“We assess that Russia probably has massed between 169,000 – 190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine as compared with about 100,000 on January 30. This estimate includes military troops along the border, in Belarus, and in occupied Crimea; Russian National Guard and other internal security units deployed to these areas; and Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine. While Russia has sought to downplay or deceive the world about their ground and air preparations, the Russian military has publicized its large-scale naval exercises in the Black Sea, Baltic Sea and the Arctic. Russia has publicly said the Black Sea exercise alone involves more than 30 ships, and we assess that amphibious landing ships from the Northern and Baltic Fleets were sent to the Black Sea to augment forces there” says US Ambassador to OSCE Michael Carpenter in a statement.

Executives at white collar crime syndicate Citadel Securities, founded by billionaire right wing donor Ken Griffin, is under federal criminal investigation for some market manipulation scam during the early 2021 Reddit day trader GameStop/AMC theaters stock revolt against short sellers, reports finance blogger Frank Nez. While this Nez fellow seems a bit hyperbolic and sensational like stereotypical “underground” blogger of yore, his article includes a clip of a Bloomberg TV anchor reporting there is indeed an active Department of Justice investigation into Citadel.

Last year Griffin invested heavily in right wing lifestyle brand DeSantis Inc to market the “Regeneron” COVID-19 treatment to the key unvaxed and infected with Delta demographic in Florida. Overall he’s personally spent over $107 million backing a wide portfolio of GOP ventures in the industry since 2009, seeing huge ROIs that contributed greatly to his personal wealth.

Total asshat Texas Lt Gov Dannie Goeb, aka “Dan Patrick”, has likely screwed himself and fellow incumbents Gov Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton out of thousands of votes in the March 1st Texas GOP primary by telling Republican voters to mail their requests for mail-in ballots to the Secretary of State rather than their local county election bureaus, the Texas Tribune reports.

Stupid story as short as possible: Goeb’s campaign mailed out letters to fans in January telling them how to submit their ballot request forms – which only candidates are legally allowed to do under the state’s draconian voter suppression laws – with the incorrect instructions because “many Republican voters are rightly suspicious of Blue County election officials,” Goeb’s campaign claims. Goeb then ordered the Secretary of State’s office to sort out the ballots and send them to the correct county officials, something that took time and will certainly result in missed deadlines, unnecessarily costing Goeb votes. While Goeb himself is not facing any serious competition in the primary, the other two in his unholy triumvirate of Trump-endorsed Texas incumbents, Abbott and Paxton – especially Paxton – are. Would be damned entertaining to see Ken Paxton lose to Louie Gohmert or George P Bush because of Dannie Goeb’s completely unforced fuckup.

Best. Birthday. Ever!!!

— Jenna Ryan 🇺🇸 (@dotjenna) February 17, 2022

Happy 51st birthday to Jenna Ryan, the “Private Jet Karen” Capitol rioter and Christian pop artist who famously declared she was “Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I’m not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong” on March 21st and then reported to prison nine months later. Doesn’t seem like she’s learned much, as she celebrated both her release and birthday on Thursday by retweeting Hillary Clinton conspiracy bullshit and her excitement over the upcoming Truth Social launch.

Special Counsel John Durham, in his nonsense case against Dem lawyer Michael Sussman, appeared on Thursday to try to distance himself from the “Hillarygate” bullshit a previous filing had ignited among Trump and his fanboys over “spying” allegations, the New York Times reports. “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information,” Durham wrote, while also vowing to submit future filings under seal if they had any “information that legitimately gives rise to privacy issues or other concerns that might overcome the presumption of public access to judicial documents.”

Donald Trump is so fucked.  

Voters will tolerate corruption.  Evangelicals will support a serial adulterer, who owned casinos, and paid for sex.  American Firsters will overlook two foreign-born wives.  But a bank?  A bank will never forgive a customer who lies to it about his finances.  

That’s why the news that Mazars has not only dumped Trump as a client but announced that they’re essentially saying the financial statements they prepared for him were complete bullshit will go down as the terminal point in the Myth of Donald Trump, Businessman.  

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Thursday evening requested a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken next week as tensions about the Russian military build-up along the Ukrainian border rises, France 24 reports.

Blinken accepted the invitation for the end of next week, after he had made a presentation to the United Nations this afternoon on how Russia is preparing the groundwork in public opinion to support an invasion.  NBC News is reporting President Biden will lead a phone call with Western leaders to discuss the situation Friday morning.

