CNN: “The White House is working to quickly fill the vacant seats on the Postal Service Board of Governors. ‘President Biden has made clear his feelings on the current leadership of the Postal Service and the challenges it faces, and his team is working as quickly as possible to fill board vacancies so the USPS can effectively fulfill its vital mission for the country, and live up to the commitments made to its workers,’ Biden spokesperson Michael Gwin told CNN. As the administration works to assure lawmakers with promises of action, another Democratic lawmaker is putting pressure on President Joe Biden to remove embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.”

“In a letter sent Friday, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley slammed DeJoy for his ‘failed leadership,’ accusing him of sabotaging the agency through changes that slowed down mail delivery. ‘DeJoy continues to compromise the people’s ability to receive everything from paychecks to life-saving medication, with new delay tactics and higher postage rates,’ Pressley wrote, calling for a complete overhaul of leadership at the agency. ‘The current Board of Governors has been complicit in the systematic deterioration of the USPS, a blatant dereliction of duty that requires swift removal and replacement.'”

A mother and son from Iowa have been arrested by federal investigators for their roles in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack at the Capitol, becoming the second such pair to be indicted for their participation, NBC News reports.

Deborah Sandoval, of Des Moines, and Salvador Sandoval Jr., of Ankeny, were arrested Friday by the FBI.  They face charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.  The mother also faces a count of impeding or disrupting the orderly conduct of government, and her son faces a count of obstructing, impeding or interfering with law enforcement.

The specifics of the charges are not public because the filings have been sealed, perhaps because the pair are part of a larger case or because additional charges are pending. 

In a transparent attempt to deflect from Ted Cruz abandoning his dog, Snowflake, to hit the beaches in Cancun, Newsmax host and Bill O’Reilly-wannabe Greg Kelly attacked one of the First Dogs, 11-year-old Champ, calling him “a little rough” and saying he needs “a bath and a comb.”

https://youtu.be/ZEwXsKmXsDA

• White House communications staffer TJ Ducklo resigned February 13th, exactly four years to the day Michael Flynn resigned from the Trump administration.  Somehow, I don’t think they’ll be a special counsel appointed to investigate the president’s involvement this time.
• Windmills work better to heat homes than Greg Abbott’s hot air.
• The GOP wants to portray itself as a Big Tent party, including trying to market itself as the Party for union members, but it’s difficult to fill a tent if you’ll only allow people like you in, and you kick out everyone who doesn’t like clowns.  
• Boebert doesn’t know about Constitutional amendments.  Cawthorn doesn’t know the Vatican isn’t subject to US law.  And Junior apparently thinks Texas is run by Democrats.  The stupidity of Republicans is what’s controlling the Party. 
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume VII”

Reuters: “The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has subpoenaed a New York City property tax agency as part of a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s company, the agency confirmed on Friday, suggesting prosecutors are examining the former president’s efforts to reduce his commercial real-estate taxes for possible evidence of fraud. The subpoena issued to the New York City Tax Commission is the latest indication that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is looking at the values Trump assigned to some commercial properties in tax filings and loan documents.”

“Along with information already subpoenaed from creditors, the tax agency documents would help investigators determine whether Trump’s business inflated the value of his properties to secure favorable terms on loans while deflating those values to lower tax bills for those same properties. New York City Tax Commission President Frances Henn confirmed the subpoena in response to an inquiry from Reuters. The subpoena likely would compel the agency to provide detailed income and expense statements the Trump Organization would have filed as part of an effort to lower tax assessments on some of its commercial properties, according to people familiar with the commission’s operations.”

The Department of Defense Inspector General announced that it will open an investigation into the decision by Donald Trump at the end of his administration to move the command center for Space Force out of Colorado and to Alabama, the Associated Press reports.

Currently located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, the Space Force command mirrors the Air Force’s Space Command.  Trump stated at a 2020 Colorado Springs reelection rally that the command would stay in the city, which is also home to the US Air Force Academy.

However, Trump lost Colorado to President Joe Biden in the November election, as did incumbent Republican Senator Cory Gardner, for whom Trump campaigned.  The city and the state were shocked by Trump’s mid-January announcement.

“After the humiliating failure of his mercenary expedition in Libya, sources told me Erik Prince used former Acting DNI @RichardGrenell to lobby the Pentagon to allow Prince’s mercenaries take over US military operations in Africa, but [Chris Miller] shot the idea down. … Another person who was trying to get Prince a DoD contract in Africa was former [Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense] for African Affairs Pete Marocco. Handing responsibilities to Prince would avoid the optics of fighting what Marocco called ‘goat herders'” – Rolling Stone’s Seth Hettena

Note: Grenell announced his candidacy for California governor.

