Biden's GOP-Strom Thurmond comparisons anger conservative social media users: 'Always personal attacks' https://t.co/wDA5hukdq6

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2024

Conservatives are angry, Fox News reports while citing a major new source of that anger and subsequent angry reactions it prompted. The right wing media outlet gave no indication of when or how the anger could abate, nor did they attempt to balance it out with any sort of reporting on what is making conservatives happy or contented, raising concerns that they may be overly focused on anger – or worse that they could be playing a role in continuing to stoke and amplify that anger.

All three of the realistic candidates – including Trump-endorsed frontrunner Bernie Moreno – to take on incumbent Dem Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown have said publicly they favor some sort of national abortion ban, a potential vulnerability given that last year voters approved a measure amending the Buckeye state’s constitution to permanently enshrine the right to it, NBC News reports.

“I think abortion is going to be a pivotal issue that Sherrod Brown runs on,” said Republican strategist Mehek Cooke, who worked on the failed campaign to defeat the abortion measure. “For any candidate that emerges as a front-runner for the GOP, it’s really important for him to understand that this has to be more of a national discussion. A majority of Ohioans voted against a ban, and we need to figure out moving forward where that middle ground is so that as Republicans we can still protect life.” Already Moreno’s campaign is trying to spin away from his call for a 15 week ban, with his spokesworm Reagan McCarthy saying “Bernie is proudly pro-life and believes we can unify this country around ending late term abortion once and for all. He doesn’t believe in letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and his goal is to protect as many babies as possible.”

White nationalist conspiracy freak Georgia MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she’d “be honored to serve President Trump in his next administration in any capacity that he asks me. But I’m certainly particularly interested in Homeland Security.”

“I think it’s the top issue in the country,” she continued, reducing the Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency that oversees the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, FEMA, and all sorts of critical infrastructure cyberdefenses and other extremely important functions, down to just the border and immigration as the “top issue.” The former CrossFit gym owner/Jewish space laser research expert who also worked at her dad’s construction business before getting elected said she feels “very strong about being capable for that role” given her “background in an executive position.”

The sinful degenerate rapist adulterer pornstar fucker was at least an hour and a half late to his speech to the Christian Broadcasters Association on Thursday night, struggling to read the teleprompter as he outlined his agenda to deport millions of illegal aliens and people who look like illegal aliens, abolish the Department of Education, and somehow force auto manufacturers to keep AM radio in newer models because pretty much all Christian talk radio is on AM.

If it wasn’t already clear enough even before that Alex Smirnov asshole got cuffed, a number of House Republicans are now saying publicly on the record that their failed effort to impeach President Joe Biden for something, they never figured out what, is now extra failed, Politico reports.

“I happen to know there are like 20 Republicans who are not in favor of a Biden impeachment. Mainly because it smells bad what he did, it looks bad, but when you ask them what crime is committed – they can’t tell you,” said “moderate” Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon. On Thursday House Freedom Caucasians Chair Scott Perry told the crowd at CPAC he doubted the House GOP could “get to a point, quite honestly, where we’re going to be able to impeach him, especially with the thin margin that we have.” Ohioan David Joyce said he’s “not seen any evidence. I’ve heard a lot of accusations,” of theoretically impeachable misconduct by Biden in the years before he was sworn in.

Other Freedom Caucasian Ralph Norman said simply “no” on whether they’d be able to swing a Biden impeachment after squeaking through DHS Secretary Alex Mayorkas on the second try, especially since the House GOP “should have been at 100 percent” on that vote.

A New Orleans magician tells NBC News that Steve Kramer, a consultant working for dead-end Biden primary challenger Congressman Dean Phillips, hired him to create the fake robocall of the 46th president telling New Hampshire residents not to vote in last month’s primary.

“I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” said Paul Carpenter. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed,” even though it should’ve been pretty fucking obvious based on the content of the call telling people not to vote.

Once valued at around $5 billion, Vice Media announced Thursday it is essentially shutting down its eponymous news website and lay off hundreds as the company faces its likely breakup by creditors after declaring bankruptcy last May, the Associated Press reports.

