Times of Israel: “An array of North Carolina Jewish figures and the Republican Jewish Coalition have called on North Carolina’s lieutenant governor to apologize for past comments about Jewish control. Jewish Insider on Friday quoted a number of Jewish officials who were appalled by Mark Keith Robinson’s comments on Jews and their influence. Robinson, a Republican, has said he will not apologize for things he said before he became an elected official. ‘His refusal to apologize is troubling and unacceptable to us,’ said Matt Brooks, the director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. ‘These kinds of comments have no place in our society.'”

“Typical of the reactions of North Carolina’s Jews was Rabbi Lucy Dinner of Temple Beth Or in Raleigh. ‘I believe that Mark Robinson’s election in North Carolina is, as we would say in Yiddish, a shanda,’ meaning a disgrace, she told Jewish Insider. Among Robinson’s offenses was an attack in 2018 on the creators of the Black Panther character, after a movie about the Marvel Comics superhero came out. ‘It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist,’ said Robinson, who is African American, in a Facebook post. ‘How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?” he added, invoking a Yiddish pejorative for African Americans. ‘Shekels,’ the name of the Israeli currency, is often used in anti-Semitic literature.”

“After hitting the jackpot with Donald Trump’s endorsement for MyPillow and after a million-dollar bet on Fox News ads had paid out handsome returns, Michael Lindell exploited another chance to boost sales: marketing MyPillow to people who would tune in and attend rallies to hear Lindell tell the ‘Big Lie’ that Dominion had stolen the 2020 election. As when MyPillow previously faced legal action for deceptive marketing campaigns, Lindell knew there was no real ‘evidence’ supporting his claims. And he is well aware of the independent audits and paper ballot recounts conclusively disproving the Big Lie. But Lindell – a talented salesman and former professional card counter – sells the lie to this day because the lie sells pillows. MyPillow’s defamatory marketing campaign – with promo codes like ‘FightforTrump,’ ’45,’ ‘Proof,’ and ‘QAnon’ – has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40% and continues duping people into redirecting their election-lie outrage into pillow purchases” reads the civil complaint filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Mike Lindell.

“About 19,000 Pennsylvanians have left the Republican Party since Jan 6. That’s a drop in the bucket for a state with more than 8.8 million registered voters, and almost 3.5 million Republicans. But it’s also an unusually high rate of defections: Almost two-thirds of the voters who have switched parties this year left the GOP, compared with a third or less typically. And there are signs of a broader political shift underway” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“These are often longtime party loyalists, highly engaged voters who cast Republican primary ballots in low-profile, off-year elections, according to an Inquirer analysis of voter registration data. They haven’t changed their political ideologies, they said in interviews. But they’re registering as third-party or independent voters because they believe that their political home, now led by Trump, has changed around them. That raises the prospect of a Republican primary electorate even friendlier to Trump and Trump-allied candidates – something that could have big implications for the party in competitive races for governor and U.S. Senate next year.”

Axios: “In his first post-presidential appearance, Donald Trump plans to send the message next weekend that he is Republicans’ ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’ with a vise grip on the party’s base, top Trump allies tell Axios. A longtime adviser called Trump’s speech a ‘show of force,’ and said the message will be: ‘I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.’ Payback is his chief obsession. Axios has learned that Trump advisers will meet with him at Mar-a-Lago this week to plan his next political moves, and to set up the machinery for kingmaking in the 2022 midterms. Trump is expected to stoke primary challenges for some of those who have crossed him, and shower money and endorsements on the Trumpiest candidates.”

United Airlines announced it was grounding all 24 of the Boeing 777 airliners in its fleets, and the Japanese airline regulatory agency order all 777s to be pulled from service, after a 777-200 plane lost parts of its engine after taking off from Denver International Airport, the Guardian reports.

Between Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airlines, Japan has 32 777s flying in its domestic fleet.  It specifically called for airlines to ground planes using the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Sunday that its preliminary findings determined that two of the fan blades in the engine that broke apart had been cracked, causing the major malfunction.  Parts rained down on a Colorado neighborhood, but luckily no one on the ground was injured.  The plane circled back to DIA and landed safely.

Axios: “In a first taste of Republicans’ Biden-era villains, the Virginia GOP is rolling out some of Donald Trump’s favorites – China and Hillary Clinton – for the state’s 2021 election. Virginia’s off-year elections are an early battleground in defining the Republicans’ post-Trump identity. A spate of attacks against GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin appears to be drawing from the same playbook, hyping familiar Trump-era GOP villains. The latest round of ads came from a Virginia-based nonprofit called Americans for Limited Government.”

