.@RealCandaceO for SCOTUS!

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 1, 2022

American workers remain confident that they can improve their individual employment situations as nearly 11 million jobs were available in the United States in December, an increase of 1.4% from the previous months, the Associated Press reports.

More than 4.3 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in December as well, in a further sign that workers are feel confident that they can find a better job.  That number is slightly lower than the 4.5 million people who quit in November.

Pundits are predicting a jobs report, to be released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to show approximately 165,000 jobs created in January, a dip from previous months due to the spread of the omicron version of the coronavirus preventing people from starting new jobs.

Mostly peaceful tourists staged a visit to take selfies at the palace of woke illegitimate loser Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embaló in its capital city Bissau on Tuesday, the AP reports. The tourists, believed the be supporters of the “defeated” 2020 presidential candidate Domingos Simoes Pereira, though they’re probably Antifa disguised as Pereira fans to make him look bad. This would be the fourth time Guinea-Bissau patriots have stopped the steal since the tiny West African republican gained independence in 1974. Today is 1974 for true Bissau-Guineans.

NBC News posts an insightful story about the need for school libraries to have books on sexuality and race relations–the opening account of a girl who hasn’t told her evangelical parents about being queer but reads books in her high school library to understand her situation about is heart-wrenching–also links to a list of books the neophyte Fascists in Texas want to ban.  A sample:

• A Katy mother wants to ban a biography of Michelle Obama written for children, “Michelle Obama: Political Icon,” by Heather E. Schwartz, because she says, it unfairly depicts Donald Trump as a bully.
  Read More ▶ “The books book banners want to ban”

Tampa Bay Buccaneers Quarterback Stephen Breyer ended months of speculation and announced his retirement after 22 years of key decision made under pressure, and some huge wins. The move comes just days after Supreme Court Justice Tom Brady also announced his retirement. Pittsburgh Steelers QB Brett Kavanaugh, credibly accused of rape multiple times, also retired last month.

We celebrate the countless contributions black men and women have made. #BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/on8XNYMJCO

— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) February 1, 2022

“So pathetic to watch the Unselect Committee of political hacks, liars, and traitors work so feverishly to alter the Electoral College Act so that a Vice President cannot ensure the honest results of the election, when just one year ago they said that ‘the Vice President has absolutely no right to ensure the true outcome or results of an election.’ In other words, they lied, and the Vice President did have this right or, more pointedly, could have sent the votes back to various legislators for reassessment after so much fraud and irregularities were found.”

“If it were sent back to the legislators, or if Nancy Pelosi, who is in charge of Capitol security, had taken my recommendation and substantially increased security [note: he never recommended this], there would have been no ‘January 6’ as we know it! Therefore, the Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!” says the Former Guy in a whole new level of insanity, also without realizing that he’s endorsing Kamala Harris to simply ignore Red States’ electoral votes and declare the Democratic candidate the winner on January 6th, 2025. What a fat idiot.

Talking points binder woman Kaleigh McEnany has been cooperating with the House January 6th Select Committee, turning over text messages and other communications to the investigation of the insurrection, ABC News reports citing several sources. Among the messages received were those sent from Sean Hannity to McEnany during the riot, such as “1 – no more stolen election talk. 2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th amendment are real and many people will quit,” to which McEnany replied “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce…”, an exchange referenced in the Committee’s January 20th, 2022 letter to Ivanka Trump requesting her cooperation.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined the investigation into sexual assault allegations into Republican former state House Speaker Lee Chatfield, whose brother’s wife accused him of a long-running abusive relationship that began when she was 15 years old and a student at a Christian school Chatfield taught classes at and founded by his father, Bridge Michigan reports. “The Department is assisting the Michigan State Police as it continues its investigation,” Michigan Attorney General’s office spokesperson Lynsey Mukomel said on Monday.

Separately on Monday the Detroit News published an analysis of Chatfield’s spending, finding over $900,000 of campaign and non-profit funds he raised over the years were paid out to his family members and staffers as “consulting fees” and what not, adding to the MAGA bro’s woes.

Former president Donald Trump directed his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to work with the Secretary of Homeland Security to get DHS agents to secure voting machines in swing states he lost in November’s election, the New York Times reports.

DHS involvement in the seizures wasn’t going to happen, a Deputy Secretary told Giuliani, because the Department didn’t have such authority.  This was the third Cabinet Department Trump tried to get to seize the voting machines:  both Defense and Justice said they wouldn’t participate.

The new account puts Trump directly in the line of command for efforts to overturn individual states’ elections.

Having announced last spring that her new contract would lead to changes at her top-rated MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow announced on her program Monday night that she will take a two- to three-month hiatus to work on outside projects.

