Nine people are confirmed dead and at least 140 are missing in the Indian state of Uttarakhand after a glacier broke free from a Himalayan mountain and released a massive torrent of water that wiped out everything downstream, the Associated Press reports.

The massive wave of water and mud left the landscape a disaster, turning an otherwise lush mountainside into a gray dystopia. The water wiped out a hydroelectric dam and destroyed another one under construction. The water was being contained by the Nanda Devi glacier feeds the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers.  At the site of the hydroelectric dam project on the Dhauliganga was destroyed, 42 workers being trapped in construction tunnels.  Another 140 workers were missing. More than 2,000 members of the Indian military were dispatched to the area for search-and-rescue and emergency services.

George P. Shultz, who held three different Cabinet positions in two Republican administrations, has died in California at the age of 100, the oldest surviving former Cabinet member, NBC News reports.

Shultz served as the Secretary of Labor and as Treasury Secretary for Richard Nixon.  He also spent time as head of Nixon’s Office of Management and Budget.  Under Ronald Reagan, Shultz served as Secretary of State, where he worked to improve relations with the Soviet Union.

Shultz was integral in negotiating the first-ever treaty limiting Soviet land-based nuclear missiles.  When he retired from government, he went on to be a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution.

“What first seemed like a petty partisan power play in the U.S. Senate has escalated into a setback for President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice before it even really leaves the starting block. At the center of the imbroglio is a figure who is accustomed to being collateral damage of partisan warfare on Capitol Hill: Merrick Garland. The former federal judge and Supreme Court nominee is Biden’s pick to serve as attorney general – but unlike other key Cabinet appointees, he has yet to receive a confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee for his nomination to lead the Department of Justice.”

“That’s because it took the parties’ Senate leaders weeks to agree on how to divide resources and set the rules in the evenly split Senate. During that time, Democrats were technically in the majority, but the last session’s rules were still in place, meaning Republicans ran the committees. So when the incoming Judiciary chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), wanted to schedule a hearing for Garland, he first had to ask the permission of the outgoing chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – and Graham said no. With the impeachment trial of former President Trump slated to take up at least all of next week, and the chamber scheduled to be in recess the following week, it’s possible that another month could pass before Garland takes over as attorney general, said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a member of the Judiciary panel and a close ally of Biden” – Daily Beast.

AFP: “US President Joe Biden said he won’t lift sanctions against Iran as long as the Islamic republic is not adhering to its nuclear deal commitments. Asked whether he would halt sanctions to convince Iran to return to the bargaining table, Biden offered a clear reply in a CBS interview aired Sunday: ‘No.’ The journalist then asked if the Iranians would first have to stop enriching uranium, which drew an affirmative nod from Biden. The 2015 landmark deal has been hanging by a thread since Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from it in 2018 and reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Tehran a year later suspended its compliance with most key nuclear commitments to the deal. The Biden administration has expressed willingness to return to the deal, but insisted that Tehran first resume full compliance.”

Bloomberg: “Renaissance Technologies, the investing giant that just posted its worst-ever returns across its public funds, has been hit with at least $5 billion in redemptions. Clients pulled a net $1.85 billion across the three hedge funds in December and requested a net $1.9 billion back in January, according to investor letters seen by Bloomberg. Investors are poised to yank another $1.65 billion this month, the letters show.”

“Those figures could be offset if there are any inflows in February or if investors decided to walk back any of their redemption requests. Billionaire Jim Simons’s firm, a quant-investing pioneer, is coming off a rough year. Its three public hedge funds posted double-digit losses in 2020 as their algorithms were thrown out of whack by market swings the computers had never seen before. At the same time, its fund for employees and insiders soared 76% last year, Institutional Investor reported.”

ANTIFA is back on the streets of Washington DC causing mayhem.

Last night, they chanted "if we don’t get it, burn it down" as they confronted police officers.

ANTIFA is a domestic terrorist organization and should be declared as such. More to come on that!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 7, 2021

New York Times: “In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media. Fox Business canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines. Fox News, which seldom bows to critics, has run fact-checking segments to debunk its own false claims about electoral fraud.”

“This is not the typical playbook for right-wing media, which prides itself on pugilism and delights in ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its content. But conservative outlets have rarely faced this level of direct assault on their economic lifeblood. Smartmatic, a voter technology firm swept up in conspiracies spread by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, filed its defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire on Thursday, citing Mr. Dobbs and two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, for harming its business and reputation.”