Listen to how serial adulterer (and man who didn’t get better after being turned into a newt) Newt Gingrich starts out.  It almost seems that he’s decrying the Cult of Trumpism, where people go to rallies and chant his name and talking points.

And what strikes me, th-, th-, this is like watching a religious movement.  These are people who are now chanting and doing what they do with no regard to reality, ah, and they have a level of contempt for the rest of us.

Ah, but no, it’s not about Trump.  It’s about HILLARY CLINTON’S EMAILS!  (Oh, and pay no attention to the fifteen cartons of documents, including classified information, Trump absconded with to Florida.

I mean, you watch Hillary Clinton after 31,000 eliminated emails after having somebody take a hammer to destroy her hard drives, after all the things she’s done [grunt] she prepares with a straight face saying, “Gosh, you really don’t think I did that?”

“There’s a pretty good chance–well, I think it’s inevitable at this point–that, ah, I’ll probably be going somewhere tomorrow where I’ll be getting three square meals a day, and that’s okay,” Tamara Lich, one of the organizers of the Ottawa trucker protest said in a video statement last night.  “I, um, I’m okay with that and I want you to know that I’m not afraid.”

Well, she was right.  Lich was arrested by law enforcement officials Thursday.  Chris Barber, another organizer, was also arrested.  Canadian officials are pursuing charges against those who were not on the scene, but still responsible for organizing the protest, which cost the US and Canadian economics billions of dollars.

A state of deep unease settled in across the Villages, Florida following the mysterious fire which incinerated a golf cart parked outside of the Chula Vista Recreation Center on Thursday. The main source of the disquiet stemmed from the fact that the cart’s make, model, and even whether it was a gasoline or electric engine, was completely unknown to media sources. Though no one was hurt, the lack of information about what carts of a similar model could be potentially dangerous. Maybe next time one could explode spontaneously while a Villager is driving home after enjoying a few well-deserved afternoon scotches down at Margarita Republic. Or explode not so spontaneously when they pass out behind the wheel and crash the cart into a gas pump at the Exxon station.

Then there’s possibility of arson caused by a hidden cell of Antifa terrorists conducting hit and run attacks against people who worked for a living all their goddamned lives only to have some fucking leftist punks destroy it simply to please their evil master Nancy Pelosi. Or much more likely it was their 52 year old son or daughter who came to live with them in the Villages who torched the cart as phase one of their operation to steal the insurance check to buy heroin. But they prefer to talk about their other kids – and their grandchildren who are in college and not jail.

Twenty-four-year-old Puerto Rican model Sofia Jirau became the first Victoria’s Secret model with Down Syndrome when the brand introduced its Love Cloud collection this week, Yahoo News reports.

To broaden their market from just serving waifs and supermodels, Victoria’s Secret’s recent advertising campaigns have transitioned away from their trademark Angels to women of all shapes, ages, sizes and races.

The Love Cloud collection of bras, for those who care, are a new design of undergarment that focus on comfort for various body styles and at various stages of life, but with the fashion and style of a Victoria’s Secret product.  But, it’s a bra, so “comfort” is a relative term.

By a 65 to 27 vote, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday night to avert a Friday night government shutdown and finance government operations through March 11th, CNN reports.   President Biden will sign the bill tomorrow.

With Democrats down three Senators–Democratic New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján is absent as he gets cancer treatments, California’s Barbara Feinstein is caring for a sick husband, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly’s wife is ill –the passage of the bill was in question if Republicans had opted to have another temper tantrum, as has become routine.

Democrats have been working on a long-term budget bill, which would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year in September, but they’ve yet to get significant Republican buy-in.

“So, Crooked Hillary Clinton, one of the most corrupt politicians ever to run for President, can break into the White House, my apartment, buildings I own, and my campaign – in other words, she can spy on a Presidential candidate and ultimately, the President of the United States – and the now totally discredited Fake News Media does everything they can not to talk about it. On the other hand, failed Gubernatorial candidate, Letitia James, can run for the office of AG on saying absolutely horrendous and false things about Donald Trump, a man she doesn’t know and has never met, go on to get elected, and then selectively prosecute him and his family.”