Maddow announced that she was working on a screen adaptation of her book “Bag Man” which details the corruption of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, the Maryland politician who resigned from office after it was discovered that he was taking bribes and kickbacks.

Ben Stiller will direct the movie, which will be produced by “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels.  Maddow is also working on another podcast series similar to the one that spawned the writing of “Bag Man.”  She said she will return for major events like Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address, which does not have a date yet.

The House January 6th Select Committee has obtained second December 2020 Trump Administration draft executive order to seize voting machines, CNN reports. While the first order which surfaced earlier this month after it was obtained by the committee commanded the US military to execute the confiscation of voting machines and tabulation equipment in the states Trump felt he’d been entitled to win, the newly uncovered order was to be issued to the Department of Homeland Security for the same purpose. CNN had reported around the same time that Rudy Giuliani had approached then-Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli to order his agents to seize the machines which Cooch rebuffed as he did not have the authority.

Special Counsel John Durham, the badass motherfucker MAGA lawman who was supposed to have locked up Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Kathy Griffin, Keith Olbermann, and Huma Abedin for high treason like three years ago – but in reality has indicted all of three no-namers on “process crimes”, admitted he fucked up handling evidence in a court filing Friday night, Talking Points Memo reports on a maddeningly tedious situation.

Early last week Durham told the court that he had never previously discussed certain pieces of evidence in the case against Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussman, charged with making false statements to the FBI during the course of its investigation into the 2016 Trump Campaign, but on Friday he changed course saying “Oh wait. Shit. I actually did talk with the DOJ Inspector General about that stuff back in February 2018,” per the filing. “Special Counsel Durham has no current recollection of that conference call, nor does Special Counsel Durham currently recall knowing about the OIG’s possession of the former FBI General Counsel’s cellphones before January 2022,” Durham wrote, which, as Talking Points Memo editor-in-chief Josh Marshall puts it in a separate editor’s blog entry, “It’s hard not to note that by Durham’s standards – as applied to Sussman – Durham himself should probably be indicted. And I’m only half kidding here.”

We’ll add this isn’t exactly what we were told to expect by the MAGA trolls. As they would have it, Durham was supposed to be strapping on his kevlar, loading shells into a Kel-Tec KSG shotgun, storming out of an armored personnel carrier, leading a patriotic law enforcement SWAT team into Deep State headquarters, and absolutely fucking shit up. Like motherfuckers getting tagged and bagged. Rambo-level body counts. This real-life shit is weak. Even his failures are boring.

America has been endowed with the new world record for the longest-ever lighting bolt, the AP reports. An April 2020 zap stretching 477.2 miles across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi was named this Monday as the new king of all lightning bolts by the World Meteorological Organization, trouncing a previous 440.6 miles long Brazil bolt recorded in 2018. Though impressive in sheer semi-physical length, the April 2020 American bolt didn’t last as long temporally as a 17.1 seconds long Argentinian stud, also recorded in 2020. The WMO did not offer any detail on what the prize is for excellence in lightning, or whom would collect said prizes on behalf of the now-dissipated bolts.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Victor Hugo https://t.co/tQ23LkjMf2

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) February 1, 2022

Staff at the National Archives on Monday told the Washington Post that some of the Trump White House documents requested by the House January 6th Select Committee had to be taped back together after some asshole – probably Trump himself – had ripped them up prior to archiving.

“White House records management officials during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records. These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations,” said the National Archives in a statement to the Post, without specifying which papers had been ripped up.

“Highly respected Dinesh D’Souza, working together with Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, just released a trailer to their new movie, ‘2,000 Mules,’ that shows the world exactly how the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen. The movie exposes the lies of the Democrats, RINOs, and Fake News who say it was the ‘most secure election in history.’ It was, perhaps, the least secure in history. The ballot box was stuffed, and stuffed like never before – and it’s all on video. Ballots were trafficked and sold in a massive operation in each Swing State.”

“The evidence is so damning, what will the cowards who sat and did nothing about the stolen election say now? The way our votes were taken away is a disgrace to our Nation. It must be fixed. Watch the trailer here” says the Former Guy, promoting a “movie” that isn’t even out yet.

The Alaska State House Committee on Committees, which really needs a better name, like “Chamber Committee” or something because this one freaking sucks, voted 5-2 on Monday to remove State Rep David Eastman, R-Wasilla (yes, Sarah Palin’s town) from his committee assignments over his membership in the Oath Keepers, a MAGA terrorist group whose leadership have been charged with seditious conspiracy against the United States, the Anchorage Daily News reports. The motion, which again, two elected legislators so far were against because they don’t have a problem with the Oath Keepers, will be brought to the full floor on Wednesday where it is expected to pass, per sources. No word yet on whether lawmakers will move to expel Eastman from the Alaska state House completely, though it is reportedly under consideration.