Republican Tennessee state House Representative Todd Warner on Thursday went full “groomer” on Lt Governor Randy McNally, taking it a lot further than the bizarre and suspicious but theoretically innocuous public flirtations on social media with a young gay man scandal that started last week, with accusations of just short of sexual predation. It’s not clear what new evidence Warner has, but what he raises doesn’t sound like the sort of thing one would say about the second most powerful politician in the state – and a fellow Republican – without some solid stuff to back it up:

“Not only have Tennessee Republicans now become the laughingstock of the nation, the bottom line is this: Randy McNally is a predator. Randy McNally began sexually grooming his victim when he was a 17-year-old minor, commenting relentlessly on nude photos from his official social media account, sending private messages, calling the victim on multiple occasions, and even offering him a job in the Lt Governor’s office – a position which the young man himself says he was wholly unqualified for. Additionally, Randy McNally pursued similar inappropriate relationships both before and during this same timeframe. Since news broke of this story, Lt Governor McNally has scrubbed and erased the entirety of his Instagram account to hide the discovery of additional behavior.”

“Let me be clear: these are not the actions of a ‘grandfather’ working to ‘encourage’ Tennesseans. These are the actions of a perverted 80-year-old man looking to fulfill his closeted sexual desires. These are the actions of man using his authority to manipulate others for sexual gratification. These are the actions of a hypocritical man caught red- handed in a scheme to take advantage of at least one underage young man. I call on Randy McNally to step down from his position as Lt Governor immediately. Additionally, I am calling on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to open a probe into this incident to examine possible violations of Tennessee criminal law related to the sexual exploitation of a minor,” writes Warner in the letter and man they ain’t happy down in the holler.

A new survey for Variety by pollster Maru Group finds that 13 percent of Fox News viewers no longer believe the 2020 election was stolen after learning from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit discovery documents that their favorite propagandists such as Tucker Carlson and others privately did not believe for a second that Trump had been cheated out of victory, while 50 percent said the revelations had “No effect, I still believe the 2020 election was stolen” even after finding out about the texts. The remaining 37 percent said “I still believe the 2020 election was generally run fairly.”

On the question of “How has your trust in the information provided by Fox News changed following Murdoch’s testimony and private texts from Fox News hosts that voter fraud claims were false,” 21 percent said “I trust it less.” Would be interesting to see a crosstab of where the overlap was with the other question, as somewhere in that would be maybe as much as 10 percent of Fox viewers who’ve been both got turned off from 2020 bullshit and the network itself. That’s not good for them.

Because of course it did!

SVB Donated $73M to BLM Scam – Related to Crash? https://t.co/gJTUt8tQPL

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 15, 2023

You will not be shocked to learn that this fucking idiot is lying, and that the “$73 million to BLM” is a bullshit claim, per breakdowns by Talking Points Memo and Popular Info which explain that the claim originated from the far right Claremont Institute (famous for fascist MAGA lawyer John Eastman and “Critical Race Theory” scam artist Chris Rufo) took a bunch of mostly pledged contributions (some donated, but mostly pledged) contributions, like $50 million marked for a diversity initiative meant to “connect women, Black people, and Latinos with startup funding, networking, and leadership development in the venture capitalist ecosystem.” Another $20 million was contributed “to support additional COVID-19 relief” and establish a “full-ride, needs-based University Scholarship program to students,” none of which was tagged with anything remotely “DEI”-related much less for Black Lives Matter, Inc, or any other group associated with the BLM movement. They just straight up lied.

An unnamed Republican operative who hosts and organizes events for GOP presidential candidates in New Hampshire tells the Daily Beast that heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s not-yet-presidential campaign is a “nightmare” to deal with and that only Newt Gingrich was a bigger pain in the ass, which is probably saying a lot considering Newt last ran for president in 2012 and there had to have been dozens of other Republicans passing through in the 2012, 2016, and now 2024 cycles whether they were officially running or not, plus however long before that this guy’s been doing this.

