The Justice Department announced on Friday that Nicholas Ochs, the founder of the Hawaii Proud Boys chapter, was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Nicholas DeCarlo, who was photographed at the Capitol with Ochs, was also sentenced to four years. Both men had previously pled guilty.

Members of Proud Boys, a far-right nationalist group comprised of self-described “Western chauvinists,” have helped promote the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. In recent months, Proud Boys members from across the country have been sentenced to prison time for their actions during the January 6 insurrection, including one who received a four year and seven month sentence after joining a mob going after Capitol police and coming within seconds of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In October, a North Carolina leader of the group pled guilty to seditious conspiracy related to his actions on January 6. A New Jersey leader pled guilty to “interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder” the same month.

Before entering the Capitol on January 6, Ochs and DeCarlo threw smoke bombs at police outside, according to the Justice Department. They were then photographed in front of a door inside the Capitol on which DeCarlo had written “Murder the Media,” the name of their social media channel on Telegram. DeCarlo also took plastic handcuffs from a Capitol Police duffel bag.

After leaving the building, Ochs apologized to his audience for not livestreaming the ordeal. “[S]orry we couldn’t go live when we stormed the f—-in’ U.S. Capitol and made Congress flee,” he said.

In a court filing, Ochs’ attorney Edward B. MacMahon said his client “recognizes the gravity of his involvement in the events at the Capitol on January 6.” He described his client as someone who grew up in a “warm and supportive family” before serving in the Marines, getting married, and becoming a father. MacMahon asked for a prison sentence of less than 18 months. 

Wow, what an incredible World Cup so far, with Spain, Brazil, Germany and now Portugal despatched, leaving England with a possibly (!) easy route to the final, if there is such a thing as easy!

Anyway, today is the big day for England fans as they now have to try and get past France to get that coveted place in the semifinal but it definitley won’t be easy against a France team with possibly the best young player in the world right now.

Watch Saka and Mbappe facing each other down the wing, and we will see who comes out on top shall we?

The biggest regret is that we will have William Saliba in the wway of Saka as he goes flying up the wing, I would prefer him stopping Mbappe instead!

I have to admit that I can’t wait. Every other quarter final has been enthralling so I can’t imagine how exciting this one is going to be.

Kari Lake is still trying to win the election she lost. Her latest move is a conspiratorial 70-page lawsuit filed in Arizona on Friday in which the former local news anchor asks that she be declared the victor of last month’s gubernatorial election because of unsupported allegations of voter fraud.

Lake’s lawsuit in state court argues that Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who defeated Lake in November, and election officials in Maricopa County have “shattered” trust in the state’s elections. The results have already been certified by Hobbs, the state’s top elections official. There is no evidence the election was stolen. 

Nevertheless, Lake’s lawsuit demands an “order setting aside the certified result of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and declaring that Kari Lake is the winner of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.” If the court won’t grant her the victory automatically, Lake asks instead that it forces Maricopa County to “re-conduct the gubernatorial election” under the “direction of a special master.” 

The court is not expected to go along with either demand. Hobbs’ campaign manager called the case a “nuisance lawsuit” from someone who “needs attention like a fish needs water.

A statement from our campaign manager on Kari Lake’s latest desperate attempt to undermine our democracy and throw out the will of the voters.

While Arsenal fans were trying to digest the devastating news that Gabriel Jesus will miss the next two or three months after an operation on his knee, we found out in Arsenal’s Dubai Cup game against Lyon that Oleks Zinchenko was not even in the squad for the Dubai Super Cup match, prompting worries that he was back on the treatment table again, which is becoming to be a very regular thing for the Ukranian.

Oleksandr Zinchenko not in today’s squad against Lyon is absolutely concerning for Arsenal. Already without Gabriel Jesus and potentially Benjamin White, Mikel Arteta could be missing several key players when the season restarts against West Ham on Boxing Day. #afc pic.twitter.com/bqY4ATNC2T

— Logan Caswell (@Loggy_caswell) December 8, 2022

Obviously we have reasons to worry about which players will be available for Arsenal’s game against West Ham on Boxing Day, but we now know that Gabriel Martnelli is on his way to join Mikel’s squad for training in Dubai, but Bukayo Saka is still in with a chance of going all the way to the World Cup Final and missing the game, and no-one knows what is really going on with Ben White at the moment.

But this afternoon it has been revealed that Zinchenko is still on track to face West Ham….

