In the wake of essentially learning of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization through media reports, the White House made sure it was cc’d on the Justice Department announcement that Attorney General Merrick Garland is scheduled for back surgery this weekend, so he will temporarily hand leadership of the department to his deputy, ABC News reported.

Garland will be under anesthesia for approximately 90 minutes for a minimally-invasive unspecified procedure; Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco will take the DOJ reins for a time before, during and after the procedure.  While he’ll be working from home during his recovery, he is not expected to be back at the Justice Department office until the week of February 5th.

Employing the defense strategy unsuccessfully used by both Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in recent court appearances, outgoing NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre admitted in testimony that he improperly used association funds to pay for family travel and that he should not have taken multiple vacations paid for by NRA vendors, the Associated Press reports.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued LaPierre and three other current or former NRA executives, claiming that there was widespread self-dealing and financial abuse by the executives for the non-profit association.  For example, LaPierre admitted to using $1,000 of NRA funds to buy his wife a designer handbag, and he said he accepted more than half a million dollars worth of private jet flights, including some for flights that he was not on, but instead arranged for family members.

The Iranian government stated it had nothing to do with the drone attack on a US military outpost in Jordan on Sunday that killed three American military personnel and injured more than two dozen, CBS News reports.  The problem with the statement is, Iran built the drone used and it supports the group that took credit for the attack, Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The attack, at a location called Tower 22, reportedly succeeded because the attack drone came into the base’s perimeter at around the same time a US-operated drone was also returning to the base.  This led to some confusion about drones, allowing it to impact within the base without anti-drone measures being taken.  It’s unclear if the timing of the attack was planned for the return of the US drone or if it was just coincidental.

“Regional resistance factions do not receive orders from Iran, and Iran does not interfere in the decisions of the resistance to support Palestine or defend itself,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said during a press briefing on Monday.

A company linked to flyers left at churches and other locations around Florida advertising free flights out of state for migrants is a Florida-based state government contractor owned by the same Texas company that manages the DeSantis administration’s flights of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and other locations, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Written in English, Spanish and Creole, the flyers promote a group called My Bright Horizons which has also contacted churches, local police departments and community-assisting non-profit organizations looking for migrants to fly out of state to fulfill .

My Bright Horizons is an alias of Access Restoration Services, a Texas company allocated $20 million in the state funds to continue the DeSantis program, including being paid $15 million so far this fiscal year.  It is one of several companies Florida pays to ship migrants out of the state.

Texas Republican Attorney General and guy with the abby-normal heart Ken Paxton subpoenaed medical records from a Georgia-based telehealth company that provides care to trans people, seeking information on youths from Texas who sought treatment, the Washington Post reports.  The clinic, QueerMed in Decatur, refused to give Paxton any records, citing HIPAA protections, but noted that the subpoena covered records going back through January 2022; the Texas law banning gender-affirming care for minors went into effect 20 months later, in August 2023.

The grand jury subpoena read aloud on the House floor on Monday stems from a criminal investigation of an unnamed Dem suspected of misusing the funds provided to each member for personal security, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports on the boring reason behind the mystery.

Two brothers in Queens were arrested on Monday after the Department of Homeland Security and the NYPD found an arsenal of weapons and homemade bombs at their family’s apartment, along with a target list of police officers, judges, politicians and celebrities the pair listed as “human sacrifices,” WABC-4 New York reports.  The brothers also targeted “banker scum” and “corporate scum.”

Andrew and Angelo Hatziagelis, ages 39 and 51 respectively, were found with eight operational IEDs, two loaded, non-traceable AR-15s “ghost guns,” two “ghost gun” handguns, another two 3D-printed “ghost” handguns, more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition, and three sets of body armor.

Along with all of that was a collection of notes outlining their plans and targets, with messages like “Wipe out the scum.  Wipe out the earth,” while another described their intended victims as “[h]uman sacrifices,” saying their murder was “[p]ermitable but only for the corrupt rapists, pedophiles, murderers, politicians, judges.”

Arggghhhhh… The MAGA assclowns cannot let this go so neither can we. There is something grotesquely fascinating about their collective inability to stop ruminating about the woman and the potential threat she poses politically, but what it is exactly escapes us. Maybe contrasting it with something like Trump’s legal issues for example where they’re not happy about them at all but at least the whole “Deep State is out to get him” is a way of making some semblance of peace with which they would rather not contemplate: That their messiah is a criminal and a rapist.

With Swift it’s that a pop star could help swing the election by mobilizing her fans and that there’s no way of squaring that with their worldview that there are a lot of Americans out there that really don’t give a shit about their grievances. That’s extremely disturbing to people who are already deeply insecure and this search for something, anything, to quell the unease with that reality continues apace. Like you can kind of tell even Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t believe his earlier bullshit about the Super Bowl being somehow rigged, tweeting “What the MSM calls a ‘conspiracy theory’ is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight. Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious,” on Monday afternoon. Since when the fuck did a confident MAGA bro like him feel the need to explain himself? This shit coming from the “own the libs” crew is just sad.