“He’s been tighter in his requests than other candidates,” said the New Hampshire Republican. Another in an unspecified early state said DeSantis is running “easily the least responsive campaign I’ve ever dealt with… We invite, invite, invite, ping, ping, ping. We don’t hear anything.”

The larger problem for DeSantis is his deep aversion to getting close to voters physically, not shaking hands and talking to them like you’d expect a politician who hates it to at least pretend to enjoy. At an Iowa event bike racks were placed between him and the crowd, leading one New Hampshire GOP lawmaker to say “If they want 50 bike racks, we’ll give them 50 bike racks.”

The CDC on Thursday published a new report on maternal deaths in the United States, finding a sharp increase over previous years. “This report updates a previous one that showed maternal mortality rates for 2018–2020 (2). In 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes in the United States compared with 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019 (2). The maternal mortality rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019.”

“In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black (subsequently, Black) women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic White (subsequently, White) women (26.6). Rates for Black women were significantly higher than rates for White and Hispanic women. The increases from 2020 to 2021 for all race and Hispanic-origin groups were significant. Rates increased with maternal age. Rates in 2021 were 20.4 deaths per 100,000 live births for women under age 25, 31.3 for those aged 25–39, and 138.5 for those aged 40 and over. The rate for women aged 40 and over was 6.8 times higher than the rate for women under age 25. Differences in the rates between age groups were statistically significant. The increases in the rates between 2020 and 2021 for each of these age groups were statistically significant.”

On the question of “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” a new Gallup survey finds 49 percent of Democrat respondents siding with the Palestinians while 38 percent said the Israelis, a switch from the 53 percent favoring the Israelis and 23 percent with the Palestinians found on the same question in 2016, Axios reports.

Overall 53 percent of respondents sided with the Israelis to 31 percent with the Palestinians in 2023, down from 62 percent pro-Israeli and up from 15 percent pro-Palestinian in 2016, all showing how much damage fat ex-President Trump did to the Israeli cause with his “King of the Jews” bullshit.

Just after the fat former president posted that bullshit, the Guardian reported that his lawyers are trying to convince the Manhattan DA’s office that the $130,000 payment was made but it wasn’t “campaign related.” That Trump won’t ever explain why she was paid isn’t the kind of incongruity his fans care about, but it’s going to stick out more than it ever did while he was in office.

The financial markets are about to take another jolt as international banking giant Credit Suisse announced that it will borrow $54 billion from the Swiss central bank in an effort to stabilize itself after years of mismanagement, CNN reports.

Calling the move a “decisive action to pre-emptively strengthen its liquidity,” the bank said in a statement, adding, “This additional liquidity would support Credit Suisse’s core businesses and clients as Credit Suisse takes the necessary steps to create a simpler and more focused bank built around client needs.”

Credit Suisse lost about 30% of its stock price Wednesday, and the move by the Swiss National Bank in the middle of the night could reassure investors so there’s no run on Credit Suisse or other Swiss banks to pull cash out, as there was with California’s SVB.

Kudos to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney (no relation that I know of to those Cheneys) on following up on a hunch and discovering something important to history.  Cheney synced up video evidence of Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, currently on trial for seditious conspiracy, approaching an area where Republican Iowa Senator and schoolboy crush of Marie Curie Chuck Grassley was being shuffled to safety with video of Capitol Police Office Eugene Goodman approaching the group from the other side.

Goodman, you may remember, was an early hero for luring a group of insurrectionists away from the hallway being used to evacuate members of Congress.  Well, this was the key moment. In the trial, Pezzola is seen realizing VIPs are whizzing by, while Goodman distracts and draws the rest of the crowd away, eventually getting Pezzola to follow.

Cops in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday halted their long fight with supporters of Imran Khan outside the ex-Prime Minister’s home as roads blocked by the clashes threatened to halt an important Pakistan Super League tournament cricket match in the area, Al-Jazeera reports.

