Gravity, huh?

 In February Ravil Maganov criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for "serious negotiations and diplomacy."  Miraculously, the chairman of Lukoil lived until September 1, when he accidentally fell from the balcony of his room at Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow while smoking.  Or he committed suicide.  Or he passed away following a severe illness.  The CCTV camera was turned off for routine maintenance, so we may never really know.  Sudden death is quite common in the upper reaches of the Russian energy industry.  

Friends of Vlad are also having a bad time.  The FBI, the NYPD and Homeland Security Investigations have searched the various homes of Viktor Vekselberg of Renova Group (metals, tech, the occasional bank fraud).  The detectives and police were seen "carrying boxes" -- why does that sound familiar?

Judge Cannon unsealed the inventory of items recovered from Trump's property, including "ninety empty folders marked Classified or for return to the White House staff secretary or a military aide."  Now all they have to do is find the contents.  The agents also took magazine and newspaper clippings dating back to 2008, gifts and clothes.  He'll probably get that junk back.

He may not want the clothes.  A gossip site called RadarOnline is reporting that Melania was so horrified by strange men searching her undies drawers that she has replaced all her underpants.  It doesn't specify whether they were the edible kind, which would make sense.  But what about the bra the Army Corps of Engineers designed to stabilize the kidneys we bought her at Walter Reed?  You can't pick up one of those from Bare Necessities.  Anyway, Trump is equally germophobic -- it's what brought them together -- so he'll probably need new panties, too.  I loved the comment by one of Mel's "friends":  "This is her home.  It's her bedroom.  Even her husband isn't allowed in her bedroom."  Amazing what you can write into a prenup.

Joe Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, ground zero for American democracy, to deliver a speech about the most serious threat it has faced since 1860.  The big three networks decided it was just political flim-flam and declined to pre-empt the sitcom, game show and Law & Order rerun on their schedules.  The Republicans chose to focus on the "inappropriate" deployment of two Marines in the background and even the use of the Marine Band.  (It's called "The President's Own" for a reason.  Biden can have them play while he rides his Peloton if he wants to.)  There was a crowd and there were even hecklers, who Biden defused with the poise of a veteran stand-up comic:  "They're entitled to be outrageous.  This is a democracy."  

If you don't have cable and your local paper disappeared years ago, here is a transcript. 

I love that John Fetterman, or someone in his campaign, called the flailing Oz efforts "shambolic."  It only entered the language around fifty years ago but it fills a need, a mix of "symbolic" and "shambles."  Oz's handlers decided that attacking a stroke victim for having a stroke is not playing well and have decided to go with "soft on crime."  The Fetterman campaign employs two brothers, Lee and Dennis Horton, who were convicted of second-degree murder because they were in the same car as the man who did the actual killing in 1993.  In 2020 their life sentences were commuted and they were pardoned.  To make matters worse for the TV huckster, someone found a 2019 interview where he asserts that "life begins at conception."  Oops.

On a related note, Michiganders have been out in the heat collecting signatures on petitions to get an abortion referendum on November's ballot.  Frightened by the vote in Kansas, Republicans on the Board of State Canvassers blocked them; now it goes to the state Supreme Court.  There's that respect for democracy that Biden was talking about in his "partisan" address.  MAGAs or not, they must go.

That seven-year-old in Arizona who brought two guns to show-and-tell didn't hold the record very long.  In Corpus Christi, Texas, a four-year-old managed to carry a gun to John F. Kennedy Elementary School (nice touch) and it was loaded.  Daddy could get two years for making a firearm accessible to a child, which doesn't sound like Texas.

Sarah Palin won't be joining the Crackpot Caucus -- not this year, anyway.  Mary Peltola was elected to the last four months of Don Young's term; she has to run again in November.  Trump campaigned for Palin, so her loss was due to a "voting system mistake" (ranked-choice voting) which she looks forward to "correcting."  It can't be that Alaskans are just tired of her and Trump.  They might even be pro-choice.  "I'm going to reload," said the ex-governor who once tweeted a map with gunsights superimposed on Democratic districts (including Gaby Giffords's).  Could that be the violence Biden condemned last night?

Nobody in the capital of Mississippi can turn on the tap without getting a sinkful of sewage, but the state collected over $70 million in TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) from the federal government and handed it to a horse farm, a volleyball complex, a professional wrestler -- and Bret Favre, for "motivational speeches" he never gave.  (Favre has repaid the $1.1 million, though not the interest sought by the state auditor.)  I can't see where even needy white Mississippians got a nickel.  Oh, and student debt forgiveness?  The worst crime in history?  Yeah, the Magnolia State will consider it taxable income.  "Why does the Democrat Party hate working people so much?" Taint Reeve tweeted soulfully.  There may be a blues song in that.

If you liked the movie 2,000 Mules by fascist propagandist Dinesh D'Souza and you can't wait to find out if the book is even better, you'll have to wait until October 25.  Regnery Publishing, which is famously un-picky about what it puts out, discovered a "publishing error" and pulped the lot.  Not cancelled, just postponed.  The movie was too toxic even for Newsmax and the standards for libel action are a little higher in the old Gutenberg universe.  So readers will have plenty of time to finish Jared Kushner's Humping History or whatever it's called.  

Greg Abbott has resumed his stupid stunt of busing migrants to northern cities to express disdain for the Biden administration.  The Venezuelans who arrived in Chicago today were met with "food, clothes, a shower and shelter."  "They're not cargo.  They are not chattel.  They are human beings," said Mayor Lori Lightfoot.  Normally migrants would have to pay for their own travel to sanctuary cities, so -- thanks, Texas taxpayers!

 

Barbara Ehrenreich has died.  "She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell," said her son Ben.  So do that.  And watch out for falling Russians.