Frequently lauded for producing pieces for the overlooked (and highly profitable) young adult news consumers, Vice was seen as a “new media” darling.  While the website was still available, the new management said it will not be updated.  Its publishing arm, Refinery 29, will be sold off.   The closure comes within a 12-month period where online media sites Jezebel, BuzzFeed News, and the Messenger all shut down operations.

“If your church is not talking about political issues, if they’re not talking about how to save our country, you need to find a new church!” RSBN host Brian Glenn proclaims to the audience before he denigrates various evangelical branches.  Extolling the audience to get political because “we saw what happened the last four years, exactly what the Biden Administration can do”–he talks about strong GDP growth, 13 million new jobs, deficit reduction, infrastructure upgrades and increased veterans benefits (among other things) like those are bad things–before launching, of course, into praise for Donald Trump, being thankful that he is so rich he can afford to fend off these godless attacks.

“President Donald J Trump respectfully submits this motion seeking dismissal of Counts 1 through 32 on the basis of presidential immunity, as these charges stem directly from official acts by President Trump while in office. Specifically, President Trump is immune from prosecution on Counts 1 through 32 because the charges turn on his alleged decision to designate records as personal under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’) and to cause the records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. As alleged in the Superseding Indictment, President Trump made this decision while he was still in office. The alleged decision was an official act, and as such is subject to presidential immunity,” write fat former President Trump’s lawyers in the intro to their motion to dismiss all the charges for stealing classified documents from the White House.

It wasn’t the only bullshit attempt to toss the charges Team Orange filed late Thursday. Next they claimed he was immune because of the “Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith by Donald J Trump” because “The Appointments Clause does not permit the Attorney General to appoint, without Senate confirmation, a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States. As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action.” Then it was “President Donald J Trump respectfully submits this motion to dismiss the Superseding Indictment pursuant to the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’). First, the PRA conferred unreviewable discretion on President Trump to designate the records at issue as personal. As such, President Trump’s possession of those records was not ‘unauthorized’ as alleged in Counts 1 through 32. Second, the PRA’s exclusive remedy for records collection efforts by NARA is civil in nature and forecloses criminal investigations,” and blah blah blah.

Lastly they also filed, as an exhibit, some bullshit lawsuit stupid John Solomon filed against Merrick Garland claiming something something “Crossfire Hurricane.” Solomon, lol.

Former South Carolina Republican Governor and last remaining challenger to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential nomination race Nikki Haley hummina-hummina’ed her way through trying to explain her support of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, saying on CNN Thursday that “if you look in the definition, an embryo is considered an unborn baby.”

On Wednesday, Haley, who herself had IVF to conceive her child, said straightforwardly, “embryos, to me, are babies.”  On Thursday, she tried to hone the edges of her statement, claiming that while she believes that embryos are babies, she’s actually okay with legally slaughtering those babies (like she opted to after her child was born).  “I think that the court was doing it based on the law, and I think Alabama needs to go back and look at the law,” she stammered.

In a week, the number of clinics providing in vitro fertilization in Alabama has been nearly cut in half as a third provider announced on Thursday it was halting treatments, further limiting reproductive care for couples seeking medical help to have children, the Washington Post reports.

Since the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that frozen embryos are legally children in Alabama, clinics providing IVF and freeze unused embryos for possible use at a future date have reviewed their practices for legal liability under the law.  Of the state’s seven clinics, three have shut down entirely; three have stopped disposing of frozen embryos; and the status of the last one is unknown.

The IVF practice at the University of Alabama Hospital’s reproductive care clinic in Birmingham shut down on Wednesday.  Later that day, a partner in the private practice Alabama Fertility confirmed they were ceasing operations.  On Thursday, the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile said it was closing.

Poor Jamie Comer. Less than a year ago, he was all over Fox “News”–they earned those quotation marks in 787.5 million ways–touting how important and vital the vaunted 1023 Form from the FBI would be to the impeachment of Joe Biden.