“Since the teams have to reach the stadium a few hours before the match and the routes need to be cleared out, the security personnel at Zaman Park have stepped back for a short while,” a cop told Al-Jazeera. A judge later ordered police to give up on trying to arrest Khan until Thursday, which we’re going to just take a wild guess is some kind of ruse to get Khan’s fans to let their guard down.

“Yeah, there, last year, it was actually three separate loans as the, as the machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars and, um, we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow,” Mike Lindell, the man with lots of accusations and little evidence, claims, blaming election endorsers for the financial difficulty of his stuffed foam company.  “We’re a company, we’re an employee-owned company.  It just baffles me, Steve, ya got all these companies are, these machine companies out there, these voting machine companies that nobody knew their name before but everybody protects ’em and yet you attack a USA company, MyPillow, and my employees, it’s just disgusting.”

In another guilty plea in the case conservative declared a “nothingburger,” a Wisconsin man pleaded guilty in a Michigan county court to attempting to provide material support for a terrorist act, a step prosecutors sought to characterize the plot to kidnap, try and execute Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, NBC News reports.

As part of the plea agreement, 54-year-old Brian Higgins will cooperate with prosecutors in the cases against four other members of the anti-government group who wanted to punish Whitmer for implementing public health guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic.  He faces up to five years in prison, which could drop based on his cooperation.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday warned the country was on the brink of civil war after far right psychopath Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Herzog’s proposal to tone down the authoritarian premier’s plan to seize control of the judiciary that has caused massive anti-government protests to erupt – even within the military – against the “Bibi” regime, Axios reports.

And Herzog didn’t mean another conflict with the Palestinian territories, but in Israel itself. “Whoever thinks a real civil war that will cost human lives is something we will not reach does not know what he is talking about. Now when we are reaching Israel’s 75th anniversary the country is on the brink of the abyss. A civil war is a red line and I will not let that happen,” said Herzog in a speech.

The US Marshal Service has declared the former chief of staff to Republican ex-Maryland Governor and one-time rumored presidential aspirant Larry Hogan a fugitive after he failed to appear for the beginning of his corruption trial Monday and FBI agents failed to find him during an armed search of his Naples, Florida home.

The Baltimore Banner reports that hours after Roy McGrath failed to appear in federal court and his lawyer said he had no contact with McGrath, the FBI contacted the Collier County [Florida] Sheriff’s Office to perform a welfare check of the man’s home.  “We’re concerned that something may have happened,” an FBI agent told sheriff’s deputies in a recording of the call obtained by the Banner. “He doesn’t have any kind of violent criminal past, but we are concerned he may have committed suicide at this point.”

McGrath’s wife, who has not been accused of a crime, was reportedly found at the scene, and is apparently also ignorant of her husband’s location.  Her lawyer says she is “distraught” about her husband’s safety.  “She’s doing about as well as can be expected under the circumstances and she’s asking that people respect her privacy.”

The Biden Administration is threatening to ban TikTok from the United States if the ChiComs do not divest from the popular spyware-loaded video sharing app, the Wall Street Journal reports.

If this all sounds familiar it’s because the Trump Administration tried to do so the same but failed due to the incompetence of its chief executive, a guy who didn’t care about the app having a legitimate bullseye on its back from Treasury Department regulators until he found out those fucking K-Pop kids had used it to organize a massive troll of his big campaign rally.

Whether the Biden Administration will have any success pulling this off without pissing off millions of Gen Z and Millennial voters is yet to be seen, but they’ve got better odds than the Former Guy.

The one true thing about the abyss of MAGA depravity is that the bottom of it is a mirage. The elevator keeps going further and further down, infinitely deeper than Baal’s foursome with Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. And even deeper than Congressman George Santos’s absconding with $3,000 he raised to pay for surgery for a disabled veteran’s dog suffering horribly and dying of cancer.

