The good:
Conan O’Brien made a winning punchline of President Donald Trump and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein during his monologue at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
The
Oscars host — who has largely steered clear of politics despite being a
registered Democrat — teed up the joke by noting that the 98th Academy
Awards marked the first time since 2012 that a British star hasn’t been
nominated in either the Best Actor or Best Actress categories.
“British spokesperson said,
‘Yeah? Well, at least we arrest our pedophiles.’ So we’ve got that going
for us,” quipped the late night legend, who earned 10-plus seconds of
applause from the Oscars crowd.
The host’s joke arrives less than a month after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was arrested
in the U.K. on suspicion of misconduct in public office as he faced
mounting pressure over his link to the late convicted sex offender
Epstein.
Trump
socialized and appeared in several photos with Epstein over the years.
He has denied any link to the financier and has not been implicated in
Epstein’s crimes. [snip]
Following a commercial break, O’Brien made a jab at the president’s Kennedy Center rebrand since he returned to office.
“Welcome back, we’re coming to
you live from the ‘Has A Small Penis’ Theater,” he joked. “Let’s see
him put his name in front of that.”
O’Brien’s dig arrives a little over a month after Trump flipped out on social media over various quips from ex-“Daily Show” host Trevor Noah during his last gig as emcee of the Grammy Awards. (our emphasis)
Well, there have been lots of better Malignant Fascist zingers and more sustained satire at the Oscars, mostly by Jimmy Kimmel, but we'll take what we can get at this point in our march toward authoritarianism.
The bad:
A federal jury on Friday convicted eight people
on terrorism charges over a shooting at a Texas immigration facility
that federal prosecutors tied to antifa, the decentralized far-left
movement that has become a target of the Trump administration.
One person was also found guilty of attempted murder after prosecutors say he opened fire
last summer outside the Prairieland Detention Center outside of Fort
Worth, wounding a police officer. The Justice Department called the
violence an attack plotted by antifa operatives but attorneys for the
accused denied that characterization, saying there were no antifa
associations and that it was merely a demonstration with fireworks
before gunshots broke out.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an
appointee of President Donald Trump, presided over the nearly three-week
trial in Fort Worth. It was closely followed by legal experts and
critics who called the proceedings a test of the lengths the government
can go to punish protesters. [snip]
Defense attorneys told jurors that there was no plan for violence on July 4 outside the facility in Alvarado.
There
were nine defendants on trial in all, eight of whom faced the charge of
providing material support to terrorists, among other charges. The
ninth defendant, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was charged with corruptly
concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents. He was found
guilty of both.
Sanchez Estrada’s attorney, Christopher Weinbel,
said he can’t believe jurors “came to this conclusion.” Weinbel said he
has deployed as a member of the Army several times in the defense of the
U.S. and he’d hoped what he sacrificed “meant something.”
“But I feel like it turned its back on justice with this. ... The U.S. lost today with this verdict,” Weinbel said.
Prosecutor
Shawn Smith told jurors during closing arguments that the group’s
actions — including bringing firearms, first aid kids and wearing body
armor — were all signals of the group having a nefarious intent. He said
they practiced “antifa tactics,” and were “obsessed with operational
security.”
Attorneys for the defendants have said there was no
planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms only did so for
their own protection. [snip]
Critics of the Justice Department’s case have said the outcome could have wide-reaching effects on protests.
“That
opposition is something that the government wants to squash so a case
like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in
criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them
kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities
then will think twice over protesting,” said Suzanne Adely, interim
president of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal group... (our emphasis)
Having this trial in Texas before a Malignant Fascist- appointed judge and a Tex-ass jury was a slam dunk for the "Justice" Department. We didn't read about an appeal in the story, but we hope the defendants take this further, because letting the MF regime squelch dissent in this way is a terrible precedent.
The ugly:
Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
acknowledges having a romantic relationship with a member of her
security detail that began while she was a lawmaker, according to legal
documents. But she also contends she shouldn’t be subject to a lawsuit by the man’s ex-wife who blames Sinema for the marriage breakup.
The
North Carolina federal court litigation seeks financial damages from
Sinema, who represented Arizona in the U.S. House and later the Senate
for one term that ended early last year.
Heather Ammel contends
in a lawsuit that she and husband Matthew had “a good and loving
marriage” and “genuine love and affection” existed between them before
Sinema interfered, pursuing him despite knowing he was married.
In
a signed March 7 declaration attached to a lawsuit motion filed this
week, Sinema said her relationship with Matthew Ammel “became romantic
and intimate” at the end of May 2024 and “physically intimate” over the
next several months in California, New York, Colorado, Arizona and
Washington, D.C. The Ammels separated in November 2024, the lawsuit
said.
North Carolina is one of a handful of states that allow jilted spouses
to sue for “alienation of affection” to seek damages from a third party
responsible for the breakup of their marriage. [snip]
Sinema’s head of security hired Ammel after he retired from the Army in
2022, according to the lawsuit, and in early 2024, Heather Ammel
discovered messages between Sinema and her husband on the Signal
messaging app that were of “romantic and lascivious natures.” That
summer, Matthew Ammel stopped wearing his wedding ring and Sinema gave
him a job on her Senate staff while he continued to work as her
bodyguard, the lawsuit alleges...
Sinema turned out to be a terrible Senator and a big disappointment for the Democratic Party. She seemed to delight in being a loose cannon together with her portmanteau partner in showboating Joe Manchin ("Sinemanchin"). After leaving the Senate, she lost no time completely abandoning her progressive roots by joining multiple corporate boards. It's not all that surprising that she was, to say the least, less than high character in her personal life, too.