• What we learned this week:  While President of the United States, Donald Trump attempted to order civilian law enforcement, the military and the nation’s national security apparatus to overturn a valid Constitutional election.  Trump wanted to be a third-world dictator.
• Record job growth in the first year, an ISIS leader killed, and key people in Trump’s cabal questioned in various investigations around the country.  Or as Chuck Todd would say, perhaps the most troubling week for the Biden Administration.
• It’s not racism to say you want a Black woman on the Supreme Court because you’re not excluding anyone already there.  It is racism to object to that pledge, because you’re claiming there are no qualified Black women to fill the nomination, which is obviously not true.  
• Anti-vaxxers are the child at your dinner table who won’t eat his carrots even though your mother says no one will leave the table until you’ve cleaned your plate.  They are holding everyone else hostage from safely opening America up.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LV”

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“Organizers provided a clear distribution plan for the initial $1M that was released earlier this week and confirmed funds would be used only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest. Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe. All donors may submit a request for a full refund until February 19th, 2022 using this dedicated refund form.”

Federal prosecutors apparently sought and obtained a search warrant for communications by Steve Bannon’s attorney Robert J Costello, Politico reports citing a motion filed by Bannon’s defense in pretrial discovery before he faces charges on contempt of Congress. In a Friday filing, Bannon’s team stated that last month, federal prosecutors provided them with over 790 documents that “reflected efforts by the Government to obtain telephone records and email records from the personal and professional accounts of defense counsel, Robert J. Costello.”

The whole situation is confusing as shit, but it would be extraordinary that the DOJ would be able to get their hands on evidence that normally would be subject to attorney-client privilege. Costello advised Bannon to refuse to comply with the House January 6th Select Committee’s subpoenas, which led to the contempt referral to the DOJ and his subsequent indictment, so it’s possible Costello is being looked at as an accessory to a federal felony. Inspiring!

Awesome.

🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇸 https://t.co/pR03QbuUUE

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 4, 2022

Ukrainian forces steeling themselves for combat with Russian troops are using the site of a previous Russian atrocity inflicted on their country to train for urban warfare, Reuters reports. This marks the first real fuctional use of the town of Pripyat, once home to 50,000 Ukrainians, now permanently evacuated since the April 1986 meltdown of a shitty, unsafe, Russian-designed nuclear reactor that exploded during an engineering test. “This was a battle with irregular militias in (an) urban environment,” an unnamed soldier told a reporter. Not great, not terrible.

BREAKING: Fantastic news for voters and the health of our democracy — the NC Supreme Court just struck down the legislative and congressional maps as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The maps violate a voter's fundamental right to vote.

— Josh Stein (@JoshStein_) February 4, 2022

Not clear exactly what the next step is, but North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein seems pretty happy with the outcome, so it’s safe to say Republicans are going to be pissed. In related news, democracy fanboys are awaiting a possible move by the US Supreme Court to intervene in a case in Alabama, in which a federal judge tossed that state’s GOP-drawn Congressional map last month, ordering it redrawn with a second Black-majority district in the state by Monday.

A Virginia judge has blocked Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order allowing parents to opt-out of school district mask mandates from going into effect, the Associated Press reports.

Youngkin signed the executive order within days of taking office January 15th, and seven Virginia school districts immediately filed suit to overturn the order, saying it was a serious overreach of the Governor’s authority.

“Keeping rules in place that have been established over the school year helps children, families and staff understand how they may be impacted during the pandemic. Without a restraining order, children and staff would have to reassess certain health conditions they believe are impacted by a mask policy (any mask policy), having relied upon a universal mask mandate implemented by the School Boards,” Arlington Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo wrote in her ruling.

“If Nancy Pelosi does her job on security, there is no ‘January 6.’ So the corrupt Unselect Committee should stop its work immediately!” says the Former Guy in a statement tweeted by his kind of creepy looking minion Liz Harrington at 4:55 PM EST on Friday, fully an hour after video of Mike Pence’s speech rebuking the Donald’s coup attempt was carried by most major news outlets.

It’s anyone’s guess why the statement doesn’t address Pence, possibly it was pre-queued as the content isn’t really specific to any recent development in the news so much as it is just a rehash of the same bitching he’s been doing for over a year now in these stupid statements. But for the sake of comparison, the turnaround time from when it was first reported that Jeff Zucker had left CNN and Trump putting out a statement celebrating it on Wednesday was like 70 minutes, tops. So either Donald is busy watching old videos of himself and isn’t caught up on the news yet, or his rage at Vice Former Guy is so uncontainable that it’s taking a lot of drafts to properly communicate. We’re eagerly anticipating the finished product, so hurry the fuck up, Trump lackeys.

Nice work, MAGAmerica. Thanks for picking up the slack after all us Blue State commies got vaxxed and stopped succumbing to a now almost completely avoidable death. Read more at AP.

A cyberattack believed to have been launched by China was discovered January 20th in the systems of Murdoch-owned News Corp. including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, the Journal reports.

The attack targeted the email accounts of journalists working for Murdoch’s US and UK media outlets, giving the hackers access to the email accounts and documents of journalists and other employees at the outlets.  News Corp. revealed the hack in an FCC filing released Friday.

In a memo to staff, the company’s management said they believed the threat has been contained, but they still did not completely know how many accounts or files were infiltrated.  News Corp. has retained the services of cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which specializes in tracking attacks from China, to assist in its internal investigation.

Hang tough, @Mike_Pence!