We have had a lot of opinions about Eddie Nketiah since Arsenal fans first heard about the devastating injury to Gabriel Jesus, and the consensus tells us that he is simply not good enough to start every game for the Gunners.

So I decided to do a little fact checking on his Arsenal statistics. So he started playing for the youth sides at 16 years old, and scored 24 goals in his first two seasons at the Academy.

His full record in the PL2 side (our reserves) he has started 28 times and scored 27 goals.

At 18 years old he made his seniour debut for Arsenal as a sub in the League Cup against Norwich. He scored twice to help us come back to win the game.

In that competition last season (2021/22), Eddie made 5 appearances and scored 5 goals. in fact he has scored 9 goals in 10 games in the League Cup in his career.

The Arsenal striker Bukayo Saka exploded into view at the World Cup with two super goals in England’s opening game against Iran.
He followed that up with the third England goal against Wales.

This has put him in the running for the Golden Boot, although to do that he would have to stop Mbappe from adding to his numbers today and put his France team out of the competition.

The fact is that before the competition even started there were many pundits saying that Phil Foden should be ahead of him in the starting line-up, but Southgate kept his faith in Saka and has been amply rewarded for his faith.

Saka believes that it is Southgate that has instilled the confidence in him to go out and perform. “When I have the trust of the manager to pick me in the starting team, despite all the attacking quality that we have, it gives me huge confidence.

Listen to him talking in this video….

Arsenal & England Women star Leah Williamson video interview with Rachel Yankey by Michelle

25 year old Leah notched up her 200th club appearance for Arsenal on Saturday, when our Gunners beat Everton 1-0 at Meadow Park. Leah signed for Arsenal at the tender age of just 9, back in 2006, having progressed through Arsenal’s Centre of Excellence.  She really is an Arsenal thoroughbred, through and through!

This video is a wonderful chance to look back through old photo’s of Leah with funny videos when she was a youngster – well, she still is at 25 lol!  It’s a brilliant chance to look at Leah’s career and she chats very openly with Arsenal and England legend Rachel Yankey.

Leah reminisces about her development as a player and a lifetime as a Gooner.  From her first tour with Arsenal’s under-10s to her senior debut and Women’s Super League wins, Leah’s seen it all in the red and white of Arsenal.

Eidevall talked about Leah’s return to the squad, after injury, in his Aston Villa Presser saying:

WILL EDU AND ARTETA LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES?

By  Ibiniyi Victor

The hugely productive and cohesive relationship between the Arsenal bosses Mikel Arteta and Edu Gasper has been fundamental to the progress recorded thus far by the club, both on and off the football pitch.

The management also deserve credit – firstly, for recruiting the now flourishing duo and secondly, for reassuring the gaffer of their faith and trust in him by offering him a new contract right in the middle of a losing run last season. I believe many will agree with me that this was an anomaly given the level of cruelty these football managers suffer when things start going wrong. There is no better way to show faith in a manager than this, and as a result, the manager has been able to focus even more on growing his team without bothering himself about the security of his job.

And yes, the work done thus far has been impressive but definitely not without some blips and mistakes along the line. Actions, either good or bad, have consequences and while some management/managers’ actions have resulted in the success or failure of their teams, it is not entirely difficult to admit that the failure to sign adequate cover during the last winter transfer window somehow cost the club a champions league spot at the end of the last campaign.

Dotun and Andy are joined by Nicky Bandini to look over a pair of cracking quarter-finals, as Croatia's gnarly persistence got the better of Neymar n co - the favourites are out! 

Elsewhere last night, Louis van Gaal bows out with typical good grace after their loss via judges' decision to Lionel Messi’s security team. We also look ahead to Morocco vs Portugal and pay our respects to the legendary Grant Wahl.

Pete’s Film Club is back! Sign up for weekly episodes throughout the World Cup and much more here: patreon.com/footballramble.

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Arsenal are back in action in the Women’s Super League action on Sunday 11th December, when head to Villa Park to take on 5th place Aston Villa.  Kick-off is at 16:15 UK.  Arsenal’s Away Allocation of tickets have already sold out but you can watch the match live on Sky Sports.

Ahead of this weekend’s match, Jonas Eidevall spoke to the media. Here’s what he said on Aston Villa in his Arsenal pre-match press conference:

Eidevall confirmed that there was no new team news after the recent return of Leah Williamson and Rafaelle Souza and no likely return of Kim Little and Lina Hurtig for the Villa game.

