BREAKING: The UK economy has officially entered recession, figures showhttps://t.co/9fRk4LZP76

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 15, 2024

Seriously, though, the data on the UK economy point to a short, easy recession–using the commonly understood definition of a recession which is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.  (Declaring a recession officially really is “a thing” done by a bunch of economists at the National Board of Economic Research who look at more than if the overall economy shrinks, one of the reasons why no recession was declared in early 2022… but that’s a discussion for another day.). The UK saw dips of 0.2% in Q3 2023, and last quarter, when the US saw a 3.3% increase, the UK dipped 0.3%.  Thanks, Dark Brandon!

Asked if he believes Oversight Committee Chair Jamie Comer knew the information presented by Republicans was false in the Super Big Biden Impeachment Fiasco Hearings ft. Jim Jordan, with Marjorie Taylor Greene as the Snuffalufagus, Florida Democratic rising star Jared Moskowitz asked the key question:

I’ll ask it a different way:  When did James Comer know this was false, and how long did he conceal that from the American people?  I mean, are you telling me he just found out through the indictment, or did he know it all along, or at least a period of time that this 1023 form was made up.  Those are real questions we need to get to the bottom [of], in addition to Speaker Johnson ending this sham impeachment.  We should be looking into that, and whether James Comer should be chair of that committee.

Last month, we told you about the “Gilbert Goons,” a group of primarily white teenagers from privileged communities in Gilbert, Arizona tied to a series of attacks on students in the region.  Well, they’re learning the lesson all privileged white kids learn:  it helps when you know people.

A kid was arrested in connection with one of the attacks, which have left at least one dead and many hospitalized after being attacked at random in mall and other public parking lots, but being the stepson of a school principal in the district, he had the charges dropped by the prosecutor, the Arizona Republic reports.

The father of the victim in that attack said police notified him that prosecutors refused to charge the teen, even though the attack against his child had been recorded and posted online, as many of the attacks had been.  “I’m super pissed about this,” he told the newspaper. “Where are people supposed to go for justice?”

Opting not to add to his Supreme Court menu, Donald Trump has dropped his appeal to the high court of a federal appeals court ruling allowing several civil lawsuits by members of Congress and law enforcement officers who were at the Capitol during the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

Politico reports that Trump had claimed his activities that day were covered as official acts and that he has–let’s say it all together–absolute presidential immunity so he can’t be sued.  By pulling his appeal to the Supreme Court–something he can refile should he so choose–Trump allows some discovery and other procedures to progress.  He obviously feels that if through some amazing legal-esque gymnastics by Clarence Thomas and his other minions on the Court, he can simply throw that case before the lower court.

UPDATE ON ANOTHER CASE:  Remember Trump’s pending class action suit relating to fraudulently marketing the alleged pyramid scheme/phone company ACN?  Well, back in January, that federal case has been dismissed without prejudice, allowing the four plaintiffs who sought class-action status to file in their individual states.

“These cartoon characters don’t have the pedigree to be in the same courtroom as the former president,” Fox host Jesse Watters says, deftly homogenizing casual racism with Nazi-level eugenics-speak.  “But remember, this is a Fanny [sic]-and-Loverboy scandal; this is a Biden scandal.  The loverboy, Fanny, Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith’s team and New York Attorney General Letitia James have all been meeting with Biden’s White House Counsel, the Justice Department, or with Kamala Harris.  The Biden White House is overseeing the prosecution of his political rival, but just like everything Biden oversees, it’s falling apart.”

Falling apart?  Can you say, 13 million jobs, 3.2% annual GDP growth, and falling deficits, arse?

Chairman @jimjordan has said that the “best example” and “most compelling evidence” of wrongdoing by POTUS are the Burisma allegations that relied solely on an FBI source’s info.

Today, that FBI source was indicted for lying about Burisma.

Time to end this sham impeachment. https://t.co/XZjmmG6mXa

— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) February 16, 2024

There are times when we go out to dead-named Twitter looking for a specific clip of some Republican being hypocritical.  In this case, we were looking for a clip of sex abuse misprisioner and useless Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan spouting how credible and critical the recently indicted witness was to his investigation of President Joe Biden.  But kudos to the staff of New York Democratic Congressman (and man who’s got a good social and RW media game himself) Daniel Goldman for pulling the clip for us.

A number of House Republicans implored their caucus mates to untangle their Gordian knot of intraparty squabbles and objections to clear a bipartisan-supported Ukraine aid bill, the Washington Post reports, and they’re willing to work with Democrats to find a way to bypass Speaker of the House Mike Ja-hesus-son’s obstruction.