Santos’s Republican freshman colleague, Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles – already to a degree a Santos-esque bullshit artist – may have taken us to that next negative level as the “charity executive” is accused of having raised nearly $25,000 to pay for a burial garden for stillborn children – an effort he launched immediately following the sudden death of he and his wife’s own unborn child 2014 – and absconding with that money, according to a new report from WTVF which details how Ogles literally ran away from reporters as they asked “Congressman, this doesn’t have to be a story if you just offer some evidence it went for a good cause,” after a political event.

US Border Patrol Chief confirms it was was filled with sand. https://t.co/eQ2LBEkKlh

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 15, 2023

About 20 minutes later Greene tweeted in response to CBP Chief Raul Ortiz saying that in January he had already testified earlier Wednesday that it really was a clump of dirt covered in duct tape and they already knew it, with Greene writing “Thank you for your testimony today Chief Ortiz and I know you are explaining what you were told when you inquired about the situation after the hearing.”

“Unfortunately, several Border Patrol agents are saying it was some sort of IED and there is video surveillance and pictures of a man placing the device. They say that is why agents were sent to retrieve it in the area known as No Man’s Land. This is an area controlled by the Cartels according to BP and with the shortage of agents they aren’t just walking around out there to randomly just find something like this. According to them, they were told later that it was some sort of explosive, not filled with sand. I’m just explaining what I was told today and with the extreme dangerous border crisis and threat from Cartels, I’m very concerned about our agents.”

Pornstar Stormy Daniels on Wednesday testified before the grand jury investigating the $130,000 hush money payment from disgraced now-former President Trump just days before 2016 election to keep quiet over their 45 seconds long 2006 sexual encounter, MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reports.

New York City firefighters on Wednesday responded to a fire in on the 18th floor of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue that broke out just hours after scumbag Steve Bannon’s “dissident” Chinese billionaire sugar daddy Guo Wengui was arrested there by federal law enforcement on various wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering charges, WABC reports. It hasn’t been confirmed yet if the fire definitely started in Guo’s $32.5 million, 15-room penthouse unit on the 17th floor or is otherwise connected to his arrest, but it would sure be quite a coincidence if it weren’t and as such the FBI are back on the scene to look into it, per WABC.

In related news, the Daily Beast’s Zach Petrizzo reports that among the many assets seized by the government following Guo’s arrest (including the massive yacht on which Bannon was arrested in August 2020 over the “We Build The Wall” scam) was a $3 million bank account used to fund the day-to-day operations of GETTR, the lame MAGA Twitter clone founded by deadbeat dad Trump minion Jason Miller in 2021, a network apparently still limping along after having been made largely redundant by the launch of Truth Social and then Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter itself.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Wednesday announced the arrests of two women on charges of illegally voting in the the past two national elections, WPLG reports. In the one case, Ocala registered Republican Donna Prentes Brady, 66, is accused of voting in both primary and general elections in her native New Jersey and in Florida in 2020, a third degree felony.

In the other case, Toye Ann LaRocca, 63, of Fort Walton Beach was caught voting in 2022 while serving probation for a DWI conviction. As DWI is a misdemeanor offense it would not have been a crime for LaRocca to vote, however she has a prior felony conviction thus making her ineligible to vote under state law even if the probation was unrelated to the felony. LaRocca’s information does not appear on VoterRecords.com in any state, however her Facebook profile says she’s a native of Metairie, Louisiana. All nine voters with sharing her surname in Metairie are listed as registered Republicans, making it probably more likely than not Toye Ann is MAGA too.

In Brady’s case, it’s not clear if she was caught using voting in two states using the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) interstate database, but either way her crime should serve as a reminder that it’s a good idea for states to have a means to check with each other to prevent voter fraud. Should serve, but won’t as Florida already withdrew from it just last week, the fourth state to do so this year after Alabama, Missouri, and West Virginia, which probably precipitated this week’s resignation of ERIC founder and election law expert David Becker from its board.