Category: Uncategorized

Congress speedily passed a short-term continuing resolution that won’t do much but pull the nation back from the financial cliff for another week, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for signature, the Washington Post reports.

The CR passed the House by a 320-99 margin, with a bipartisan coalition overcoming far-right GOP objections, while the bill passed the Senate by a 77-13 margin a few hours later.  Under the CR, the March 1st funding deadline for several agencies (including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development as well as the Environmental Protection Agency) gets extended a week to March 8th.  A separate deadline for funding the rest of the government goes fro March 8th to March 22nd.

These continuing resolutions and Republicans’ inability to govern are two reasons the US credit rating was downgraded by agencies like Fitch and Moody’s.  As Moody’s put it last November:  “Continued political polarization within US Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability.”  In other words, Republicans, your performance art and incompetence are costing us money.

Republican Missouri gubernatorial candidate Darrell Leon McClanahan III’s lawsuit against the ADL and its head, Jonathan Greenblatt, says he’s a “pro-White man, horseman, politician, political prisoner-activist who is dedicated to traditional Christian values,” and saying he was anything more than an “honorary” member of the Ku Klux Klan is defamatory, the Riverfront Times reports.

The Maryland State House in Annapolis was put on lockdown Thursday evening and staff and guests were told to shelter in place after state capitol police received a call from someone saying they were armed and approaching the building, the Baltimore Banner reports.  A Banner reporter in the building during the lockdown was told there were reports of gunmen in the state house.  As of 6:15 p.m. ET, no intruder or gun had been found at the scene.  Staff were being evacuated by law enforcement officers as they search the building.  Should no intruder be found, this would be the latest in a series of swatting incidents hitting public officials and buildings.

UPDATE 7:08 p.m. ET:  The Maryland state house has been opened after it was cleared by local law enforcement.

Faced with unaffordable insurance rates, bigoted education policy, a science-denying state surgeon general, statewide homophobia, and Ron DeSantis, Floridians are anxious to ditch their property and move out of state, data from the real estate website Zillow shows.

According to Newsweek, nearly 5,000 listings of homes for sale in Florida show that the sellers are “motivated” to unload their houses, meaning they were willing to entertain offers lower than their stated asking price.  By comparison, in California (which has twice as many residents), just 1,069 characterized themselves as “motivated” as of Wednesday; in New York, that number dropped to 424.  Florida also had three times as many homes for sale according to data than California.

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer and pals on Thursday released the transcript of the Wednesday interview with Hunter Biden, in which he told investigators that floating cutting Joe Biden in on one of the deals was actually the idea of former partner Tony Bobulinski.

The Alabama state house and senate pushed through legislation that protects medical professionals and patients seeking in vitro fertilization in response to the state’s supreme court criminalizing the disposal of unused embryos, Politico reports.

Responding to the outrage brought by the far-right court justices’ ruling two weeks ago that fertilized embryos are constitutionally protected citizens, the elected representatives sought to ensconce in law protections for individuals and clinics who provide IVF treatments, where eggs are fertilized outside the womb and frequently unused embryos are aborted if implanted or destroyed if stored.

The Alabama court ruling forced at least three of the state’s fertility clinics to suspend IVF treatment, and scores of women reportedly attempted to ship their frozen embryos out of state to continue treatment without the risk of being charged with manslaughter after they got pregnant.

Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting more than 100 pages of classified and confidential documents on a Discord server channel for gamers in 2022 and 2023, will reportedly plead guilty before a federal judge next week, CNN reports.  Prosecutors filed a change of plea notice with the court on Thursday, but did not specify what charged Teixeria will plead guilty to.  He had been charged with illegally possessing classified documents and one count of violating the Espionage Act.

Manuel Rocha, a former US ambassador to Bolivia for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told a judge he will plead guilty on Thursday to working as an unregistered agent for the Cuban government for four decades, the Washington Post reports.  A State Department employee since 1981, Rocha was charged in December with working for the Cuban government.

The Justice Department asserts Rocha was a Cuban agent when he was hired by the State Department during the Reagan Administration and slowly rose though the ranks until he was named ambassador to Colombia, his native country.  Prosecutors says over that 40 year period, Rocha provided intelligence to his Cuban handlers, including visiting Havana on at least one occasion, in 2017.

Rocha was arrested after repeatedly meeting with an undercover FBI agent in 2022 and 2023, who told Rocha he was Rocha’s new contact for Cuba.  In numerous conversations with the agent, Rocha referred to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante” and called Cuban intelligence agents “Compañeros,” or comrades.