“Trump considering launching social media network called ‘Trumper’ according to his senior adviser Jason Miller” reports Paul Joseph Watson, correspondent for some bullshit MAGA news site.

“Senior Democrats on Monday will unveil legislation to provide $3,000 per child to tens of millions of American families, aiming to make a major dent in child poverty as part of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief package. The 22-page bill to dramatically expand direct cash benefits to American families was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release.”

“Under the proposal, the Internal Revenue Service would provide $3,600 over the course of the year per child under the age of 6, as well as $3,000 per child of ages 6 to 17. The size of the benefit would diminish for Americans earning more than $75,000 per year, as well as for couples jointly earning more than $150,000 per year. The payments would be sent monthly beginning in July, a delay intended to give the IRS time to prepare for the massive new initiative” – Washington Post.

“Two-thirds of Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds, putting the new commander-in-chief on steady footing after more than two weeks in office. In line with attitudes measured just after his inauguration, twice as many Americans approve of Biden’s leadership on the virus than disapprove, a feat that his predecessor never accomplished in the year of ABC News/Ipsos polls on the coronavirus while he was still in office.”

“Former President Donald Trump’s approval on handling the coronavirus was higher than his disapproval only once, when it spiked to 55% in mid-March last year. But for nearly the entirety of the pandemic, support for his response eroded, falling and remaining underwater for months. In ABC News/Ipsos polls from July through October last year, more than 6 in 10 disapproved of Trump’s handling of the virus. Among Democrats and independents, Biden’s approval is overwhelming – with 96% and 67%, respectively, viewing his response favorably. Despite these polarized times, Republican approval for Biden’s coronavirus performance is still at 33% in the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News” – ABC News.

Washington Post: “The nation’s mail service is slower and more erratic than it’s been in generations, via the confluence of an abrupt reorganization and pandemic-era anomalies that has fueled demands for reform and fundamentally different ideas on how to achieve it. On one side is Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who, with the backing of the U.S. Postal Service’s governing board, is expected as soon as next week to outline a new vision for the agency, one that includes more service cuts, higher and region-specific pricing, and lower delivery expectations.”

“But congressional Democrats are pressing President Biden to install new board members, creating a majority bloc that could oust DeJoy, a Trump loyalist whose aggressive cost-cutting over the summer has been singled out for much of the performance decline. The fight over the agency’s future is expected to be fraught and protracted, leaving Americans with unreliable mail delivery for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, customers are fuming on social media and to postal workers about late holiday packages and days-long delivery gaps. Only 38 percent of nonlocal first-class mail arrived on time in late December, compared with 92 percent in the year-ago period, according to data reported in federal voting lawsuits. The agency has not disclosed 2021 performance data.”

“Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is almost certain to end in acquittal, yet it will deliver a public reckoning for his presidency and influence whether his populist supporters continue to dominate the Republican Party. The nine House managers prosecuting Trump, arguing their case as much to the American public as to the senators who’ll serve as jurors, will focus on the most searing moments of the nationally televised Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

“Still, even with evidence including video of the day’s violence and the fiery rhetoric Trump used to egg on his loyalists, the Democratic prosecutors faces an almost impossible task of winning enough Republican votes to convict him. Trump’s legal team is basing its defense on the constitutional question of whether a former president can be convicted of an impeachable charge, while also saying that his actions fell short of incitement and were protected by the First Amendment. Those arguments have already found favor with enough Senate Republicans to suggest Trump will escape conviction, as he did in first impeachment trial a year ago. The televised proceedings are set to open at 1 p.m. Tuesday, creating an extraordinary confrontation likely to cement public attitudes on Trump’s behavior in office, pro and con, playing out at a time Americans normally would have turned their attention away from a defeated incumbent. Short of a conviction, Democrats will be looking to blunt Trump as a political force within the GOP, including his prospects for another White House run in 2024 and his ability to shape the lineup for the 2022 midterm elections” – Bloomberg.

Team Ruff and Team Fluff face off Sunday to determine the champion of the televised dogs sort-of-playing-football universe in an event that has already been filmed as well as heavily edited as Puppy Bowl XVII airs on Animal Planet and Disney+ starting at 2pm EST Sunday. The event will be hosted by rapper Snoop Dogg and white collar criminal Martha Stewart for some reason.

