Hi everyone,

Welcome back.  How are you?  Sorry we were out of the office for the past two days.  I had to help Dad Clutter with some stuff.  I don't love throwing BDH and Little Buddha off their routine, but you do what you have to do for family.  Of course, the guys said not to worry about it, because nothing fazes them.

Unfortunately, something new has come up which will throw us off a little bit next week, but we'll talk about that more tomorrow.  In the meantime, let's get caught up with today's headlines.  There's a fresh pot of coffee on the counter, so grab yourself a nice medium DD, because it's time to clear out some Thursday Clutter.

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Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker will return to the stand in Donald Trump's hush money case today to continue explaining how the tabloid served as an extension of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.  Pecker has already told the jury how the Enquirer worked closely with Trump's team to kill embarrassing stories that would have hurt his chances of making it to the White House.  Today's testimony will reportedly get into detail about Pecker's role in the the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which is the basis for the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

David Pecker is making life hard for Donald Trump.  (pic via deadline.com)

While David Pecker continues to embarrass Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court will finally hear the oral arguments about Trump's ludicrous "absolute immunity" claim today.  There's almost no chance Chief Justice Roberts and the rest of the conservative majority on the bench will endorse this argument.  The question is how long it will take them to reject it, and if their decision will create another way for Trump to continue trying to run out the clock.  This court is corrupt to its very core, as evidenced by the fact that Clarence Thomas isn't recusing himself today, despite his wife's involvement with the coup attempt.

Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani were among the 11 individuals indicted in Arizona yesterday for their attempts to overturn the state's legitimate 2020 presidential election results, via a fake elector scheme.  According to the linked article, the charges include, "nine counts, from conspiracy and forgery to engaging in fraudulent schemes."  These people deserve to have the book thrown at them for these felonies.  If attempts to kill democracy in the United States go unpunished, the traitors will consider it a green light to try again.

President Biden signed the recently passed aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan into law yesterday.  Hopefully Ukraine will see the benefits soon, after being held hostage by GOP extremism for months.  The measure also includes the language requiring TikTok to be sold within the next nine months or face being banned in the United States.  That's still a mistake.  Authoritarian governments block media outlets.  We'll see how that plays out before the deadline.

It's not surprising to hear that the Biden administration and The New York Times don't get along.  The newspaper has consistently tried to "both sides" the White House and Donald Trump for years.  We're not saying the Times is supposed to be an outlet for Democratic press releases, but the editors and reporters underplay Trump's existential threat to democracy time and time again.

We're not sure why anyone would be surprised that polls show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential bid is pulling more from Trump voters than Biden's supporters.  Kennedy is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who has sympathy for the January 6 criminals, and he's trying to hide his views on abortion.  That all yells "MAGA."

Look at that - the Arizona House finally repealed the state's pre-Civil War complete abortion ban yesterday, after all of three Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats.  The Senate is expected to also pass the bill, which would restore access to abortions in the state up to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.  There's still work to be done there, but this shows the ongoing impact of this issue with voters.  People don't want the government controlling their bodies.

Donald Trump knows the radical conservative demand for a national abortion ban is going to kill him in November, because it's completely out of line with the majority of the country.  Trump loves to brag about appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.  It is pure red meat for his base.  However, it will come back to haunt him again.

The U.S. teen birth rate fell to a record low in 2022, according to the CDC.  The linked article says the rate has been in steady decline (with a brief exception) since 1991.  It's good to see progress continuing to be made on this issue.

Twitter says it's building a streaming app for smart TV's.  Hard pass on that one.  The social media platform still serves a purpose as a useful news service (as long as we skip the replies), but we're not giving Elon Musk more of our time so we can watch Russian and Nazi propaganda.

The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Guardians 8-0 last night to improve to 14-11 on the year.  Rafael Devers made his return to the lineup count by going 3-5 with two RBI and two runs.  The linked article says Devers is still day-to-day as he deals with a bone bruise.  Here's hoping he can stay healthy, because the Sox need that bat more than ever, especially now that Triston Casas is out for the foreseeable future with a fractured rib. 

