Crooked Media - What A Day: Down for the 13 counts

The loneliest boy in Congress, George Santos, is finally facing the music after receiving a 13-count federal indictment. 

• Thirteen, I believe, is a lot. Santos surrendered to the feds in New York this morning and was arraigned in a Long Island courtroom this afternoon. He was forced to surrender his passport and his travel has been restricted to New York City, Long Island, and Washington, DC, which, if you’re gonna be restricted to anywhere, are honestly pretty dope places to be. Santos faces seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives. Thirteen is an unlucky number although I wouldn’t say 7 indictments is that much luckier. 
   
• The charges stem from three of Santos’ most delicious schemes. The first was using illicit campaign contributions for personal expenses and defrauding his political supporters. The second was unemployment fraud, stemming from his illegal acquisition of pandemic funds. And the third is making false statements to the House of Representatives on federal disclosure forms. A fourth scheme involving his face being one you want to punch has yet to make its way out of the court of public opinion. 
   
• These charges are just a drop in the bucket, considering how many allegations have been leveled against Santos. He’s been accused of many crimes ranging from bad to hella-bad. There was the credit-card skimming scheme. He also falsely claimed his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Then there are the dogs. He’s accused of stealing money that had been raised to help treat a veteran’s service dog, as well as bouncing checks to dog breeders.

So what does this mean? We can expect many lawmakers to distance themselves from him but legally there is nothing in the law requiring him to resign, even after the indictment. 

• In other words, good times for his Republican comrades in the House! His fellow New York freshman congressional peers have long called for his resignation, and that won’t change now. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has also demanded his ouster. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) said that “the sooner he leaves, the sooner we can win the seat with someone who isn’t a liar.” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, on the other hand, is waiting for a guilty verdict (and a treat from his owner, Marjorie Taylor Greene) before making any demands. Santos already stepped down from his two committee assignments, so this won’t change anything about his already-terrible congressing.
   
• Santos is no doubt trying to figure out how to stay in his seat. He hasn’t said anything meaningful since his arrest (aside from trying to imitate disgraced former president Donald Trump on Twitter) but he’s not giving one inch. When he stepped down from his committees he said he was doing so “temporarily.” Also, he’s already announced he’s running for reelection. Amazingly, he’s one of the sponsors of the new Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act. He’s cracking down on his own crimes, people.

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Trump isn’t the only ousted world leader looking to get back in the game despite a recent arrest. Former Prime Minister and World Cup-winning cricket captain, Imran Khan has been arrested on 85 charges including corruption, terrorism, and blasphemy. Protests erupted after his arrest and the army was deployed to quell uprisings. Many supporters have been killed so far in the protests and far more have been arrested. There are currently dozens of cases against Khan in Pakistan courts, but this is the first one for which he has been formally charged. For now, the country has closed all of its schools and suspended mobile internet services in much of the country. 

Khan believes the charges are politically motivated. Which is a defense a lot of politicians use and it may be true. Because he is a politician and he was shot in the leg during an assassination attempt last November. He has stated publicly that he believes the person behind the assassination attempt was the current prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif. This accusation could bring him even more legal trouble. Khan is still a hugely popular figure in Pakistan but can no longer run for political office following a ruling by Pakistan’s election committee. He was ousted a year ago on charges of corruption and unconstitutional actions that were held up by the country’s Supreme Court and they aim to keep him out of next year’s election process.

• Sexual abuser and defamer Donald Trump has no grounds to appeal, says the lawyer of the woman he sexually abused and defamed, E Jean Carroll. Trump is fond of delaying court proceedings but this one is expected, like his stubby hands, to move quickly. 
   
• House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (like James Comey with a hard “R”) raised yet more dubious allegations over the millions of dollars he says the Biden family received from foreign entities while he was vice president.
   
• This just in, from the MTV News desk…nothing. Paramount has shuttered the news outlet and also laid off 25 percent of its workforce which is a far higher percentage than other high-profile layoffs recently at Meta, Twitter, and Google.
   
• Impartial jury victim Donald Trump becomes that which he hates tonight as he participates in a CNN town hall on the much-maligned (by him) network. He will take questions from an exclusively Republican audience and will no doubt have to confront his proven sexual abuse. 
   
• Dirty grandpa Robert Deniro just had a new baby. His baby mama is most likely his rumored girlfriend, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen. This makes it seven kids for Deniro, the oldest of which has most likely entered menopause. 
   
• 80 for Brady target-audience member President Biden may start releasing some migrants into the U.S. without future court dates or any way to track them. It seems we finally have an actual crisis at the border. 
   
• Authorities have denied bail for ‘hunger” cult leader Paul McKenzie who is accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves and their children to death. 133 members of his flock have died with many more still missing. 
   
• College football national champs the Georgia Bulldogs have declined an invitation to visit the White House citing a scheduling conflict with university activities. Do they know they will actually get a real meal this time?
   
• The former U.S. Army Sergeant who shot an Air Force veteran during a protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. He’s likely to be pardoned by Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), who already got the paperwork underway.
   
• Get after it, Pete Davidson.

Just as A.I. is confusing the truth in general, paper mills have long been confusing the truth in the scientific community. Paper mills are secretive businesses that allow researchers to pad their publication records by paying for fake papers or undeserved authorship. Neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel believes that up to 34 percent of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24 percent. Last week, publisher Hindawi shut down four of its journals it concluded had been “heavily compromised” by articles from paper mills. The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers is leading an effort to counter this trend by developing new detection tools it calls the Integrity Hub. Reliable signs of a fake are when a paper references retracted papers and those emailed from internet addresses crafted to closely resemble those of legitimate institutions. Another tool is detecting manuscripts that were sent simultaneously to multiple journals, a practice that is considered unethical and widely used by paper mills. 

Catching all these fakes currently requires getting a lot of false positives from the software. The system currently flagged 44 percent of legit papers as fake, which are further confirmed by skilled reviewers. While the technology is improved and better modes of detection are implemented, the hope is that exposing journals that routinely publish content from paper mills will help deter them from publishing them in the future.

A Food and Drug Administration panel voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend that a birth-control pill become available without a prescription. Take that, weirdo Texas judge. 

Answering a question many of us have asked, it turns out you can live in the woods for five days on nothing but wine and lollipops. 

An unhoused man in California abruptly left an Applebee's job interview to save a baby in a runaway stroller. Spoiler alert: He got the job—as well as multiple other job offers from other companies.

A man in China saved a panda bear's life with the Heimlich maneuver after the panda choked on a carrot.