BIG WORD DAY UPDATES

Cool! (See what I did there?)

-While Fox News as an entity appears to have escaped more deserved scrutiny and punishment (for now) over the now-settled Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit (particularly after reports emerged that insurance will cover the $787.5 million payout), individuals from Fox did not. MSN and other outlets reported three Fox News hosts - Maria Bartiromo, Dan Bongino, and Jeanne Pirro - have been or will soon be leaving, in part to try to 'turn down the temperature' as several other Fox News hosts and contributors still have Dominion suing them, and a second, larger defamation suit ($2.7 billion) from Smartmatic USA looms.

-Further, it was a very bad legal day for one of the leading proponents of the Big Lie of Ex-President Trump having the 2020 election stolen from him (it was not - Biden won clean and big), MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. A separate lawsuit ordered Lindell to pay $5 million to a man who accepted Lindell's "challenge" to "Prove Mike Wrong" and proved that Mike was wrong in claiming China had interfered in the 2020 election. The man, by the way, was a computer expert from NV named Robert Zeidman - and, fun fact, Zeidman voted for Trump! Lindell is still trying to say he was right (wrong) and that now that Fox has paid off Dominion, they can bring Lindell back on Fox (not likely) so Lindell can continue his stated quest to melt all the voting machines down and turn them into prison bars for Joe Biden (voting machines are made of plastic).

-Reports indicate that, after over a year of investigation, prosecutors are contemplating bringing four charges against Hunter Biden for crimes involving tax returns - two would be felonies, two misdemeanors. But if you listen to UltraMAGA Rep. James Comer (HunteR!, KY) and GOP Party Leader Marjorie Taylor Greene (Z-Q-R, GA), those are just the tip of the iceberg of what Greene sinisterly calls "the Biden Crime Family." Greene insists she has seen "over 2,000 pages" of classified information (if she did she is violating the law and her oath as a Congressperson) that "proves" that Hunter and the "entire Biden family" are actually the masterminds behind, among other things, a sex crime and prostitution ring based out of China, with the entire government covering up for the Bidens.

-Uh ... no.

-Greene has been quite mouthy lately, particularly in a Congressional hearing featuring Homeland Security Chairman Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this week. After first having been rebuked by claiming committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) had "a sexual relationship" with a Chinese spy (the charge is false and has been proven to be false but continues to be parroted in right-wing media as being true) (Greene herself continued to slander Swalwell on social media later that night), Greene had her words stricken from the record - and her questioning for the duration of the hearing ended - after calling Mayorkas "uh LYE-ahr!!!!" in response to a harangue in the form of a question. That the rebuke came from GOP Chair Rep. Mark Green was notable, as were stories that began to circulate that other GOP Reps are very unhappy with the de facto House Speaker and her antics, but given her position with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (SINO-R, CA), do not expect Greene to back off as she continues her trolling.

-In part, you can expect Greene to continue her shenanigans because the House GOP continues working on their primary legislative goals in this Congress. Just yesterday, amid an epidemic of gun violence and the threat of the abortion pill being banned, McCarthy and company proudly passed, on a clean party line vote, a national ban on transgendered individuals from competing in sports. The bill now goes to the Senate where Chuck Schumer will throw the bill into the trash where it belongs and not give it another second of space.

-Hot off the explosion of a SpaceX rocket that was spun as an incredible success, billionaire weirdo Elon Musk continued his less-than-rapid semi-scheduled disassembly of Twitter, by removing the "blue check verification" that was used to ensure celebrities and governmental accounts were not fake. Instead, Musk demanded users and accounts pay to keep their blue checks - and that has led to even more chaos on the once-influential site. While Musk openly paid celebrities like Stephen King, LeBron James and William Shatner to keep their blue checks, an explosion of copycat governmental accounts ranging from the IRS to New York City has shredded any sense of what posts can be relied upon and which cannot. A number of Twitter-like sites including Mastodon, Post .com, Spoutible and Substack Notes are all vying to be the next Twitter as Musk continues having pseudo-deep conversations with people like Tucker Carlson and allowing anti-semitic and racist Twitter feeds to explode.

-This writer has accounts on Mastodon, Post and Spoutibule @jafedorko, and of course a Substack which YOU can subscribe to (at no cost!) and, if you wish, leave a tip!

-On this date in 1895, the first movie projector debuted. On this date in 1977, ANNIE opened on Broadway. On this date in 1986, one of the most hyped for the time live television events flopped as Geraldo Rivera found little of value in a vault once owned by Al Capone. And on this date in 1989, student protestors began to occupy Tiananmen Square in Beijing, demanding democratic reforms in the Chinese Communist Party continue.

-Happy Birthday to Catherine the Great, Charlotte Bronte, baseball manager Joe McCarthy, Gov. Pat Brown, Anthony Quinn, Queen Elizabeth II, Elaine May, Charles Grodin, Sister Helen Prejean, Iggy Pop, Patti LuPone, Tony Danza, Jesse Orosco, Andie MacDowell, Robert Smith, Les Lancaster, John Cameron Mitchell, Ed Belfour, Michael Franti, Glen Hansard, Rob Riggle, James McAvoy, and Tony Romo.

-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Jean Racine, Mark Twain, The Red Baron, Gummo Marx, Sandy Denny, I.A.L. Diamond, James Kirkwood, Nina Simone, Prince Rogers Nelson, Verne Troyer, Florian Schneider, and Daryle Lamonica.

-Feed the Worms: Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier, racist sexist oddsmaker Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, and Watergate bag Charles Colson bought it on this date.

-John Maynard Keynes and former Olympic chair Juan Antonio Samaranch died on this date. You decide if they Rest in Power or if they Feed the Worms.