A new YouGov/Economist survey finds 56 percent of Republicans and “Republican-leaners” think the United States is currently in a recession. To be fair, 25 percent of those identifying as Dems and 40 percent overall did too, but Jesus Christ that is still so fucking stupid.

US military forces kaboomed some asshole who led the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia responsible for last month’s attack that killed three American service members, sources tell the New York Times.

The unidentified scumbag was blasted inside his car in the Baghdad suburb of New Baghdad on Wednesday. Locals were pissed and gathered around the melted vehicle to chant “America is the devil” which is really hurtful and offensive to our great nation when you think about it.

Jesus dork House Speaker Mike Johnson tells Breitbart he’s offended by President Joe Biden correctly saying he’s Trump’s bitch and the failure of the Senate’s bipartisan border bill is on him.

“It was offensive,” Johnson told. “I don’t think anyone is buying it. Everyone understands this all changed dramatically when he walked into the White House. Now, we’ve shown, and we continue to show the American people step-by-step, how he and Mayorkas orchestrated this. There is a reason why only 18 percent of Americans in the latest polls approve of the administration’s handling of the border. His overall approval rating is only 37 percent in the last poll I saw. That means they know he has to do something to address the border, and he won’t. The idea that he could blame Republicans for the catastrophe they created is laughable. It’s time for him to take ownership.”

The interview, which we’re not even sure was real or was just a press release laundered by Breitbart, goes on for considerably longer and has Johnson contradicting himself on whether legislation is necessary or not because he keeps bringing up that “HR2” line of bullshit.

Expect a lot more of this now that the Senate GOP officially tanked their own bill this afternoon.

Feckless soon-to-be-ex-RNC Chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel told fat former President Trump she would resign after the February 24th, South Carolina GOP primary, CBS News reports in a follow-up to the New York Times’s Tuesday story about duck lips’ pending departure in an election year.

Earlier on Wednesday Axios printed an analysis saying that the coming party regime change, among other signs of consolidating his power, are Trump’s means of fortifying himself as it becomes more likely than not that he will face trial in DC and be convicted in the final few months of the 2024 campaign, trying to get as much campaign shit out of the way before the courts take up most of his time again. “Trump’s campaign is wary of the competing demands on Trump’s time – and eager to get Republicans united behind him immediately,” Axios writes, threatening us with a good time.

A team of University of Kentucky computer science researchers who spent 10 months painstakingly trying to delicately open and then develop an AI tool to help translate scrolls recovered from the destroyed ancient Roman city of Herculaneum tell McClatchy that not only were there no clues to vexing mysteries of lost antiquity but the researchers were unable “escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2,000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life.”

“As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant. Such questions will be considered frequently,” the ancient author wrote at some point before they were incinerated by the massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The writer then complained that some sort of ideological adversaries “have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular, when it is a question of definition… for we do [not] refrain from questioning some things, but understanding or remembering others. And may it be evident to us to say true things, as they might have often appeared evident!”

The UKY team say they’ve only uncovered and translated 5 percent of the legible-ish ancient Greek written on the scrolls. We’re looking forward to the part that says “Man there’s a lot of smoke and earthquakes coming out of Vesuvius today huh. Maybe I should check it out after I try to hand my demo scroll to Pliny the Elder. I just know it’ll be my big break in the philosophy scene after all these years of obscurity. Just have to make sure that punk ass nepo baby Pliny the Younger is distracted.”

Not one to be slowed down by a federal appeals court telling him that he doesn’t have presidential immunity for attempting a violent coup while he was in office, disgraced former President Trump is going to argue to another federal appeals court that he has presidential immunity for stealing and then refusing to return classified documents while he was out of office, CNN reports.

The notice of the argument came in some motions filed on Tuesday so it’s likely Donald’s lawyers hadn’t counted on the DC decision coming earlier in the day. Waste not, want not, right?

Spartan doesn’t like writing in the first person. He also really doesn’t like that Caro-esque “this reporter” or “this writer.” Stretching the boundaries of logic – as well as Jack’s tolerance for getting associated with certain deranged rants – to use “we” is the least bad option which is why he uses it.

Third person is stupid too, but it’s necessary here if only for a brief anecdote about something stupid and funny that happened on Twitter to preface the rest of this gutter-level stupid story.

Asked by a reporter Wednesday about Texas Congressman Al Green being wheeled onto the floor in a hospital gown to cast the deciding vote against impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Tuesday night’s disaster, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “It’s not our responsibility to let House Republicans know which members will or will not be present on the House floor.”

Jeffries also told reporters he’s not going to let up on giving Team MAGA shit for sabotaging fat former President Trump’s other commands on border policy, saying “The reality is that extreme MAGA Republicans have walked away from any effort to fix our broken immigration system, or address the clear challenges that we have… Republicans have been ordered by Trump not to solve the challenges at the border because they want to use the border as an electoral issue. That’s going to backfire. The Republicans thought they set a border trap with Democrats, and they fell into it”

On the question of “Former President Donald Trump recently said that if elected, he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. Do you think that this is a good or bad idea for the country?” a new UMass Amherst survey finds an unsurprisingly high number of self-identified Republican respondents – 74 percent – saying it was either definitely or probably a good idea.

The same survey also found on the question of “From the following list, please select the individual who is next in line to become President of the United States if President Joe Biden is no longer able or willing to serve as President of the United States,” only 89 percent of total respondents answering correctly and saying Vice President Kamala Harris. Actual second-in-line House Speaker Mike Johnson came in second at 6 percent, raising the possibility that the respondents might’ve just sort of tuned out and thought the poll operator had mentioned Harris. Maybe.