As Texas thankfully starts to come out of these storms, we need to carefully answer the most important Q: How do we make sure this never happens again? How do we make sure the TX grid can handle demand & 4mm people aren’t left w/o power? Good read on this:https://t.co/KpEwhMK7qb

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 20, 2021

“New Zealand’s prime minister launched a public appeal for help tracing the owners of a toy bunny after it was left behind at an airport. Jacinda Ardern urged her thousands of social media followers to help reunite ‘Wink’ the bunny with his family after the toy was handed to her by staff at Hamilton Airport. Posting a selfie of herself holding the rabbit on Thursday, Ms Ardern wrote: ‘Landed in Hamilton this morning and the airport team kindly let me use their board room for a couple of meetings. ‘As I was leaving they introduced me to this wee bunny. It was found at the airport on the 28th of January and they’ve been looking for its owner ever since! ‘I think everyone who has a little person in their lives will know how important these precious things can be, so maybe you can help us find whoever ‘wink’ belongs to? (NB I think ‘wink’ has only acquired a name, safety jacket, mask and ID since living at the airport…hopefully that won’t stop it being recognised!)'”

“Hamilton Airport gave a ‘blimmin’ exciting’ update the following day, revealing it had managed to track down the toy’s owner. A spokesperson for the airport wrote on Facebook: ‘We found Wink’s family!!! He belongs to little Beauen, who has had him since birth, and his name is Nu Nu!! ‘We’ll be back with more news tomorrow – Beauen’s Mum can’t wait to tell him in the morning!!! ‘Thanks everyone – what an awesome ending to Wink’s adventures!!!'” – The Independent.

Nine members of the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers are facing charges regarding a conspiracy among the group members to plan and execute the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Capitol, the Washington Post reports.

Federal prosecutors charge the nine “did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and others known and unknown” in the attack which resulted in seven deaths and more than 130 police officers injured.  There were six people charged Friday, with charges added to three others, all military veterans, previous indicted.

Conspiracy charges were filed against Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50, both of Woodstock, Ohio; and Thomas E. Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va. The six new defendants include siblings Graydon Young, 54, of Englewood, Fla., and Laura Steele, of Thomasville, N.C. It also includes married couples Kelly and Connie Meggs, 52 and 59, of Dunnellon, Fla.; and Bennie and Sandra Parker, 70 and 60, of the Cincinnati area.

“Erik Prince, the former head of the security contractor Blackwater Worldwide and a prominent supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, violated a United Nations arms embargo on Libya by sending weapons to a militia commander who was attempting to overthrow the internationally backed government, according to U.N. investigators. A confidential U.N. report obtained by The New York Times and delivered by investigators to the Security Council on Thursday reveals how Mr. Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries, armed with attack aircraft, gunboats and cyberwarfare capabilities, to eastern Libya at the height of a major battle in 2019. As part of the operation, which the report said cost $80 million, the mercenaries also planned to form a hit squad that could track down and kill selected Libyan commanders.”

“Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, became a symbol of the excesses of privatized American military force when his Blackwater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007. In the past decade he has relaunched himself as an executive who strikes deals – sometimes for minerals, other times involving military force – in war-addled but resource-rich countries, mostly in Africa. During the Trump administration, Mr. Prince was a generous donor and a staunch ally of the president, often in league with figures like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone as they sought to undermine Mr. Trump’s critics. And Mr. Prince came under scrutiny from the Trump-Russia inquiry over his meeting with a Russian banker in 2017. Mr. Prince refused to cooperate with the U.N. inquiry; his lawyer did not respond to questions about the report. Last year the lawyer, Matthew L. Schwartz, told the Times that Mr. Prince ‘had nothing whatsoever’ to do with military operations in Libya. The report raises the question of whether Mr. Prince played on his ties to the Trump administration to pull off the Libya operation” – NYT.

Politico: “A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit Rep. Devin Nunes filed in 2019 claiming he was libeled by CNN in reports alleging he was involved in an effort to dig up Ukraine-related dirt on Joe Biden. In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain granted the news network’s motion to dismiss the suit, which sought a whopping $435 million in damages.”

“CNN’s story asserted that a witness was prepared to testify that Nunes, then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a close ally of former President Donald Trump, met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in Vienna in 2018 to gather information that might be politically damaging to Biden. Nunes adamantly denied the allegation and named CNN in a flurry of lawsuits he filed against news organizations in 2019. CNN said it wasn’t vouching for the accuracy of the account about Nunes but was relaying testimony available from a witness to the matter, Lev Parnas, a businessman who worked closely with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.”