Fat former President Trump has been commanding his loyalists in the Senate GOP to support NRSC Chair Steve Daines as successor to Moscow Mitch McConnell next Congress, sources tell Axios.

First up sometime after 2 PM EST on Thursday is fat former President Trump, whose campaign wrote in a statement “Today, President Trump will visit the crime scene at Biden’s open border, where Joe Biden’s failure has resulted in more than 9 million illegal immigrants, 27 tons of deadly fentanyl, and dangerous criminals crossing the border since he took office. President Trump will meet with brave US Border Patrol agents and state and local law enforcement officials working on the frontlines of Biden’s crisis, and he will outline his plan to put America first and secure the border immediately upon taking office,” heralding this lame campaign stunt.

“Almost one month after the jury returned its verdict in this case, Defendant Donald J Trump filed yet another motion for a stay – this time, to stay enforcement of the judgment without a bond or any other security that would ensure that Plaintiff E Jean Carroll’s will be able to collect the $83.3 million that Trump now owes her. The reasoning Trump offers in seeking this extraordinary relief boils down to nothing more than ‘trust me.’ He doesn’t offer any information about his finances or the nature and location of his assets. He doesn’t specify what percentage of his assets are liquid or explain how Carroll might go about collecting. He doesn’t even acknowledge the risks that now accompany his financial situation, from a half billion-dollar judgment obtained by the New York Attorney General to the 91 felony charges that might end his career as a businessman permanently. He simply asks the Court to ‘trust me’ and offers, in a case with an $83.3 million judgment against him, the court filing equivalent of a paper napkin; signed by the least trustworthy of borrowers,” writes EJ Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan in her motion opposing fat Donald’s bid for a stay of the judgment.

A 50 year-old San Antonio man was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon Wednesday after shooting a landscaper multiple times for blowing leaves too close the man’s truck at an apartment complex on the city’s west side, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

Suspect Charles Martin had gotten into an argument with the landscaping crew over the direction of the leaf blowing and then went to complained at the complex’s front office. Per KENS5 this “was not handled to the suspect’s satisfaction,” leading to the shooting and the 35 year-old victim ending up hospitalized in critical condition. Martin was taken in without further incident.

Not having the victim’s name we can’t say this was racially motivated but it sure as fuck sounds like a disgruntled Texan with a gun blasting a migrant worker for simply doing his job.

High school dropout Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s 18 year-old son Tyler is one bad hombre according to a report by Westword.com on the charges he’s facing. A very bad hombre.

Documents allege Tyler’s crime spree included making a sex tape with a female minor and at least one other male who is/was also a minor, robbing a woman who suffers from a brain tumor of $75 cash, the only money she had “left to her name,” stealing credit and debit cards from cars parked at the Kum and Go (lol) in Rifle, Colorado – while wearing a “Shooters Grill” hoodie, and racking up hundreds of dollars in charges at the store as well as at Shein.com and other online retailers.

“I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man and the subject of attention that he didn’t ask for. It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track. I will never give up on him and I will continue to be there for him. As an adult and father, Tyler will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen,” said Tyler’s QAnon fan mom in a statement. Her tweet declaring that “The Biden Crime Family will go down as the most corrupt political family in American history,” posted the same day as Tyler’s arrest, still hasn’t been taken down yet. Might as well just leave it up.

Thousands upon thousands of cable news hits promising the exposure and utter destruction of the “Biden Crime Family” and here we are with two of the MAGA-est Congressmen, Greg Steube and Andy Biggs, trying to settle down the expectations they created with their endless bullshit hype.

So disastrous has this week been for them that on Thursday California Dem Congressman Robert Garcia went right to the floor with a brutal takedown of Jared Kushner and the “Trump Crime Family.”

Pennsylvania Governor’s office press release: “As part of his commitment to ensure safe and secure elections in Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro has established the Pennsylvania Election Threats Task Force. Led by Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the Task Force is comprised of federal, state, and local security, law enforcement, and election administration partners who are working together to share information and coordinate plans to mitigate threats to the election process, protect voters from intimidation, and provide voters with accurate, trusted election information.”

“‘Pennsylvania is the birthplace of American democracy, and we are working to continue defending Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms and ensure we have a free, fair, safe, secure election this November. As Attorney General, I brought law enforcement leaders at every level together to ensure our elections remained free from fraud, interference, and intimidation here in Pennsylvania – and I made a commitment to continuing that work as Governor,’ said Governor Josh Shapiro.”

