Gary Scott🎤

‘There’s nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.’ - Mark Twain

music to shut it all out to open.spotify.com/playlist/2lFnq…

#BREAKINGNEWS: A 34,000-gallon tank at an aerospace facility in Garden Grove is spewing toxic chemicals into the sky, prompting an emergency response and evacuations. abc7.la/fsx8Ew

omg best track ever: theslowghost.bandcamp.com/track/braver

$30 million. That's what one Jan 6er hopes to get from the US government. I spoke to two people who spent time behind bars for Jan 6 -- they welcome Trump's "anti-weaponization" fund and they hope to cash in.

Several local newspaper companies — USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing — have begun blocking @internetarchive's access. That's more than 340 U.S. local news sites in all, a new @NiemanLab analysis by @decka227 and @HanaaTameez shows.

Berkeley law has introduced a new, much stricter AI policy law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/upl…

Forcing refiners to blend liquified corn into their gasoline is one of the dumbest policies on the books, raising the cost of food and fuel for nonexistent environmental benefits. slowboring.com/p/the-dumb-pol…

They are looting the country on an unprecedented scale and the lesson of losses by Massie and Cassidy is that no Republican in Congress will ever lift a finger to halt this.

NEW: The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5M to the Trump-backed super PAC MAGA Inc. on 4/30/2026. 8 days later, the Trump administration rolled out a new policy that could be lucrative for Reynolds by allowing it to begin selling flavored vapes nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/…

“Up to 70% of rooms reserved by Fifa in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle have been cancelled, the AHLA said” bbc.com/sport/football…

this is the pretext for something

The “confidential investigation documents” that Patel evasively alludes to is Volume II of the Jack Smith report, per the indictment. It’s the only special counsel final report in US history that’s not been publicly released, as a result of Judge Cannon’s order at Trump’s urging.

NEW: The US is threatening to revoke the visas of the Palestinian delegation to the UN unless the Palestinian ambassador withdraws his run for vice president of the General Assembly, according to a US State Department cable Tuesday obtained by NPR. npr.org/2026/05/20/nx-…

A federal judge has ordered White House personnel to continue complying with the Presidential Records Act after the Trump Justice Department argued in a legal opinion last month that the law was "unconstitutional" and that Trump has the authority to destroy presidential records from his term. ms.now/news/judge-ord…

and illegal

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — He spent 37 days in a rural Tennessee county jail for posting a meme about President Donald Trump. Now, Lexington, Tenn., resident Larry Bushart — who was finally freed following a NewsChannel 5 investigation — will collect an $835,000 settlement from Perry County, his attorneys announced Wednesday. Details in link below. (Photo by: LadyJay Creations LLC/FIRE)

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve just saw its largest one week drawdown in history, both on an absolute basis, and on a % basis

Scoop: The Trump admin is planning to tell NATO allies this week that it will shrink the pool of military capabilities the US would have available to assist European nations in a major crisis, like an invasion of a NATO member, sources said w @JonathanLanday @andrew_r_gray

DOJ official told GOP ally that big payouts were coming for Jan. 6 defendants. nbcnews.com/politics/justi…

I asked former IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel for comment. He writes: “I am unaware of a single precedent where the IRS has agreed in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed tax returns for a specific person or business. Whether you are the President or Joe the Plumber, people expect the same tax rules and enforcement framework to apply to everybody.”