Funny too, especially the way Alina Habba compared herself favorably to Swift in an Instagram post.

The Massachusetts Department of Wildlife is asking residents to report to them if they see any bald eagles flying around carrying sticks, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reports.

If you see them carrying anything else like, say, a house cat, a small dog, a human scalp, a Dunkin Donuts box, a plastic ring from a six pack, a bag of fentanyl, a tricorn hat, the dead body of another bald eagle, or anything else then don’t bother. They only want to know about the sticks.

The Iranian intelligence agency allegedly hired two “full patch” members of the Hell’s Angels from Canada to assassinate an Iranian defector living in Maryland and the man’s wife, the CBC reports, promising to pay the pair $350,000 when the job was completed.

In a statement, US federal prosecutors say Damion Patrick John Ryan, a member of the Rhine Area chapter of Hell’s Angels already facing four weapons charges in Canada, put together a group to carry out the assassinations, including Adam Richard Pearson, a Canadian illegal immigrant and another member of Hell’s Angels living in Minnesota.  Ryan was contacted by an Iranian drug dealer who is known to operate with the blessings of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

The drug dealer, Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti, reportedly ordered Ryan to carry out the assassination; Ryan then texted Pearson saying, “We gotta erase his head from his torso.”  Both men are currently in Canadian prisons, Ryan on firearms charges and Pearson on an unrelated murder charge.  The US Department of Justice indicted Sharifi-Zindashti as well, but it’s unlikely he’ll be extradited from Iran.

In a complete yet vague statement, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Representatives notified House leadership in a public statement that it has been subpoenaed for information by the Department of Justice, and the Sergeant-at-Arms is complying with the subpoena.  What’s frustratingly missing is what information is being subpoenaed and for what?  Is it regarding the cabal of Republican congress critters who sided with Trump on January 6th?  Is the DOJ reexamining the Santos case and seeking new evidence from the Ethics Committee?  Did recent witness interviews uncover more evidence of Matt Gaetz’s perversions?  Are federal investigators investigating Lauren Boebert for trafficking herself over state lines, and did she try to seek reimbursement for the mileage?  The maddening thing about the plethora of corruption and stupidity in the House GOP Conference is, we just don’t know what the Justice Department is looking at this time.

“The meeting held by certain Republicans on January 27th was an illegitimate meeting. Proper notice was not provided to all members of the State Committee meeting. None of the actions done at the meeting are the official position of the OKGOP and the media is advised to refrain from reporting or suggesting this was an official action of the ‘OKGOP’ or ‘Oklahoma Republican Party’ regarding the motions, resolutions, or procedures done at this illegitimate meeting,” says the apparently official leadership of the Oklahoma Republican Party in a statement after some rogue group declared the state’s senior Senator James Lankford censured for working with Democrats on the border security package opposed by the Holy Orange Messiah and other MAGA elements.

In related news the fat bastard on Monday warned “They” are “using this horrific Senate Bill as a way of being able to put the BORDER DISASTER onto the shoulders of the Republicans.”

Republican Congressman Mike Waltz really, really did not like CNN’s Brianna Keilar reminding him that American troops were killed in retaliatory Iranian attacks after then-President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

“THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP – EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE (WATCH THE MIDDLE EAST!), AND RECORD SETTING INFLATION HAS ALREADY TAKEN ITS TOLL,” wrote fat former President Trump in a Monday Truth Social post.

God knows what the hell he’s reacting to. Probably something on Fox News if we had to guess. The Biden campaign’s account has been pumping out quite a few clips lately of former Trump White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and other personalities marveling about how good everything’s been going for investors and what not. Always good for an all-caps meltdown like this.

https://twitter.com/laralogan/status/1752026577410343101

“The ‘Take Our Border Back’ right-wing trucker convoy group that left Virginia this morning had a rather significant issue on their hands: no semi trucks – the central part of the convoy—showed up to their kick-off… Fox Business aired the claim in the form of a ‘prediction’ that 700k trucks would show up for the entire event – so far, nowhere near that number!” wrote Zach Petrizzo, one of the 2022 Clustertruck attempt’s top reporters. Late last year Zach quit the Daily Beast to pursue an MBA but evidently couldn’t resist getting back into the 18-wheeled patriot game for one more score.

Anyway that probably explains why pilled freak former CBS News then too crazy for Newsmax reporter Lara Logan is managing expectations and calling for a trucker to join this third diesel-fueled uprising. If they get one that’ll build the confidence needed to add a plural and make it truckers.

“Let’s hope many darker Americans flee the Democrat dependency plantation by supporting President Trump and FREEDOM! FJB!” – The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Snoop Dogg Vows Nothing but Love and Respect for Donald Trump,” posted Sunday.