“‘We take our responsibility as stewards of our democracy seriously and the Election Threats Task Force will ensure all levels of government are working together to combat misinformation, safeguard the rights of every citizen, and ensure this election is safe, secure, free, and fair.’ As Attorney General, Shapiro went to court dozens of times to defend Pennsylvanians’ right to vote and ensure every legal vote was counted. He prosecuted voter fraud and voter intimidation cases, upholding the rule of law and protecting Pennsylvanians’ rights. In recent years, Pennsylvania has strengthened election administration and improved election integrity by adopting new, state-of-the-art voting systems with auditable paper trails that changed how voters cast their ballot, as well as the introduction of no-excuse mail-in voting in 2020. ‘In recent years, we’ve seen bad-faith actors attempt to exploit these changes by spreading lies and baseless conspiracy theories to delegitimize our safe, secure, and accurate elections,’ said Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt.

The latest House scorecard from the Cook Political Report finds that, after some mid-cycle redistricting that New York Democrats bitched out of going as far as they could have with retaliating against the North Carolina GOP, there are 210 solid/likely/lean Republican seats to 204 solid/likely/lean Dem seats and 21 toss-ups, of which 11 are held by Dems and 10 by Republicans.

Zero currently Dem-held seats are in the solid/likely/lean Republican columns while two Red seats are on the blue side, which helps make this bummer of a rating go down a little easier.

Donald, man. Check the tape. pic.twitter.com/PwXb9iqP4j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 29, 2024

President Joe Biden’s campaign on Thursday snappily responded to fat former President Trump’s Wednesday night video disputing whether he called Melania “Mercedes” and follow-up rant from earlier this morning demanding “Crooked Joe Biden must take a Cognitive Test. Maybe that way we would be able to find out why he makes such terrible decisions. I took two of them, and ACED them both (no mistakes!). All Presidents, or people wanting to become President, should mandatorily take this test!” Might as well twist the knife when Trump’s making it clear it’s already under his skin.

The opening line of Thursday morning’s Politico Playbook plays on lyrics from Atlanta rapper Ludacris’s 2002 hit “Move Bitch” ft Mystikal and I-20 to segue into what the aftermath of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s surrender to MAGA would look like. Not hard to imagine that a millennial-aged Politico writer thought they were being extra clever getting it past their boomer or Gen-X-born editor as a person unfamiliar with the fairly obnoxious and uninspired track.

Further down is an actually newsworthy quote from a Senate GOP source on the plans to maneuver a MAGA Republican into the top spot rather than would-be McConnell successors and current lieutenants John Barrasso, John Cornhole Cornyn, and John Thune. “The idea that it’s just between the ‘Three Johns’ is an outdated narrative from a year ago. There will be somebody else – and possibly a scenario where none of the ‘Johns’ can get consensus, so it takes another candidate to step in,” the source said. There’s no mention of Rick Scott as a potential leader, lol.

Maricopa county at its finest…

My first time ever voting in a presidential preference election and I received not one but two mail-in ballots 🫣

Thank you @stephen_richer pic.twitter.com/DSLtZK4SU9

— Aubrey Savela (@aubrey_savela) February 29, 2024

Maricopa County, Arizona Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who constantly catches a lot of shit from paranoid MAGA assholes for their “election integrity” conspiracy theories, cheerfully put on his customer service hat in response to this deranged Karen’s complaining late Wednesday with “Hi Aubrey! Thanks for reaching out. You changed your voter registration on the last day of voter registration (Feb 20) from your Chandler address to your new Tempe address. Because early ballots must go out on Feb 21, your Chandler ballot was already set to go out, and so it did. Then we sent out a new ballot to your Tempe address when we processed your voter registration modification.”

“That’s why you had to redact out different lengths in the address (because they were sent to different addresses). You’ll also notice that one of packet codes ends in ’01’ (the one to your old address) and one ends in ’02’ (the one sent to your new address). As soon as the ’02’ one goes out, the ’01’ packet is dead. Meaning even if you sent it back, it wouldn’t proceed to signature verification, and it wouldn’t be opened. That’s how we prevent people from voting twice. So just use the one with your new address ending in ’02’ – that’s the only one that will work. Hope this helps!”

“Have a great night! Happy voting!” Richer concluded. He should’ve recorded a video and put on a really patronizing voice, but you can easily imagine it while reading through his response.

The Palestinian Health Ministry claims least 104 Gazans have been killed and 760 injured as Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd that rushed food aid trucks Thursday, CNN’s Jim Sciutto reports.