“After viewing millions of pages of documents over many years, they come up with a ‘Fringe Benefits’ case on a car, an apartment, and on grandchildren’s education. She is doing everything within their corrupt discretion to interfere with my business relationships, and with the political process. With the rest of the case, even Cy Vance, who just left the DA’s office without prosecuting anything additional, because there isn’t anything additional to prosecute—THERE IS NO CASE! The targeting of a President of the United States, who got more votes while in office than any President in History, by far, and is a person that the Radical Left Democrats don’t want to run again, represents an unconstitutional attack on our Country – and the people will not allow this travesty of justice to happen. It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history – and remember, I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible!” the Fat Orange Jesus exclaimed while bleeding from his crown of thorns.

Lobbyists for Verizon and AT&T are going pro-MAGA by successfully pressuring congress to remove provisions of the Violence Against Women Act forcing the companies to allow abuse victims to extract themselves from family cell phone plans without fees or having to start a new plan with a new number, thereby removing a point of leverage over abusive spouses who can cut them off on a whim and/or monitor call and SMS logs to see who they’re in contact with, Axios reports. Because doing so would eat into the cell phone companies’ profit margins and they can’t put makeup over that bruise when telling their shareholders everything’s fine at home, you know.

“The Wyoming State Senate is considering SF0097, introduced by Patriot Senator Bo Biteman, to protect the integrity of Wyoming primary elections. This critically important bill ensures that the voters in each party will separately choose their nominees for the General Election, which is how it should be! It makes total sense that only Democrats vote in the Democrat primary and only Republicans vote in the Republican primary. This bill has my Complete and Total Endorsement and Support. Every Member of the Wyoming Senate should vote for SF0097. Thank you!” says the Chunky Orange Man in a statement hyping a curiously obscure piece of legislation.

While he does not mention Liz Cheney by name, the implication postulated in the headline here could not be any less obvious given how it little it should matter otherwise in a state he won by 43%. Then there’s fact that 17 other states – including Nevada and Wisconsin, states he thinks he won in 2020 – allow for same day registration on primary election days and to our knowledge Trump has never bothered to scream for Republican lawmakers to shut it down in any of those. On that note we encourage our readers in those states to vote in the GOP primaries to help make sure the shittiest, most unelectable MAGA candidates end up running against Dem incumbents.

During her speech at the New York Democratic Convention on Thursday, Hillary Clinton said “So now [Trump’s] accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me counting on their audience to fall for it again. They’re getting awfully close to actual malice,” and goddamn do we hope the defamation lawyers Dominion and Smartmatic are using to sue the MAGA propagandists are working on a pitch to Hillary right now because that case would be fucking epic.

QAnon fan Georgia Gov candidate Kandiss Taylor’s campaign bus, via Dem lawyer Ron Filipkowski.

“An indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Jia Liu, a member of the United States Marine Corps Reserve, and Steven Rodriguez, a nurse at a clinic in Hempstead, New York, with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States Department of Health and Human Services and one count of conspiring to commit forgery in connection with their scheme to distribute and sell false COVID-19 Vaccination Cards. Liu, a Marine Corps reservist, is additionally charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States Department of Defense for providing these cards to United States Marine Corps reservists. The defendants were arrested this morning and will make their initial appearance this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the arrest and charges,” says a Justice Department press release.

Liu was also arrested on October 29, 2021 on charges of Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds, Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds, Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building, and Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building. Man, what a fucking idiot. Will update with his status with the Marine Corps.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released the results of a study Thursday that linked federal government stimulus checks to spikes in drug overdose deaths nationally, John Solomon’s stupid website reports. The unsubtle implication is that because a lot of people in the more opioid-infested quarters of MAGA Land took the money and chased the dragon a little to far, the three rounds of economic relief distributed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that tens of millions of other Americans used to pay for rent, utility bills, groceries was on balance a bad thing.

“The link between pandemic relief money and opioid overdose deaths is now evident. The intent was to help Americans navigate this deadly pandemic but it also fueled a tidal wave of overdoses,” said Yost, adding, “Throwing money at a problem isn’t always the best solution. Let the data be the guide to learn from the past. Addiction is a sickness you can’t cure with just cash,” as if only opioid addicts got stimulus checks and not responsible people who otherwise fell on hard times in part because of the Republican president’s atrocious response to the deadliest pandemic in a century. And even though more money was actually distributed to Americans under the Trump Administration ($1,800 in 2020) than the Biden Administration ($1,400 in 2021) Democrats are the pro-handout party. We could probably go on for another 500 words or so pointing out the cynicism and hypocrisy here, but our readers are smart and have already picked it up. Probably.

I identify as non-Bidenary.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 17, 2022