“So, in essence the relatively stupid among us would vote for someone Taylor Swift endorsed. Kind of why you shouldn’t be allowed to vote if You personally don’t pay taxes. One, you obviously are an idiot. Two, you have no skin in the game” – The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Taylor Swift Could Impact Outcome of 2024 Presidential Election: Poll,” posted Monday.

In it Breitbart uses the word “alarming” to describe the result of a Newsweek/Redfield and Wilton survey that found 18 percent of respondents saying they’re “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to support a candidate endorsed by Swift, while another 17 percent said “less likely” and 55 percent said it doesn’t make a difference. Not sure how that’s “alarming” given the 1 percent net, though maybe Breitbart are pricing in that the 18 percent were probably already planning on voting for Trump anyway. They left out the part of the Newsweek article which says “Roughly 3 in 10 Americans under 35 said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate backed by Swift,” but again without more cross-tabulation data on preexisting intent the poll is even more useless.

So really they’re just “alarming” their own readers needlessly in almost the same tone you’d expect from, say, Slate or the Atlantic estimating how much damage a No Labels bid could do to Biden.

A 31-year old The Villages, Florida man said to be occupying a home owned by his deceased grandfather and a former leasing agent for an apartment complex in the vast corporate-ruled retirement community has once again outshined older offenders in the Villages-News.com crime blotter with possibly his third arrest in under a year for vandalizing vehicles owned by his former boss Mike Hoopfer, though you might say that Jeremy Powell held back a bit after the first one.

Or held it in, as the registered Republican voter Powell shit on the roof of Mike Hoopfer’s car last year in what Hoopfer, a former Community Development District 13 supervisor and son of “powerful” Village Center Community District Board supervisor Bobby Hoopfer, said was “over a girl.” Powell was, as one might expect, fired from his job at the appropriately named Brownwood Lofts thereafter but the malice continued. On the second incident in December Powell went to Brownwood and damaged vehicles owned by Hoopfer and his brother Matt and has been out on $4,000 bond ever since. Villages-News.com does not have an arrest report for the most recent incident yet, but because the charges list “charges of driving under the influence and driving under the influence with property damage” it’s possible Powell might’ve rammed his car into the Hoopfer’s or some other property owned by them. Stay tuned for updates as this story continues to unfold.

Responding to the explosive allegation that disgraced former President Trump faked a $50 million loan to cheat on his taxes that court-appointed monitor Barbara Jones tucked into the footnote of a filing last week, the twice-impeached loser’s lawyer got really fabulous and dramatic in a reply letter, comparing Jones to “Javert,” the singing policeman who pursued the singing bread thief Jean Valjean for decades in the extravagant musical Les Miserables, the Messenger reports.

“Further oversight is unwarranted and will only unjustly enrich the monitor as she engages in some ‘Javert’ like quest against the defendants,” wrote Trump lawyer Clifford Robert in the filing, apparently dreaming a dream when his beloved Orange Muse would live free of the gothic squalor of a land gripped by breathtaking ensemble performances wrought by ceaseless turmoil.

“The January 26 Report, issued mere days before an expected decision, has only two obvious purposes: (1) ensure the Monitor continues to receive exorbitant fees (in excess of $2.6 million to date); and (2) fill the gaping hole in the Attorney General’s case, namely, that there is no basis to support continued oversight,” Robert wrote in the letter decrying the petty tormentor, appointed by Judge Arthur Engoron to oversee the bloated degenerate’s corrupt business empire.

JUST IN: Biden campaign seeks Taylor Swift's endorsementhttps://t.co/9HQBm9fc2H

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 29, 2024

Christ, this is getting to the point of us wondering if we should be embarrassed for them over this pants-pissing panic. Every one of these tweets just amplifies it. “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months,” that Vivek Ramaswamy assclown wrote earlier.

It just reeks of desperation and impotence, that everything has to be some kind of sinister plot against them. Who the fuck needs to “artificially culturally prop up” a woman worth a billion dollars and a man who was the MVP of the last Super Bowl? Can’t these MAGA influencers find something else to ruminate about? What happened to owning the libs? Can we get some owning here?

In a motion filed in their long-running defamation case against OAN for bullshit conspiracy theories aired after the 2020 election, lawyers for voting tech company Smartmatic alleged that executives at the low-budget far right propaganda network “may have engaged in criminal activities” and “appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy” on January 8, 2021 when OAN President Charles Herring emailed fellow defamation defendant MAGA lawyer Sidney “Kraken” Powell a spreadsheet listing usernames and passwords of Smartmatic employees, CNN reports.

“OAN denies that its executive team ‘may have engaged in criminal activities.’ This vague accusation is a clumsy attempt to smear OAN and to divert attention from Smartmatic’s own misconduct,” said OAN lawyer Charles Babcock in a statement to CNN, referring to that little issue the company is facing with a bribery scandal in the Philippines, something that might be a little more valid of a counterpunch if maybe OAN hadn’t already settled with former Dominion exec Eric Coomer.