Now, not so much, given the witness has been arrested TWICE.  Now, the piece of vital information Comer insinuated the FBI was hiding to protect Biden is less than nothing, completely insignificant to Comer’s quest.  But yet, Comer still brings up “China and Bulgaria” while not providing any evidence of Joe Biden’s wrongdoing.  More gaslighting from a Party that has no policies on which it can run.

After falling short in his presidential campaign, Republican Florida Governor and boy whose dream of being a jockey died at 5’4″ Ron DeSantis continues his culture war agenda on the poor people of Florida, who now must deal with a new law banning anyone 16 and under from social media platforms that just passed the state legislature and is waiting on DeSantis’s desk for his signature.

As the Sarasota Herald-Tribune notes, however:  Hours before the bill was delivered to DeSantis’s desk, Ron himself dissed the bill saying the legislation wasn’t “there yet,” meaning that it wasn’t what he wanted to see.

“Parents need to have a role in this,” DeSantis said, ready to let a marauding band of undereducated, conspiracy-minded parents determine laws again, like he did with book banning. “I do think parents are concerned about social media and what goes on there, and I do think they think it’s a problem. But I also think that for people that are in high school, it’s not as simple.”

Odysseus, the lunar mission by Intuitive Machines, attempts to be the first US-made device to make a controlled landing on the Moon in more than 50 years on Thursday, with the craft scheduled to touch down on the surface in crater Malapert A at about 6:24 p.m. ET.  If successful, it would be the first landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Records from the Alexandria City (Virginia) Courthouse indicate a widespread investigation into CPAC relating to accusations that the organization’s involvement and potential cover-up of multiple sexual harassment by the group’s chair, Matt Schlapp, the Daily Beast reports.

Officials at CPAC, including one who reportedly oversaw the destruction of official documents related to at least two complaints male staffers filed with the organization’s leadership complaining about groping and sexual advances by Schlapp, who has made a career and gets $600,000 per year to incite anger about conservative culture wars they make up, like openly gay men corrupting others.

Lynne Rassmussen, CPAC’s manager of strategic initiatives, received a subpoena after staffers said she directed interns to shred documents after CPAC staffer Carlton Huffman detailed an attack by Schlapp and provided emails and text messages supporting his claim.  The shedding reportedly happened after CPAC and Schlapp were both advised that a legal case was pending, making the destruction of potential evidence charges in play.

Republican political consultant/Russian disinformation propagator Alex Smirnov was taken into federal custody again on Thursday on a warrant from the Central District of California. A federal magistrate in Nevada had released the asshole but Hunterghazi special counsel David Weiss had petitioned a judge on Wednesday to revoke the bail citing flight risk. It’s not clear if this new arrest warrant was definitely pursuant to Weiss’s motion though it would seem likely.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 39,000 for the first time ever on Thursday because Trump’s poll numbers and investors think he’s going to win something something.

BREAKING: @America1stLegal sued the Fulton County DA https://t.co/pRxyaXHQRN

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) February 22, 2024

President Joe Biden will meet with murdered Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s widow Julia and daughter Dasha Navalnya in California on Thursday afternoon, NBC News reports. Biden should probably ask Yulia and Dasha if they agree that Robert Hur’s report and the James Comer-Jim Jordan impeachment inquiry, are just as bad as what Putin and his goons did to Alexei.

No he fucking shouldn’t but we’d like to think just casually throwing Biden’s political problems in there was a good way of illustrating how meekly the media’s been covering the other guy.

Republicans on Georgia’s state Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday voted to advance a bill switching automatic voter registration from opt-out on driver’s license applications to opt-in, the AP reports on a natural response to too many people voting in elections over the last few years.

“The intent is certainly not to reduce voter registration, the intent is to clarify and make voter registration more accurate,” said committee chair Max Burns. Majority Leader Steve Gooch echoed that line of bullshit with a rhetorical question. “Are we just trying to get a lot of people on the rolls and two or three years later we’re purging all of them because 90% never went to vote anyway?”