Eidevall noted his frustration at Arsenal’s performance in the last two games, where our Gunners won both games but only with the narrowest of margins at 1-0 against both Everton and Juventus, saying  I think going forward we need to do that better. Now we sit here with two 1-0 victories, and we’re all happy about that, but in both of these games, in the final minutes, both [opposition] teams have had free-kicks on the side that they haven’t been successful with. But we all know that the more times you let that happen, they will also be successful with that.

Rachel Daly is recognised as one of Villa’s star players and currently joint top goalscorer in the WSL this season.  Eidevall talks about Rachel and the Villa threat saying She’s been tremendous. Coming back, it felt like she was scoring everything for a time. Villa are a good team – they have a lot of different threats. Rachel Daly has been phenomenal so far this season, but it’s not only her. Unfortunately it’s not that easy to only [focus] on her. We need to focus on Villa as a whole team in order to deal with them and get the result we want.

On the evening of October 24, 2020, a guy who goes by the name Wenyang tweeted a picture of Hunter Biden. Hunter was facing a mirror in what looked like a hotel room, with his penis exposed.

Within an hour, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign asked Twitter to take down the post. We know this because journalist Matt Taibbi—using documents that Twitter owner Elon Musk provided to him—has been tweeting out internal communications between Twitter executives who, at the time, were discussing how to deal with material from Hunter’s laptop. Wenyang’s tweet is the third of five listed in a screenshot of an email from one Twitter staffer to another. “More to review from the the Biden team,” the email said. “Handled these,” a Twitter employee responded a few hours later.

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

Taibbi did not explain what those five deleted tweets contained. But using the Internet Archive, you can see that three of them featured explicit images of Hunter Biden. One doesn’t work. Another is a video, which won’t play now, but probably showed sexual activity. All of those I was able to access violated Twitter’s rules.

Our newest Hale End superstar Bukayo Saka gave a very frank interview last week, where Arsenal’s young striker admitted that his biggest regret was never getting to meet Arsene Wenger, our legendary manager.

Well this week they are both in Qatar, and in an interview with L’Equipe Wenger was flattered by Saka saying that, and replied: “That’s very nice of him. We’ll end up meeting each other one day, of course,” he said.

“I’m happy about his development and the fact he’s still playing at Arsenal. I was told about him when I was still at the club, he was one of two or three guys who were coming through. I heard some very good things about him, I’m told he has a very good mentality.

“That’s reassuring because these days, players are glorified so quickly that it’s important for them to have good foundations.”

Of course, as FIFA’s Director of Development, Arsène Wenger will be helping at the Al-Bayt Stadium this evening as Bukayo Saka’s England take on the holders France in the Quarter Final of the World Cup, and despite Gareth Southgate having Saka and Ramsdale in the squad, Le Prof still believes that France are the better side, and has even predicted them to win the trophy.

Workers at an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant in Ohio voted Friday to join the United Automobile Workers union, a milestone in the auto industry’s transition from producing gas to electric cars.

The vote at Ultium Cells—a joint venture between General Motors and a South Korean battery manufacturer—was 710 to 16, according to the union. The National Labor Relations Board is expected to certify the vote.

Labor experts told the Detroit Free Press that the election results were unsurprising given the location of the Ultium factory and the strong pro-union strain among GM workers. Still, it’s a major win in a larger battle: making sure that as workers transition to green jobs, they keep labor protections. (Tesla, the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the US, is also the only large US auto-maker that’s not unionized.)

Electric vehicle manufacturing workers tend to be paid lower than their counterparts at other auto factories, the New York Times reports, and, without government subsidies, the transition to electric vehicles could cut auto industry jobs. While President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act does offer tax credits for electric vehicles produced entirely in the United States, it does not specifically incentivize the creation of union jobs in electric vehicle manufacturing.

“As the auto industry transitions to electric vehicles, new workers entering the auto sector at plants like Ultium are thinking about their value and worth,” UAW president Ray Curry said in a statement. “This vote shows that they want to be a part of maintaining the high standards and wages that UAW members have built in the auto industry.”

Kyrsten Sinema is back where she started. On Friday, the Arizona senator announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party, but would keep her committee appointments and not caucus with the Republicans. Twenty years after Sinema lost a race for state legislature as an independent, she is once again a party of one.

On a day to day basis, Sinema’s switch doesn’t necessarily change much. Democrats will still control the chamber, they’ll still need 60 votes to pass most legislation, and they’ll still be counting on one from the junior senator from Arizona. She will no longer be attending caucus lunches, but that’s really an issue for the catering staff. No one paying attention to Democratic politics or Capitol Hill would have characterized Sinema as a party loyalist over the last few years—or even the last decade, really—and she has gone out of her way to distance herself from the state and national Democratic parties time and again. In one sense, her announcement makes official a dynamic that has for a long time been frustratingly apparent to her critics.