A number of current and former members of the European Union Parliament tell Newsweek that they’re well within their power to sanction former top Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson for platforming Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, subjecting Tuck to travel bans and other penalties.

“First of all, it should be remembered that Putin is not just a president of an aggressor country, but he is wanted by the International Criminal Court and accused of genocide and war crimes,” said EU Parliament member and former Estonia Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. “Carlson wants to give a platform to someone accused of crimes of genocide – this is wrong. If Putin has something to say he needs to say it in front of the ICC. At the same time Carlson is not being a real journalist since he has clearly expressed his sympathy for the Russian regime and Putin and has constantly disparaged Ukraine, the victim of Russian aggression. So, for such propaganda for a criminal regime, you can end up on the list of sanctions. This concerns primarily travel ban to EU countries.”

Jesus dork Speaker of the House Mike Johnson of course had a terrible night on Tuesday but isn’t in danger of losing his job quite yet (“But if he has any more days like yesterday, that idea might change fast,” Politico Playbook writes) probably thanks to staying on top of more menial tasks like firing his PAC’s fundraising firm, Axiom. There’s no mystery why he fired them, as last month the Holy Orange God Emperor issued an edict declaring that Republicans “who want to stay on President Trump’s good side should not hire Axiom. They are enemy Number 1.”

The edict, issued in response to Axiom founder Jeff Roe supporting heels-wearing Governor Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential effort and running the “Never Back Down” PAC, is non-negotiable.

Or maybe it’s a little negotiable as Johnson’s main guy at Axiom, Jason Herbert, is just going to continue billing Johnson’s PAC through a different company, according to the Washington Post. It’s not clear if Herbert will have to stand before the Orange Allah and slice his hand open with a kukri to swear a blood oath. Or, more seriously, if this workaround might still be seen as a violation of Trump’s edict and Johnson is committing a grave act of heresy against his true Lord and Savior.

The leadership of a Dutch party being courted by Islamophobic white nationalist MP Geert Wilders to form the working coalition he needs to ascend to the premiership abruptly fucked off Tuesday, leaving Wilders and his far-right extremist Freedom Party adrift for the time being, AFP reports.

Anti-corruption guy Pieter Omtzigt’s New Social Contract (NSC) party announced they were “finished” with the current round of coalition talks, though Omtzigt said they would remain “constructive” and did not foreclose coming back to the table. At this point however there’s a possibility Wilders could be frozen out if the Labor-Green alliance are able to form a coalition.

Wilders also publicly floated calling for another general election – and probably wants to given polls showing his party only growing in popularity – but AFP’s article doesn’t explain whether that option is available to him now or if/when the other guys’ shot at building a coalition fails.

Neither does Bloomberg’s Wednesday article about it, which also contains a mistake: “Right-wing parties have found a natural habitat in opposition – using the mainstream government as a battering ram and a foil for their populist policies. But once you start winning elections, it becomes a different story, and Wilders’s struggles are being felt in other nationalist corners of Europe,” they wrote, as if this kind of shitshow is only happening in Europe. Good insight otherwise though.

Partisan shenanigans and dirty tricks are getting a bit out of hand in Pakistan ahead of Thursday’s crucial general elections, with pranksters killing at least 24 people in two separate explosions: 14 dead outside the offices of an independent candidate in the Pishin district of the Balochistan region and another 10 killed outside the local headquarters of the Jamiat Ulema Islam in Qilla Saifullah, a town near the border with Afghanistan, Sky News reports on the wacky election hijinks.

And this was just Wednesday as on Monday at least 10 cops were killed in an attack on a police station in the northwestern Draban region – where last week a National Assembly candidate was shot dead. On the same day an unspecified party leader was shot dead in his office in Balochistan.

New Hampshire Democrat cradles newborn daughter while advocating for abortion rights during floor debate https://t.co/TXswq5QpZf

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 7, 2024

Incumbent Joe Biden was declared the winner of the Nevada primary, taking 90% of the vote with 62% of the ballots counted, according to USA Today, while the Republicans voted for literally no candidate instead of Nikki Haley.

Yeah, that’s right:  “None of the above” beat Nikki Haley, the only other candidate on the ballot, in the meaningless Nevada Republican primary.  Donald Trump will be awarded the state’s delegates through a future caucus in a totally-not-rigged election.

A Tennessee man who intended to travel to the Mexican border with an arsenal of weapons and explosives to “stir up the hornet’s nest” because migrants are invading the United States was arrested by federal agents on Monday after selling an undercover agent an unregistered silencer, NBC News reports.

According to the criminal complaint, Paul Faye had been on the FBI’s radar before recent conversations, when he told FBI agents that he was in contact with militia groups in Tennessee and three other states as he coordinated some paramilitary action with them along the border to gain media attention.

“What I hope happens. Is called a domino effect. I want, I want the news to find out about it,” Faye said according to the criminal complaint, which also noted Faye believed the government was planning to wage war with citizens soon.

https://youtu.be/ESmIix1X-zM

Hours after reports emerged that Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel offered her resignation to Lord High Monarch and One Who Shall Not Be Challenged Donald Trump, stuffed foam magnate Mike Lindell told multi-shirted criminal Steve Bannon he’s ready to step into the breach to save the RNC, saying it will empower him with “the tools [he needs] to secure these elections immediately.” Unreassuringly, there is a non-zero chance Lindell would win a Party election.