“ALG has placed radio and television spots going after Youngkin. The former private equity executive is well-positioned in the primary, already raising well over $1 million, and he has substantial personal wealth he can pour into his campaign. Among his formidable challengers are former state House Speaker Kirk Cox and state Sen. Amanda Chase, a hard-right Trump ally. The ads dubiously accuse Youngkin of funding BLM protests and Hillary Clinton. They also mention his business dealings in China, with the radio ad punctuating the attack with gong sound effects.”

“Send an invoice to overcharging utility companies for twice the electric bill. Line item: Failure to adequately prepare for natural disaster.”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Texas Moves to Protect Residents from Extreme Spike in Energy Bills“, posted Sunday afternoon

Texas Republican Congressman Michael McCaul said he wants Texans to be able to pay the outrageous power bills–some running into six digits–the utilities that failed to deliver electricity issued in the wake of widespread power outages that left millions without heat or lights, essentially rewarding the power companies for spiking prices during a crisis they caused.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” McCaul said “Yes, that’s the current plan with the federal assistance — be able to help the homeowners both repair, because we have a lot of water leaks, a lot of water damage, pipes bursting, but also their electricity bills as well.”

The power outages in Texas were caused largely by failures of fossil fuel companies to properly winterize their pipelines and systems, causes critical sensors to freeze, stopping fuel to power plants.  Republicans have made the false claim that the blackouts were due to the use of windmills and other renewable energy sources, that  make up approximately 10% of Texas’s power supply.

Florida Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist requested that he US Department of Justice investigate the actions of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis relating to the location of a vaccine distribution site in a development run by a political donor, Evan Donovan of WFLA reports.

Last week, DeSantis defended the state-funded vaccination site at Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County, where only people from two wealthy ZIP codes were eligible for the 3,000 available inoculations.  Crist notes that the ZIP codes also have some of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in the county.

DeSantis brushed aside allegations of political favoritism–Lakewood Ranch was developed and is run by company run by a person, Rex Jensen, who donated $900,000 to DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaign–saying that he chose the location because of the concentration of elderly people in the development.  DeSantis also threatened to pull the vaccination site and put it in a different county if people continued to question his decision.

New York City will close two ice rinks in Central Park at the end of the day Sunday after cutting all business ties with their sponsor, the Trump Organization, CBS News reports.

After incendiary comments by Donald Trump and his son Junior at a January 6th rally in Washington, DC incited a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, many business and organizations cut ties with Trump-run businesses.  New York City opted to cancel the operating agreements the Trump had for the ice rinks, and it has not yet signed with a new management company.

The ice rinks were going to close Sunday to allow the Trump Organization to remove its signage and property.  The city opted to close the rinks rather than operate them itself.

Nearly half of the Republicans who voted for Donald Trump said they would abandon the GOP to join a political party formed by the former president if he should choose to create one, a new poll from USA Today shows.

In a sign of the deep divide within the Republican Party, the Suffolk University/USA Today poll shows that 46% of 2020 Trump voters would join a new party led by the twice-impeached Trump, whereas only 26% would keep with the GOP.  The balance, 28%, were undecided.

The poll shows how the influence of Trumpism has permeated the Party, and does not bode well for long-term stability within Republican ranks.  Trump has vowed to support candidates within the GOP who have sufficiently displayed loyalty to him, promoting challengers to mainstream conservatives.

“A leader in an alleged Oath Keepers conspiracy in the US Capitol insurrection claims she was given a VIP pass to the pro-Trump rally on January 6, had met with Secret Service agents and was providing security for legislators and others, including in their march to the Capitol, according to a new court filing. Attorneys for Ohio Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins detail how the efforts among paramilitants who are now accused of conspiracy on January 6 were closer to the apparatus around then-President Donald Trump and his rally than was previously known.”

“By sharing the new details in the filing Saturday, the defense attorney for Watkins, a former Army ranger who served in Afghanistan, argues for her release from jail on bond and other restrictions as she awaits trial. ‘On January 5 and 6, Ms. Watkins was present not as an insurrectionist, but to provide security to the speakers at the rally, to provide escort for the legislators and others to march to the Capitol as directed by the then-President, and to safely escort protestors away from the Capitol to their vehicles and cars at the conclusion of the protest,’ the court filing said on Saturday. ‘She was given a VIP pass to the rally. She met with Secret Service agents. She was within 50 feet of the stage during the rally to provide security for the speakers. At the time the Capitol was breached, she was still at the site of the initial rally'” – CNN.

BBC: “President Trump’s meetings with Kim Jong-un were among the most eye-catching moments of his presidency. In the third and final episode of a new BBC series Trump Takes On the World, directed by Tim Stirzaker, we discover new details about how these summits came about, and speak to those who were in the room when the two men met. Trump’s second summit with Kim Jong-un, in Vietnam, did not go to plan. As negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program broke down, Trump left abruptly, saying to the press: ‘Sometimes you just have to walk.'”