The switch does change one big thing, though. Although she did not address this aspect of her future in an op-ed this morning in the Arizona Republic, nor in interviews with Politico and CNN, Sinema’s move upends what was already expected to be one of the 2024 cycle’s most competitive and expensive Senate races. Her popularity among Arizona Democrats has fallen through the floor over the last two years, due to Sinema’s opposition to changing Senate rules to push through key party priorities, like expanding voting access and preserving abortion rights. She was censured by the state party in January over her vote to preserve the filibuster. Activists have protested outside her office and even confronted her in a bathroom at Arizona State University. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego was reportedly gearing up for a primary challenge. His colleague, Rep. Greg Stanton, the former mayor of Phoenix, tweeted an internal poll that showed him beating Sinema in a primary 58 to 17.

In a statement on Friday, Arizona Democratic Party chair Raquel Terán acknowledged Sinema’s work on “several historic pieces of legislation” but accused her of falling “dramatically short” when it came to protecting voting rights and curbing corporate power:

As a party, we welcome Independent voters and their perspectives. Senator Sinema may now be registered as an Independent, but she has shown she answers to corporations and billionaires, not Arizonans. Senator Sinema’s party registration means nothing if she continues to not listen to her constituents.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent. Politico has the scoop, which you can decide is either unsurprising or something of a bombshell. The news comes shortly after two key moments for Democrats. This week, Sen. Raphael Warnock won re-election in Georgia, securing the party with a theoretically more powerful advantage in the upper chamber, and Sen. Chuck Schumer was chosen again as majority leader.

Speaking to Politico, Sinema attempted to downplay the “timing” of her announcement, claiming it was rooted in some recent soul-searching of how she could best champion her core values. 

“Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she added.

While it’s easy to scoff at Sinema’s reassurances here, in some ways,  they’re less mealy-mouthed than they seem. Because regardless of how you feel about her absolute refusal to end the filibuster (and in doing so, torpedo Democrats’ efforts to protect voting rights); her donations from venture capitalists while killing tax hikes for the Wall Street set; or even that heinous thumbs down, Sinema’s claim that her behavior will not change once she leaves the party would have to mean that she was working in lockstep with Democrats to begin with. Not really her thing.

As my colleague Tim Murphy wrote in his excellent profile of the Arizona senator, Sinema’s political career has been one giant metamorphosis. She’s gone from the Green Party roots to unlikely Dem powerbroker. She once claimed donations were a form of “bribery;” now she enjoys friendships with the private equity crowd.

Marcus and Luke are here for a special England vs France preview ahead of tomorrow! They discuss how Kyle Walker and co could contain Kylian Mbappé, why Gareth Southgate absolutely has to lift the handbrake, and the less than ideal presence of Robbie Williams in the England camp.

Plus, our favourite correspondence ahead of the game! Listen in for all you need to know ahead of the big one tomorrow night.

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The day after Donald Trump, a former president and the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called for the “termination” of provisions of the US Constitution governing elections and essentially demanded that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post ran a front-page story reporting Trump’s call for ripping up portions of the nation’s founding document. No mention of this even appeared in the Times that day. Trump’s unprecedented and dangerous statement was not deemed a big deal. This raised a question: Have major media players still not figured out how to cover Trump’s extremism?

In recent weeks, Trump has dined with a Hitler fanboy and an antisemitic rapper, embraced the bonkers QAnon conspiracy theory (the world is run by an evil cabal of Democrats and elites who are baby-eating pedophiles and sex-traffickers!), and vowed he would, if returned to the White House, pardon the January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted the US Capitol. All of these developments have been reported on by the top news organizations. Yet the coverage does not seem to capture fully the danger posed by a wannabe-tyrant validating forces of hatred and irrationality. He won the GOP nomination and presidency once; he could do so again.

The first story each paper published on Trump’s “termination” comment focused on the reaction to Trump’s outlandish remark. The Times cooked up an odd formulation, telling readers that Trump’s “extraordinary antidemocratic statement…drew a degree of bipartisan condemnation over the weekend, with a flood from Democrats and a trickle from Republicans.” The only GOP “condemnation” cited in the piece came from a newly elected GOP House member who said, “Well, obviously I don’t support that.” This hardly amounted to even a trickle of Republican denouncement. More significant was that most Republicans had said nothing. And this was a rather conventional approach to a rather unconventional event, emphasizing the political angle not the remark itself and its implications.

