BE NOT PROUD: A third and fourth members of the Proud Boys were sent upriver yesterday for some serious time for their part in the January 6^th insurrection.

   Ethan Nordean, a leader of the Proud Boys, was given 18 years, equaling the sentence given to Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers. Nordean, who once ran a Proud Boys chapter in Seattle, had been granted so-called “war powers” by Enrique Tarrio, the group’s leader during the days leading up to January 6^th.

  Earlier in the day Dominic Pezzola from Rochester, NY was sentenced to 10 years. He led the breach of the Capitol by smashing a window with a police riot shield.  He was convicted of six felonies but acquitted of sedition.

  Pezzola told the judge that he was remorseful and had given up on politics, but before he was removed from the courtroom he raised his fist and shouted, “Trump won!”

MOMMY DEAREST: Utah parenting influencer Ruby Franke, who talked about her strict parenting style on YouTube and other social media outlets, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated child abuse this past week after one of her children climbed out a window and went to a nearby house seeking help. 

  Franke, 41, was arrested in Ivins, a city in southern Utah, at the home of Jodi Hildebrandt, her business partner, who was also arrested on the same charges. Franke hosted the now defunct YouTube channel “8 Passengers” on which she posted videos about her parenting of six children, including sometimes refusing them food as a form of punishment. Her own sisters posted a statement saying her arrest “needed to happen.”

  According to an affidavit, Franke’s 12-year-old son went to a neighbor’s house on Wednesday morning, asking for food and water. He appeared to be malnourished and had duct tape on his ankles and wrists, as well as open wounds.

ECON 101: The job market is cooling. Employers added 187,000 jobs last month and unemployment rose to 3.8 percent. It is, however, more jobs than were added in June and July, but the three month average is 150.

  Mortgage rates are down slightly, but still over seven percent. 

THE WAR ROOM: As Ukrainians troops make slow progress punching through Russian lines and making a house by house fight to re-take small villages, the Russians are reported to be deploying some of the last of their reserve units to strengthen their lines.

  The Ukrainians have evidently deployed a new weapon in their air war. Small cardboard drones are reported to have destroyed at least five Russian fighter jets and may have been used to take out four giant transport planes earlier this week.

THE OBIT PAGE: Jimmy Buffett, the singer songwriter who rocketed to stardom with his island escapism hits “Margaritaville” and “Fins,” developing devoted followers known as Parrot Heads, has died at age 76. His sound was calypso country rock. Despite his enduring popularity, his only song to hit the top 10 on the charts was “Margaritaville.” A sample: “I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home. /But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.” —Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian business tycoon who came into international notoriety when his son Dodi died with Princess Diana in a 1997 Paris car crash, has died at age 94. Al-Fayed had a business empire that stretched from Europe to the Middle East but most of the world had never heard of him until his son died. He had interests in oil, shipping, banking, and real estate, including the Ritz Hotel in Paris and, for 25 years, the Harrods department store in London.

 THE SPIN RACK: Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and six other accused co-conspirators in the Georgia election subversion case pleaded not guilty yesterday and waived their right to a formal arraignment hearing. Giuliani and Donald Trump face the most counts in the Georgia indictment, 13 each. — President Biden is set to tour Florida hurricane damage in the state’s Big Bend region today, but the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants to be president, is not planning to meet him as is customary after a natural disaster. — Actor Kevin Costner has been ordered to pay his estranged wife, Christine Baumgartner, $63,209 a month in child support following a contentious legal fight. They have three kids ages 13 to 16. Baumgartner had asked for $175,000.

BELOW THE FOLD: It’s an old story. Someone buys a painting for a few dollars in a junk store, and it turns out to be worth millions. But it happens. A woman in New Hampshire who wishes to remain anonymous paid $4 because she liked the frame that held an old painting. 

  The painting turned out to be one of four illustrations the famed American artist NC Wyeth did for a 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, a novel about a Scottish-Native American orphan living in Southern California after the Mexican-American War.

  The painting could go for as much as a quarter million dollars at auction.

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