“But before he departed, the then US president did make one astonishing offer to Kim. Matthew Pottinger, the top Asia expert on Trump’s National Security Council told us: ‘President Trump offered Kim a lift home on Air Force One. The president knew that Kim had arrived on a multi-day train ride through China into Hanoi and the president said: ‘I can get you home in two hours if you want.’ Kim declined.”

Here’s Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson spending a few more of the remaining seconds of his career doing nothing at all for his constituents, per usual. What he’s bitching about doesn’t really matter, he might as well be singing Gangnam Style to the camera for all I care.

One mini-soundbite that sticks out however is the mention of “74 million Americans who voted supported and voted for President Trump” who apparently are very special to Senator Johnson. We hear that get tossed around a lot by Republicans like it’s supposed to have some sort of significance to us. The actual number is 74,216,154. Sometimes they round up to 75 million, because MAGA Republicans are assholes. Anyway, when we see Josh Hawley saying “74 million Americans are not going to be told their voices don’t matter” a week before he encouraged the Capitol riot and Newt Gingrich writing “Internet Giants Can’t Send 74 Million Americans Down a ‘Memory Hole’” in the aftermath, it seems like they’re trying to say this imposing bloc is supposed to have more clout than the other 260 million or so Americans, or even the 81 million that voted for Biden instead of Trump. Or something. I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be.

CNN’s Saturday article about the blowback to Republican Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Trump includes this hilarious excerpt from an angry local business owner:

“Charlie Selzer, the 78-year-old owner of River Styx Market, said he was “surprised” that his congressman had crossed Trump, considering he voted for the lawmaker in November. Selzer, through the market he has owned since 1982, has become one of the biggest purveyors of Trump memorabilia in Northeast Ohio, selling almost anything you could think of with the Trump name emblazoned on it, including Trump flags that tout his possible 2024 run. He was unambiguous when asked whether Gonzalez should keep his job. ‘He’s like all the rest of them who voted for impeachment, I think they are going to find themselves out of a job in a couple years,’ said Selzer, making clear that if he is forced to choose between someone like Gonzalez and Trump, he will go with the latter every time.”

#TexasStrong pic.twitter.com/gK4DHtsvLU

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) February 21, 2021

Bloomberg: “The Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE Covid-19 vaccine appeared to stop the vast majority of recipients in Israel becoming infected, providing the first real-world indication that the immunization will curb transmission of the coronavirus. The vaccine, which was rolled out in a national immunization program that began Dec. 20, was 89.4% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infections, according to a copy of a draft publication that was posted on Twitter and confirmed by a person familiar with the work. The companies and Israel’s Health Ministry worked together on the preliminary observational analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.”

“The results, also reported in Der Spiegel, are the latest in a series of positive data to emerge out of Israel, which has given more Covid vaccines per capita than anywhere else in the world. Nearly half of the population has had at least one dose of vaccine. Separately, Israeli authorities on Saturday said the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was 99% effective at preventing deaths from the virus. The early results on lab-confirmed infections are important because they show the vaccine may also prevent asymptomatic carriers from spreading the virus that causes Covid-19, something that hadn’t been clear so far. Stopping transmission in this way is a key factor as countries seek to lift contact restrictions and re-open economies.”

“Celebrating DOJ’s 150th year reminds us of the origins of the Department, which was founded during Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The first Attorney General appointed by President Grant to head the new Department led it in a concerted battle to protect black voting rights from the violence of white supremacists, successfully prosecuting hundreds of cases against members of the KKK.”

“Almost a century later, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 created the Department’s Civil Rights Division, with the mission ‘to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.’ That mission remains urgent because we do not yet have equal justice. Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system; and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change. 150 years after the Department’s founding, battling extremist attacks on our democratic institutions also remains central to its mission” – Judge Merrick Garland opening statement via Senate Judiciary Committee.

Note the lack of the word “Pence” in the flag’s design.

Texas residents who were lucky enough to maintain their power during the recent winter storm that hit the region are now facing utility bills that could run into the five-figure range, the New York Times reports.

Sixty-three year-old Army veteran Scott Willoughby, who was getting by on a Social Security check each month, drained his savings account to pay the power bill of more than $16,000 that had been automatically charged to his credit card.  That 70 times the amount he normally pays each month.

Famous for its lack of regulation, many Texas have their power bills linked to the wholesale price of electricity, which has skyrocketed as the storm hit.  CNN reports on people charged $7,000; the Dallas Morning News report that some people racked up $5,000 in charges over five days.