The Washington Post’s initial coverage similarly was a report on the White House blasting Trump for this statement. It was headlined, “White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election.” (Perhaps it’s a quibble, but “termination” seems to go even beyond “suspend.”) Politico did the same. (“White House to Trump: ‘You cannot only love America when you win.’”) Axios also zeroed in on the reaction. (“Lawmakers condemn Trump’s call to suspend Constitution.”)

There was nothing wrong with these articles. But they followed the same-old/same-old formula: Trump does outrageous thing X; friends and foes say Y. Rinse. Repeat. The issue was not whether Republicans would find a way to distance themselves from this remark but whether they would disavow Trump for suggesting the Constitution be terminated. The party’s allegiance to a fellow who had just espoused a dictatorial sentiment was a key element of this story.

It’s the business end of the World Cup, people! Marcus, Jim and David look ahead to two crunch quarter finals today.

Louis van Gaal has been dishing out more kisses as his squad gear themselves up for Argentina and Lionel Messi – who may or may not soon be banned from Mexico – while Brazil have more dance routines (and stray cats) ready for Croatia! Will it be two upsets or a titanic South American semi-final match-up? Listen in to find out what we think!

The Campaign Against Living Miserably - CALM - have teamed up with Declan Rice to show that no one deserves to struggle on their own. They’ve launched a new film that shows that you don’t have to be alone to feel alone. We’re here to let you know that, however you feel right now, you’re never alone and CALM are always on your side.

Visit thecalmzone.net to find out more about it.

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On Thursday, the Reverend Robert Schenck testified before Congress about the anti-abortion influence campaign he ran targeting the Supreme Court, recounting the bombshell revelations that have clouded the highest court in scandal first reported in November by the New York Times. While speaking to the lawmakers, Schenck shared a new detail: that at least one justice knew about his efforts—and approved of them. 

“Justice Thomas commended me,” Schenck recalled of one interaction, “saying something like: ‘Keep up what you’re doing. It’s making a difference.'”

For two decades, Schenck ran a secret operation designed to embolden conservative Supreme Court justices in their resolve to overturn Roe v. Wade. When he began in the late 1990s, Schenck believed that the conservative justices felt alone and disfavored in the media and needed “shoring up.” So he got an office across the street from the court, bought access to the justices by joining the court’s nonprofit Supreme Court Historical Society, and recruited wealthy donors, whom he called “missionaries,” to befriend the conservative justices. “We wanted to create a circle of people around them that would encourage them, applaud them, literally thank God for them and assure them of prayerful support,” he explained Thursday, “and by being present, indicate to them that there were many, many people—Americans—who were behind them and hoped that they would render strong, unapologetic, opinions that would support the positions important to us.” One couple recruited by Schenck to do this work successfully became friends with Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia and their wives, even vacationing with them at their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Schenck’s revelations have further punctured the illusion that the justices are above the political fray, deciding cases only according to their view of the law. The trips, meals, and friendships Schenck helped orchestrate show how the lack of ethics rules at the court makes the justices vulnerable to pressure campaigns that could sway their rulings. Schenck told the Times that he instructed his “missionaries” not to mention him or his group, Faith and Action, to keep his affiliation hidden. But the allegation that Justice Thomas knew what Schenck was doing raises new possibilities: not only were justices subjected to stealth lobbying by wealthy friends, at least one of them may have approved of the operation.

Toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) asked a clarifying follow-up about Thomas’ alleged comments. He wanted to know what Thomas meant when he said them.

In a vote Thursday morning, the House passed a bill that would enshrine same-sex and interracial marriage in federal law. All Democrats voted for the bill, as did 39 Republicans. Democrats pushed the legislation after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned the constitutionality of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision granting the right to same-sex marriage, in his concurring opinion in the decision striking down Roe v. Wade.

The bill, called the Respect for Marriage Act, already passed in the Senate, and it now heads to the desk of President Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.

Biden has come a long way since voting for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, in 1996. In 2012, as vice president, Biden became the first Obama administration official to endorse same-sex marriage.

A different version of the bill passed in the House in July, before the midterms. Since then, seven Republicans switched their votes from “yes” to “no,” while two—Reps. Mike Gallagher (Wisc.) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.)—flipped in the opposite direction.

NOW: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the honor of presiding over the debate on the Respect for Marriage Act.