First Lady Jill Biden will make an appearance during Puppy Bowl XVIII with a pre-filmed PSA for pet adoption featuring First Dogs Champ and Major – the latter of the two a rescue dog himself. Many of the “athletes” playing in the game will be made available for adoption to viewers, contact information for their current shelters will be aired during the show.

CNN: “Nothing unusual happened when Lou Dobbs hosted his Fox Business show on Thursday evening. His hour was full of Fox’s usual themes about ‘radical Dims’ (Democrats) and Big Tech ‘abusing their power.’ ‘Join us here tomorrow,’ he said at the end of the show. ‘See you then.’ But that, it turned out, was his final broadcast. Fox pulled the plug on Friday in a cancellation so swift that it surprised even Dobb’s detractors. A day later, TV insiders are still abuzz about why it happened and what the decision augurs about Fox. Fox isn’t answering. But it seems to be an isolated incident, not a signal of a broader editorial change of direction by the company. It is certainly not the start of a shift to the center.”

“Instead, Fox may have soured on Dobbs long ago and used the post-election period to make a change. Thursday’s $2.7 billion lawsuit by Smartmatic may have been the final straw. Employees at Fox are privately wondering if Dobbs had some sort of falling out with Rupert or Lachlan Murdoch, the father and son pair who control Fox Corporation. The people who would know are not talking. Officially, Fox simply said that Dobbs’ banishment was part of a broader programming revamp. And Dobbs declined to comment. But he spent Friday night and Saturday retweeting messages from dozens of his fans, including some who criticized Fox for the change.”

https://twitter.com/jezztoot/status/1345055497276289024

“A former digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference, who also worked for pro-life groups and designed social media ads for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, has been charged with distributing child pornography. D.C. Metropolitan Police arrested Ruben A. Verastigui on Friday after an investigation revealed he allegedly ‘distributed, received, and possessed images of child pornography’ between March 2020 and February 2021. Jared Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, first reported Verastigui’s arrest on Twitter.”

“Verastigui, who posted a photo of himself at the White House just two months ago, worked for the Senate Republican Conference until July 2020, according to his LinkedIn. The investigation into his alleged offenses took place while he was still working for the GOP. He had been working as a communications manager for a non-profit called Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions until Saturday. A spokesperson for the non-profit said: ‘The details of the allegations against Mr. Verastigui are tragic and shocking. He is no longer employed by the organization and we are prepared to fully cooperate with law enforcement requests in this matter to any extent needed.’ The Daily Beast was unable to reach Verastigui and a family member didn’t respond to a request for comment” – Daily Beast.

Forbes: “Jim Hoft, founder and editor of the far-right publication The Gateway Pundit, was suspended from Twitter Saturday evening for violating the platform’s rules. The account, @gatewaypundit, no longer has a presence on Twitter, save for a message that indicates the account has been suspended. Prior to the suspension, the @gatewaypundit account had more than 375,000 followers. A spokesperson for Twitter said, ‘The account was permanently suspended for repeated violations of our civic integrity policy.'”

“The policy restricts users on the platform from sharing information that undermines elections and other civic processes, including sharing misinformation regarding the outcome of elections. Hoft and his publication have been widely criticized for spreading false information, including promoting conspiracy theories regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. A recent study published by The German Marshall Fund of the United States found that The Gateway Pundit was the leading single source of misinformation shared by verified accounts on Twitter in 2020. In 2019, Wikipedia deprecated The Gateway Pundit, removing its qualifications to serve as a source of legitimate information. The community cited “falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories” that appear on The Gateway Pundit as the reason for the decision.”

The Wyoming Republican Party voted Saturday to censure the state’s sole member of the House of Representatives, Liz Cheney, for violating its ethos by voting to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection, CNN reports.

The state GOP called on Cheney to resign her seat and stated that it would withhold any future funding for her campaign efforts.  It also wants her to repay the state Party for funds it spent to get reelected in the 2020 election.

Like the other nine Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, Cheney has been the subject of Republican ire for daring to break Party ranks to impeach Trump.  Republicans have undertaken an effort to cancel the impact of independent-thinking members who don’t comply the wishes of the now-ousted titular leader of the GOP.