida judge on Wednesday, however, ruled against DeSantis and allowed schools to mandate masks without a parent opt-out while the governor appeals to a higher court. The same judge initially ruled last month that DeSantis did not have the authority to ban the mandates.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the pro-Trump governor and potential 2024 presidential candidate suggested he was perplexed by how masks had become such a political hot button.

“Since I’ve been governor, I think any issue that has politics—and I don’t know why the masks have politics around it,” declared DeSantis, who has repeatedly mocked mask guidances. “Let the parent make the decision that’s best for their kids. If you want the masks, do it, if you don’t, don’t—that’s fine."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ron-desantis-anti-mask-merch-salesman-wonders-how-masks-became-political

DeSantis is quite the disingenuous POS, isn't he? How cute. Not.

AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)—Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that he was “actively considering” additional measures to prevent people from wanting to ever set foot in the state.

Although he acknowledged that new laws banning most abortions, restricting voting, and allowing citizens to carry a gun without a permit or training would dissuade many from visiting Texas, Abbott said that “there’s more we can do.”

“Maybe we pass a law that says when you have to go to bed every night, or when you’re allowed to use a hair dryer,” he said. “We need to put our thinking caps on.”

“Just spitballing here, but what if we mandated that every visitor to Texas got bitten by a dog or poked with a stick of some kind?” he said. “I’ll be damned if that wouldn’t do the trick.”

Even as he works overtime thinking up new ideas to alienate potential visitors to Texas, he admitted he was surprised that anyone still wanted to come. “Honestly, I thought me being Governor would be enough to keep people out,” he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/abbott-considering-other-measures-to-prevent-people-from-ever-setting-foot-in-texas

A tense standoff between Florida authorities and an armed suspect became even more dangerous over the weekend when a naked 28-year-old woman suddenly drove into the crime scene on a golf cart, according to reports.

The woman, identified as Jessica Smith, from Boston, had "a distinct odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from her person, and she was completely nude," an affidavit of the incident said, according to FOX 13 of Tampa Bay.

At the time, police in Dunedin had several Pinellas County sheriff’s office vehicles parked around the crime scene, the station reported. Smith allegedly drove past the law enforcement vehicles and into the area where authorities were confronting an armed 18-year-old suspect in what turned out to be a six-hour standoff, the report said.

Smith allegedly ignored officers’ demands that she leave the area, then later refused to get out of the golf cart when officers approached to arrest her. Sheriff’s deputies then pulled her from the cart and handcuffed her, the report said.

https://news.yahoo.com/naked-woman-28-drives-golf-035800180.html

That's how lookyloos do it in Florida!

She just wanted to see what was going on as she drove by naked in her golf cart...

The conspiracy theory-fueled “audit” of Arizona’s ballots was supposed to end in May, then by the end of August and now — who knows? Arizona Senate Republicans have ineptly orchestrated this chaotic spectacle over the fervent protests of county GOP officials, election experts and practically everyone else who has not signed on to former president Donald Trump’s dangerous mythology about the 2020 election. The audit has come to epitomize the toxic combination of lies, absurdity and grift on which 2020 trutherism rests. But the former president has watched intently, apparently under the delusion that the election results can still be reversed, and he has pressed Republican leaders in other swing states to run similar ballot reviews. With the help of right-wing media, he is succeeding in his pressure campaign.

Politico reports that top GOP officials in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are proceeding with their own 2020 election audits. Pennsylvania Senate leaders have openly compared their review to the Arizona madness and boasted that they have coordinated with Mr. Trump on their efforts. As in Arizona, they will conduct their probe with the help of outside contractors who may examine ballots and voting equipment. They have asked the public to come forward with any irregularities people think they witnessed. This is the sort of process that in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 vote led to dossiers of outlandish allegations that are most charitably described as based on misunderstandings — and that one judge after another threw out of court. They plan to hold their first hearing on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin House has earmarked $676,000 for its own vote review, to be run by a former state supreme court justice who has attended election conspiracy theory events. House leaders have promised to keep Mr. Trump updated on their investigation, which also appears to be preoccupied with voting machines.

Back in Arizona, experts have decried the GOP audit’s shifting procedures, sloppy ballot handling and failure to understand basic election practices. Despite several delays, the intent still appears to be to hand Mr. Trump and his acolytes an official-looking report, no matter how slipshod, that gives their election lies the appearance of plausibility.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/07/gops-delusion-fueled-election-audits-spell-trouble-2024/