A member of a bipartisan group of Congressman who met with Ukrainian President Vlodomor Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week, Arkansas Republican Congressman French Hill said during a GOP Conference meeting this week that they were making the bill too “complicated.”  Florida’s Mike Walt proposed linking Ukraine aid to border security while eliminating billions in humanitarian aid to various war-stricken countries, which sure does seem like making things less complicated.  So, yeah, the Republicans are in disarray.

Now that he’s out of the national spotlight having failed in his presidential run, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis needs help getting out of the culture war he started. Saying that he wants to “prohibit bad actors in school leadership positions from intentionally depriving students of an education by politicizing the book review process,” DeSantis asked the state legislature to jigger with the book-banning law he signed to enflame hatred against the LGBTQ, Black and other communities so the law prevents people from petitioning to ban books with violent or sexual content.  Like the Bible.

West Palm Beach’s Fox affiliate WFLX reports DeSantis wants to target a handful of “bad actors” who, he says, are abusing the law for their personal political purposes, very much unlike the intent of DeSantis’s law which was for his personal political purposes.  “I am calling on the Legislature to make necessary adjustments so that we can prevent abuses in the objection process and ensure that districts aren’t overwhelmed by frivolous challenges” to books like the Bible, Johnny Appleseed and “The Giver,” DeSantis said.

Saying the Supreme Court needed to essentially slow down and chill, Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a 17-page reply to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a speedy review of Trump’s claim that he enjoys a mystical absolute presidential immunity, saying that it really isn’t in the public interest to have a speedy trial because Donald Trump’s claim “on immunity will require careful and deliberate review of myriad historical sources and could even require additional fact-finding below.”

“This Court should stay the D.C. Circuit’s mandate pending the filing and disposition of an en banc petition in the D.C. Circuit and, if necessary, a petition for certiorari in this case. The panel opinion departed from its usual practice of withholding its mandate pending the filing of such a petition,” Trump’s lawyer argues.  “This decision was ill-considered. En banc review is a vital component of the lower-court percolation that assists this Court, as the example of Nixon v. Sirica demonstrates.”

Montana Freedom Caucasian Matt Rosendale on Thursday dropped his Senate bid just six days after launching it to the consternation of Mitch McConnell and the NRSC, Politico reports. “With Trump endorsing my opponent and the lack of resources, the hill was just too steep,” Rosendale said in a statement, ending what could’ve been a messy primary against golden boy candidate Tim Sheehy.

The source of innumerable urns depicting countless sex acts between genders, species and sometimes celestial beings, Greece has become the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports.  A vote in the parliament on a proposal from center-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis won a 176-76 floor vote, with two voting present and 46 representatives absent.  The bill also extends applicable parental rights to same-sex couples.

While polling shows a slight majority of the nation favoring expanding the right, few on the political spectrum has used the issue to divide the country, and there was no strong opposition to the administrative measure.   The law will not impact how the Greek Orthodox Church views same-sex marriage–it’s against it–although Church leaders joined far-right politicians to oppose the measure, saying it will lead to drag queen story time in public schools the erosion of traditional family values.

“Today, a federal court unsealed a two-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Central District of California charging Alexander Smirnov, 43, with making a false statement, in violation of 18 USC § 1001, and creating a false and fictitious record, in violation of 18 USC § 1519, for statements he made that were recorded in an official record of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) known as a Form 1023. David C Weiss, Special Counsel, made the announcement.”

“On February 14, 2024, a federal grand jury returned the indictment and Smirnov was arrested at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, after his arrival in the US from overseas. Later today, Smirnov will have an initial appearance at the federal courthouse in the District of Nevada at 2:30 pm pacific time. According to the indictment, Smirnov was a confidential human source (CHS) with the FBI. As alleged in the indictment, despite repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information to the FBI and that he must not fabricate evidence, Smirnov provided false derogatory information to the FBI about Public Official 1, and Businessperson 1, the son of Public Official 1, in 2020, after Public Official 1 became a presidential candidate.”