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) February 4, 2022

Said OANN reporter Pearson Sharp in a monologue on Thursday, via Media Matters: “More and more Americans are standing up and fighting back against the tyranny of the COVID conspiracy theory. Convoys of outraged truck drivers are sending a message loud and clear to cowardly leaders all over the world, from Canada to Australia and even here in the U.S., and that message is simple: Back off, or else. We, the people, will not tolerate this oppression any longer [paragraph upon paragraph of unsubtantiated bullshit about the “deadly” COVID-19 vaccines]”

“So, for all of you progressives and Democrats and radical leftists out there. Do us all a favor, please, and go get vaccinated. In fact, don’t stop there. Get double vaccinated, and be sure to get all your boosters. All three or four of them. Why stop there? If more is better – get five, six, get 10 boosters. All the rest of us sane, freedom-loving Americans are counting on you to get your injections. The survival of our country depends on it,” Sharp concluded.

Sharp’s previous claim to fame was his June 2021 rant in which he called for “tens of thousands” to be executed for committing fraud in the 2020 election, a video clip that YouTube deleted and suspended National Zero co-editor Jackinec for publishing. A clip of TV “news” was so terroristic that YouTube’s algorithm suspended a channel for publishing it. That’s serious MAGA right there.

Cheney and Kinzinger chose to join Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.

The NYT needs to correct this story now, or again expose themselves as political hacks.

— Ronna McDaniel (@RonnaMcDaniel) February 4, 2022

Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel seems to be telling folks to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears on the final “whereas” in the resolution to censure the two “RINOs” Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The line, which reads “Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes,” was indisputably posted verbatim in a tweet by the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey on Thursday night after being adopted by a subcommittee and prior to going to a full vote on Friday.

She now wants everyone to believe it said “…legitimate political discourse, that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.” We’re guessing this is her lame way of saying all the “Stop the Steal” fuckery and White House/DOJ coup planning, fake electors et cetera not directly connected to the riot itself should be outside the scope of the committee investigation.

Problem for Ronna is, as Dawsey reported, the resolution itself was not read or presented before it went to a voice vote Friday, writing “The whole affair took about a minute.” Meaning that unless there was a printed copy circulated around the room prior to the vote with the language amended specifically to include “had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol“, which is unlikely, Ronna is full of shit here and this is some seriously bad damage control. Therefore it is RESOLVED.

Breaking noose: Vice Former Guy Mike Pence finally badmouthed the Orange God Emperor over the failed coup attempt on January 6th, 2021 CNN’s Manu Raju reports. “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone,” and “there’s nothing more un-American [to have ]any one person… choose the American president,” said Pence in a speech to the Federalist Society on Friday.

A package of bills introduced by Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature would block punishing doctors from punishing doctors for prescribing the MAGA Cinematic Universe fan-favorite fake treatments for coronavirus, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, as well as forcing pharmacies to fill prescriptions for either, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

Doctors and other health professionals in the state are not pleased with the batshittery and wish it would stop. “As the state’s largest physician organization, we very carefully listen to our members to make sure there’s no undue interference with a physician providing appropriate care for their patients,” said Medical Society of Wisconsin board chairman Dr Jerry Halverson, adding “So rather than potentially harming our state’s high quality health care system, we ask our government policymakers to help physicians and their health care teams: encourage vaccinations, promote smart behaviors and help us emerge from this pandemic as soon as possible.”

Republicans pushing the bill circulated a memo hinting that – surprise! – there’s some kind of conspiracy to suppress the two fake treatments. “Many continue to speculate as to the exact reasons why the efforts of these health care professionals have been actively suppressed by those who have assumed the responsibility of dictating the response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said a “Dear Colleague” letter signed by eight GOP state lawmakers. “Regardless of the forces behind this troubling trend, (the legislation) seeks to reverse the unprecedented level of interference with the physician-patient relationship that has been witnessed over the past two years, whether it pertains to the treatment of COVID-19 or other diseases.” Democrats would do well to inform them that another “effective” treatment is available and no prescription is required to drink one’s own piss.

For all his hemming and hawing, his deflections, his stutter, his tapdancing and his lies, Republican Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan cannot negate the fact that he spoke to Donald Trump at least once on the day of a domestic terrorist attack on Congress, CNN reports.

Jordan (in)famously stammered for more than a minute once when asked by a local Ohio reporter if he spoke with Trump on January 6th, and now the House Select Committee investing the terrorist attack on the Capitol have records showing Jordan did, in fact, talk to Trump for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6th, hours before Congress was to certify the results of the November 2020 election.

Jordan has long been suspected of coordinating an effort with the White House to undermine the Constitution of the United States in order to overturn the results of the election that Joe Biden won and install Trump for a second term. 

During her speech on the final day of the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, Chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel affirmed her party’s aim to pull out of the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates after Trump’s complete meltdown in the first 2020 election debate and shitty, subpar performance in the second, Buzzfeed’s Kadia Goba reports. “We are not walking away from debates. We are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it’s a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interest of the American people,” said Not-Romney McDaniel, serving the best interests of her party’s likely 2024 nominee.

UPDATE 1:09 PM EST 2/4/22: The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reports the resolution censuring Reps Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for sitting on the House January 6th Select Committee and “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” passes quickly by a voice vote without even being read or presented.

The draconian Arizona state House bill HB2596, which would have killed off early voting, required hand counts of all ballots, and allowed the state legislature to override the result of any election they didn’t like, was left all but dead Wednesday by Speaker Rusty Bowers, defeated in a maneuver that would require it to survive twelve different committees, something far right state Rep John Fillmore compared to a “lynching”, AZFamily.com reports. “Yeah, it was a lynching,” said the lawmaker, who also said last week that “we need to get back to 1958-style voting.”

The graphic above adorned the opening screen of Fox & Friends Friday morning after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced an unexpectedly strong jobs report, in which it reported 476,000 jobs created in January…. which, of course, equates to “job losses.”