Let's also give a shout-out to the Sox starting pitching, which continues to be excellent.  This time it was Cooper Criswell, who threw five innings of shutout baseball while only giving up three hits on Wednesday.  The rotation will continue to be tested, given the news that Brayan Bello is going on the 15-day IL with right lat tightness.  We'll call it a win if the Sox can keep things around the .500 mark until this insane injury bug finally moves on to another team.

Next up:  Chase Anderson will take the mound against the Guardians for the series finale this afternoon.

The NFL Draft finally starts tonight, so we can stop all of the speculation and find out if the New England Patriots will select quarterback Drake Maye with the #3 pick or go in a different direction.  As we've said before, if the team likes Maye, or one of the other available QB options at that spot, we hope they fill that vacancy first and then go from there.  One way or another, we'll call it a win as long as they walk out of this whole thing with a quarterback, left tackle, and wide receiver.

It's good to see that Reggie Bush's 2005 Heisman Trophy was reinstated yesterday.  The former running back surrendered it in 2010 after it was revealed he had received support from USC supporters which was not allowed at the time.  However, given that athletes are now able to make money from their names, images, and likenesses, it makes no sense for Bush to be disqualified for doing the same thing.  Many people and institutions are making fortunes off college sports.  The actual athletes should be able to do it as well.

ICYMI - the first trailer is out for Deadpool & Wolverine, and we can't wait to see the movie, which arrives at theaters on July 26:

There's also a trailer for an upcoming movie called Blink Twice starring Channing Tatum and directed by Zoë Kravitz.  We're not generally a horror movie group, but this looks like it might be interesting.  The film hits theaters on August 23, but let us know when it arrives on Amazon Prime Video, so we can watch it with the lights on:

The spy movie Argylle is apparently doing better on streaming, after it bombed at the box office.  Unfortunately for us, it's playing on Apple TV+, so it doesn't appear we'll be watching it anytime soon.  (On a semi-related note:  Our crew is still enjoying all of the shows we can now watch on Hulu.  We should have signed up for that subscription much earlier.)

Ben Stiller recently discussed how much it threw him when Zoolander 2 bombed at the box office in 2016.  It sounds like the failure probably ended up being a positive outcome in the long run for the actor.  It's good to have your assumptions challenged every now and again.

There's a documentary about Jim Henson, directed by Ron Howard, coming to Disney+ on May 31?  BDH and Little Buddha say "Yes, please."  Check out the trailer:

A Sandman spin-off called Dead Boys Detective Agency debuts on Netflix today.  We won't give away too much of the premise here (you can click on the linked article for that), but we'll probably save this one for a quiet night when nothing else is on TV.  Our crew loved the Sandman comics, and enjoyed the Netflix series, but this show sounds a bit like Supernatural.  We'll probably give it a shot for at least one episode at some point.

This is interesting - FBI:  International star Luke Kleintank announced he's leaving the show after three years, and it turns out he won't even last this entire season.  Kleintank's final appearance is on May 7, and then apparently Chicago Med alum Colin O'Donnell will take his place for the final two episodes.  (Gotta keep the lead role in the Dick Wolf family, it seems.)  We were just starting to bail on FBI:  International, because we could never quite figure out if we enjoyed the show.  However, we really like O'Donnell, so maybe we'll need to revisit this next month.

Also, is someone leaving FBI, or is this just a setup for the season finale?  Hopefully it's the latter, because we like this character.

Drew Carey had some feelings about his first Phish show.  Maybe someone should do a quick check on the Price is Right host to make sure everything is okay.

Oh wait, now that we have Hulu, we can check out the Bon Jovi documentary which comes out tomorrow.  That should be fun.

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour will release a new solo album on September 6.  Luck and Strange will be his first individual release in nine years.  The first track will reportedly come out later today, so we'll see if we can grab that tomorrow.

Okay kids, that's going to do it for now.  We just learned that a new Johnny Cash album entitled, Songwriter is coming out on June 28.  It features 11 previously unreleased songs that the "Man in Black" recorded in 1993.  Let's close things out with one of those new tunes, called, "Well Alright" for today's, "Song of the Day."

That's got to be a sign that the rest of this week will go well.

Thanks for stopping by, folks.  It was great to see you, as always.  Enjoy the rest of your day, be good, and we'll catch up with you again soon.  Until next time, that's today's Clearing out the Clutter, and we are outta here.