“Friend, this is bad. Really bad. Fani Willis was responsible for TAKING MY MUGSHOT! FIRST she coordinated with the Biden White House to TAKE ME DOWN! THEN she hired her LOVER to go after me and PAID HIM WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS! But now, RIGHT NOW, her corruption is being broadcast LIVE to the WHOLE WORLD! I TOLD YOU SHE’S CORRUPT AS HELL! We need a historic pushback right here, right now, if we’re going to BEAT this Witch Hunt. Before the day is over, I’m calling on ONE MILLION pro-Trump Patriots to chip in and say, FIRE FANI WILLIS NOW!” writes some asshole Trump campaign lackey – sender ID “President Trump Emergency Broadcast” – in a Thursday fundraising email that just miiiiight have been sent a little too early judging by the way Willis’s testimony is going because so far she’s been crushing it and if Team Orange are probably doomed in their disqualification/case derailing effort if they can’t corner her.

Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday preserved the current trial schedule in Donald Trump’s stolen government documents case set for Florida, ordering that all pre-trial motions continue to have a February 22nd deadline.  Trump’s legal team had attempted to, again, delay legal proceedings to try to postpone his potential guilty verdicts for as long as possible.  The ruling deals another blow to Trump’s obstruction campaign.

Douchebag Biden documents fuckup special counsel Robert Hur will testify publicly to Jim Jordan’s circlejerk investigation committee on March 12th, the Washington Examiner reports.

White nationalist alcoholic Steve Bannon on Thursday lamented the “lawfare” against disgraced former President Trump, fearing that “they” even the Treasury and Federal Reserve are in on the plot to destroy him. “That’s why the inflation number yesterday shocked them. Every part of the apparatus is focused on the complete and total destruction of Donald Trump. So that even if he was to take the White House in November this year that, he would be too politically, financially, and quite frankly, physically and maybe even mentally hurt that he then couldn’t effectively govern,” as if the fat orange bastard was able to effectively govern during his failed administration.

BREAKING: THE WITCH HUNT HAS ENDED! COMPLETE AND TOTAL EXONERATION! As Fulton County, Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade testifies over his relationship with District Attorney Fani Willis, the Seychelles Attorney General’s office has dropped the witchcraft charges against opposition leader Patrick Herminie, the BBC reports on the end of a real WITCH HUNT!

GAME OVER! THE FAKE CHARGES HAVE BEEN DROPPED! Herminie told reporters the charges were an “abuse of power” and that president Crooked Wavel Ramkalawan has “no right to arrest someone and put them in prison for nothing at all.” PATRICK HERMINIE WILL BE YOUR RETRIBUTION!

“The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence worked in consultation with the Biden Administration to notify Congress of this national security threat. In addition, language in the bipartisan notification issued by the Chair and Ranking Member to all Members of the House was cleared by the Administration prior to its release. The House Intelligence Committee voted 23 to 1 to make this information available to Members of Congress. White House officials confirmed that, in their view, the matter was ‘serious’,” says House Intel Chairman Mike Turner in a statement on his alarmism over the Russian nuclear space weapon thing that is still on their drawing board, after fellow Republican Congressman Andy Ogles complained to Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday.

Justice Department press release: “A January 2024 court-authorized operation has neutralized a network of hundreds of small office/home office (SOHO) routers that GRU Military Unit 26165, also known as APT 28, Sofacy Group, Forest Blizzard, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, and Sednit, used to conceal and otherwise enable a variety of crimes. These crimes included vast spearphishing and similar credential harvesting campaigns against targets of intelligence interest to the Russian government, such as US and foreign governments and military, security, and corporate organizations. In recent months, allegations of Unit 26165 activity of this type has been the subject of a private sector cybersecurity advisory and a Ukrainian government warning.”

“This botnet was distinct from prior GRU and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) malware networks disrupted by the Department in that the GRU did not create it from scratch. Instead, the GRU relied on the ‘Moobot’ malware, which is associated with a known criminal group.”

“Non-GRU cybercriminals installed the Moobot malware on Ubiquiti Edge OS routers that still used publicly known default administrator passwords. GRU hackers then used the Moobot malware to install their own bespoke scripts and files that repurposed the botnet, turning it into a global cyber espionage platform. The Department’s court-authorized operation leveraged the Moobot malware to copy and delete stolen and malicious data and files from compromised routers. Additionally, in order to neutralize the GRU’s access to the routers until victims can mitigate the compromise and reassert full control, the operation reversibly modified the routers’ firewall rules to block remote management access to the devices, and during the course of the operation, enabled temporary collection of non-content routing information that would expose GRU attempts to thwart the operation.”

Fat former President Trump went on a long rant Thursday after exiting the New York City courtroom where he found out he’ll have to go on trial next month on charges of illegally paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election, complaining that he’ll have to campaign at night after being in court all day, randomly bitching about NATO again, and false claiming people are being murdered right outside the courthouse. The usual bullshit.