Cockburn

John McCain's foul-mouthed blonde scion is leaving ABC's housewife daytime program, The View. The show's token conservative firebrand, Meghan McCain, announced Thursday she would depart as a co-host at the end of the season. Cable junkies will remember McCain for her combative commentary and entertaining rows with her post-menopause colleagues. 'I'm just going to rip the bandaid off,' McCain declared. 'I am here to tell all of you, my wonderful cohorts and viewers at home: this is going to be my last season here at The View.' After four years of service, McCain revealed it was not easy to leave the show and exchanged bland girl-power pleasantries with her coworkers.

Who shot Ashli Babbitt, the pro-Trump Air Force veteran who was killed by police during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol building? The American people were told that it was a Capitol Police officer who fired the fatal shot. But Cockburn has stumbled across some information that points to a different explanation. Sources close to and within the intelligence community tell Cockburn that Babbitt was actually shot by a member of then-vice president Mike Pence's protective detail. The VP's detail, of course, is provided by US Secret Service, not the Capitol Police. One person asserted to Cockburn over drinks in DC that this is 'basically an open secret' in the intelligence community.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to over 22 years in prison by Judge Peter Cahill on Friday for the murder of George Floyd. Prosecutors had asked the imposing punishment be closer to 30 years. State guidelines recommend a 12-and-a-half-year sentence for a first-time offender. Cahill went beyond the guidelines, citing Chauvin’s ‘abuse of a position of trust and authority and also the particular cruelty’ to Floyd. A 22-year sentence tends to be associated with more grizzly offenders. Last year, 17-year-old Jered Ohsman was sentenced as an adult by a Hennepin County District Court — the same court that sentenced Chauvin — for killing 39-year-old Steven Markey during a botched robbery.

President Joe Biden will honor Pride Month this Friday — just before meeting with the leader of a country where the maximum penalty for sodomy is death. Biden 'will deliver remarks to commemorate LGBTQ+ Pride Month,' the White House announced this week. And later, 'the President will welcome Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani and Afghanistan High Commission for National Reconciliation chair Abdullah Abdullah to the White House to highlight the enduring partnership between the United States and Afghanistan as the military drawdown continues’. Staffers will undoubtedly rush to box up the rainbow neck beads and Pride flags when Biden steps off stage to avoid an awkward bump in the hall when Ghani rolls up to the West Wing.

Surely they can’t keep getting away with it. Oh, who is Cockburn kidding? Of course they can. Tuesday was a glorious day for karmic Houdini acts. Over at the New York Post, yet another story of Hunter Biden’s escapades landed with a graceless thud. Throughout Miranda Devine’s 1,300-word piece, one can sense her desperate desire to overwhelm with enough salacious details for the public to care. The First Son hired a Russian prostitute for an $8,000 weekend sex romp! He smoked crack! They made a porno! He balanced a line of M&Ms on his phallus! And Joe Biden, the current President of the United States, might have paid for it all! No, really! A literal ex-Secret Service agent texted Hunter about issues with 'Celtic’’s account. Celtic was Biden’s codename.

Score one for unexpected nominative determinism! All this time, people figured Sheldon Whitehouse’s name must foretell a quixotic attempt at the presidency. Instead, it turns out he just likes sitting in a giant house full of white people. Last Friday, as part of the nation’s Juneteenth ebullience (at least eight dead so far!), some enterprising reporter decided to ask the Rhode Island senator about his membership in the Spouting Rock Beach Association, better known as the Bailey’s Beach club. Whitehouse was asked if the club was still all-white — and if he was still a member. Whitehouse was apparently unprepared for the question, which is fairly inexcusable for a politician who has spent a year seeing others consumed by America’s racial 'reckoning’.

Oh joy! A fake scientist under indictment for hacking wants to oust alleged snow-sniffer and congressman Matt Gaetz, who is under investigation for soliciting sex from an underage girl. Could matters get any more Florida than this? In an Instagram post worthy of any up-and-coming representative, Rebekah Jones declared her intention to challenge Gaetz for Florida's first congressional district. 'I had hoped that someone in the Republican party would step up and primary him, and I've yet to see that happen,' Jones, who is a resident of Maryland, said in her Instagram post. 'And so, if it takes me going home to Florida to run against Matt Gaetz, then I will do it. If it means getting one child sex trafficker out of office, you're damn right I'll do it.

Did anyone else catch the sordid humiliation porn screened on CNN Thursday? The nine-minute clip featured a MILF-cum-dominatrix who works under the name Alisyn Camerota and a promising new adult star called Jeffrey Toobin (onlyfans.com/jeffreytoobin). It was Toobin's first appearance on the AVN-award-winning network since his eight-month stint in a dungeon. The little-pig-boy, 61, was locked up after one of his cam-shows went awry at his other employer, a top-shelf skin mag called the New Yorker. 'It's been a while,' Camerota begins. 'It has been a while indeed,' Toobin replies with a wry smile. Camerota then 'recaps' where Toobin has been for the last few months, as the two giggle to themselves. https://twitter.com/alisyncamerota/status/1403071356925775872?

Defund the police! The clarion cry of protesters and middle-class warriors everywhere never fails to stir Cockburn’s passions. Slashing police budgets, cutting resources and further increasing crime rates is the most logical step to improving our societies and neighborhoods. Isn’t it? But it transpires that calling for the police to be fleeced of their budgets comes easier if you are Maya Wiley, Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, who lives in a $2.7 million brownstone in a Brooklyn precinct where the crime rate has plummeted in the past year. And Wiley’s partner Harlan Mandel, CEO of the non-profit Media Development Investment Fund, has been paying for a guard to patrol their tiny neighborhood.