“The Republican Party of Virginia has voted four times since December to nominate its candidates for this year’s statewide races at a convention instead of in a primary election. But in a sign of the Trumpian times of denial and dispute in the G.O.P., nearly half of the party’s top officials keep trying to reverse the results and get a primary. The refusal of these Republicans to admit they have lost, or to agree on a set of nominating rules, has fractured a state party already in upheaval: Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2009, and they now find themselves with legislative minorities for the first time in a generation. Even the broken windows at the state party’s Richmond headquarters haven’t been fixed for months.”

“Just a month after former President Donald J. Trump left office, Virginia’s drama is the first state-level boomerang of his legacy. Some state Republicans have internalized the lesson that there is no benefit to accepting results they don’t like, and the result is a paralyzed party unable to set the date, location and rules for how and when it will pick its 2021 nominees for statewide office, including the race for governor. The intraparty dispute has scrambled longstanding political alliances and left Virginia Republicans in the awkward position of defending stances that were once anathema to a party that has been redefined by the Trump era” – New York Times.

TMZ: “Kim Kardashian has filed to divorce Kanye West after 7 years of marriage, but our sources say it’s as amicable as a divorce can be. Kim is asking for joint legal and physical custody of the couple’s 4 kids. Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ Kanye is fine with the joint custody arrangement, and we’re told both Kim and Ye are committed to co-parenting together. There’s a prenup and we’re told neither party is contesting it. In fact, our sources say they are already far along in reaching a property settlement agreement.”

The Verge reports that a video published by YouTuber Felix Kjellberg – aka PewDiePie – ripping on a channel of songs and nursery rhymes for toddlers called CocoMelon has been taken down by the network because it “encouraged harassment” of the other channel’s creators. Kjellberg’s video called the kids’ channel audience “a bunch of fucking virgins” and showed child actors attacking the channel with plastic weapons. This video was an allegedly comically overstated response to CocoMelon knocking Kjellberg’s out of the number one spot as YouTube’s most subscribed.

Now, I don’t know much about this PewDiePie character besides the fact that he’s a bro-y gamer from Sweden whose humor has crossed a line on several occasions. I know the word “controversial” has been ascribed to him many times in media reports. He’s worth a lot of money, so I guess being an edgelord works out for people sometimes. But why would someone attack a kid’s channel?

Here’s why: CocoMelon is fucking awful. It’s unwatchable. Videos for toddlers are by their nature not going to be very appealing to adults, but they should at least be tolerable. Cocomelon videos are fucking crimes. If you haven’t seen this one, try to picture what these lyrics would sound like in a song: “Shoes. Shoes. Time to wear your shoes. Yes, yes, yes, I want to wear my shoes.” It’s abominable. And the worst part is you know the assholes that created it just learned how to game YouTube’s search algorithms better than people with actual talent.

YouTube should go fuck themselves for taking down PewDiePie’s video. I didn’t even get to see it and still attacking the nightmare factory that is CocoMelon has valorized him in my mind.

CNN: “Dubai’s royal family says Princess Latifa is ‘being cared for at home,’ dismissing videos in which she accused them of holding her hostage since she attempted to flee abroad in 2018. ‘In response to media reports regarding Sheikha Latifa, we want to thank those who have expressed concern for her wellbeing, despite the coverage which certainly is not reflective of the actual position,’ the statement by her family said, according to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embassy in London. In secret recordings obtained by the BBC and shared with CNN, the daughter of Dubai’s billionaire ruler claimed she was being held hostage in a ‘villa converted into a jail’ with no access to medical help. CNN has not independently verified the videos, released as part of BBC Panorama’s ‘The Missing Princess’ documentary earlier this week, or Latifa’s current whereabouts.”

Protecting and defending the Constitution doesn’t mean trying to rewrite the parts you don’t like.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 19, 2021

DailyKos compiled a district-by-district map of the 2020 election, finding that Biden won 224 total Congressional districts to Trump’s 211, with a crossover of 9 Biden-won districts that elected a House Republican to Trump’s 7 with a Dem. Key point of the analysis:

“The number of crossover districts – 16 in total – is extremely low by historical standards but continues a downward trend reflecting our nation’s increased political polarization. Following the 2016 elections, there were 35 crossover seats, which was an increase from 2012 but a steep drop from the 83 produced by the 2008 Democratic wave. For much of the post-war era, there were 100 or more such districts, according to the Brookings Institution – to find a lower proportion in a presidential year, you have to go back to the GOP landslide of 1920, when there were just 11 crossovers. These districts are now concentrated in just 11 states, but Pennsylvania holds a unique distinction of being the only state in the nation that’s home to both a ‘Biden-Republican’ and a ‘Trump-Democrat’ seat: the 1st and 8th districts, respectively.”

Screenshot from GreatAwakening.win, a QAnon-centric Reddit clone modeled after TheDonald.win