'it's Your Allies, Stupid' -- America's Greater Middle East Disasters (pt 1)

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes details how agents served Rudy Giuliani at his 80th birthday party with notice of his indictment related to an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Arizona.

Do you want to see your teeth while you are brushing them? I go to the dentist for teeth cleanings regularly. I have no interest when he tries to use his little mirror, coaxing me to open wider to show me what's going on in my back left molar. "I believe you," I scream. The smart toothbrushes are very expensive and I rather put that money towards an excellent espresso maker. Count me out. Open thread below read more

“President Joe Biden’s political operation raised $51 million in April — a significant decline from its March fundraising, according to totals released by his campaign Monday,” CNN reports. “Biden’s campaign and affiliated committee still ended the month with $192 million in the bank, according to his aides — a war chest they described as the highest cash-on-hand figure for any Democratic candidate in history and one they say positions the president to compete effectively with former President Donald Trump.”

Senator Ron Johnson (Q-Moscow) is complaining again, which, in itself, is nothing new. The guy isn't happy unless he's complaining. Biden's saving people from the pandemic. Brown-skinned people are coming into the country. They're charging Fearless Leader for crimes that he committed. It never stops with him. His latest cause for griping is that protesters are being allowed to exercise their Freedom of Speech near the forums of the RNC convention in Milwaukee this summer.

Tom Nichols: “Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, works for the totalitarian Ministry of Truth, where his assignment is to produce lies. He rewrites history so that whatever the regime says today cannot be contradicted by something it might have said yesterday. (He ensures, for example, that Big Brother’s ‘Order for the Day’ announcements about the regime’s achievements match up with everything the leader predicted in previous statements, and he excises any untidy references in the state media to people who have been arrested and disappeared.) Once history is fixed, Winston drops contradictory materials into ‘the memory hole,’ a small opening near every desk that leads to a furnace, where the inconvenient past is quickly incinerated.” “Leaders of the current GOP presumably do not have such memory holes in their offices, but they’re doing their best to replicate the effect.

“An aide to Mayor Eric Adams who served as his longtime liaison to the Turkish community and whose home was searched by the FBI has been cooperating with the corruption investigation into the mayor and his 2021 campaign,“ the New York Times reports. “The cooperation of the aide, Rana Abbasova, could represent a significant development in the broad corruption inquiry, which has focused in part on whether Mr.