Category: News & Comment

It’s the Economy’s Great, Stupid!

Buck Banks


An estimated 166,000 Americans filed initial unemployment claims last week, down nearly 5,000 claims from the previous week and better than analyst projections of 200,000. It is the lowest figure since November 1968 (and the second-lowest since weekly reporting began in January 1967). Continuing claims rose slightly by 17,000 to 1.52 million, coming two years after the number of claims reached an all-time high of 6.1 million in April 2020.

The decline shows employers are limiting layoffs in a tight labor market. Roughly 1.8 job openings are available for every unemployed worker; the unemployment rate stood at 3.6% in March, just above the prepandemic level of 3.5%. Nearly 4.4 million workers left their jobs in February, a number that has held steady as employers try to fill job openings.

The figure represents the third consecutive week that new claims fell below 200,000.

Republicans Are Just Projecting Their Party’s Proven Pedophilia Onto Opponents

Buck Banks

The Daily Beast has an interesting article on the recent trend of Republicans calling anyone who disagrees with them a “pedo” or “groomer,” implying that if you disagree on policy it’s because you’re a pervert. Well, it takes on to know one, as they say, and according to the Beast, there’s lots of pedos and groomers in the GOP closet.

The list is not long, but it’s undeniable: Dennis Hastert, Mark Foley, Judge Roy Moore and Rep. Jim Jordan’s failure to report abuse when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University.

Maybe Republicans know something we don’t, have something up their sleeve we can’t see, or have nothing else to say. It was clear that the party had dispensed with any coherent ideology on which to run when they declined to even put forward a platform in 2016.

Meanwhile Rep. Marjoie Taylor Greene—notorious before she even took office for her QAnon sympathies—is screaming that anyone who votes for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is “pro-pedophile,” including three Republicans.

Republicans are projecting so loudly, no one can hear anything else they’re saying. They’re widely expected to win big in the midterm elections, but if they stick with this crackpot strategy, they’re going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Have at it.

DeSantis’ ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law Foundation Story Found to Be a Lie

Pensito Editors

If only facts mattered.

CNN: “Facts First: DeSantis’ account of what happened in Leon County is not quite what a limited number of records that have been made public show, and the governor has continued to repeat the story even after those records were made public late last year. CNN obtained emails that show Littlejohn wrote the school in 2020 and notified a teacher that her child wanted to change pronouns. Contrary to the governor’s portrayal of the story, Littlejohn also wrote that she would not stop her child from using preferred pronouns or name of choice at school. Littlejohn references these emails in her lawsuit against the school and they were reported by the Tallahassee Democrat in November.”

Found: U.S. Government’s Fake Newscast for 1986 Nuclear Training Session

Buck Banks


Gizmodo has uncovered a fake news broadcast created for Mighty Derringer, a large-scale Department of Energy nuclear terrorism training session held in Indianapolis in 1986. It’s pretty good and, yes, pretty scary.

In December of 1986, the Pentagon, the CIA, FBI, the Department of Energy, and just about every other federal agency you can think of came together in Indianapolis for an enormous training exercise code-named Mighty Derringer. The plan was to simulate a nuclear terrorist incident and explore how every agency would react and whether they would cooperate. To enhance the verisimilitude of the war games, the U.S. government went so far as to record a fake news broadcast about a nuclear bomb exploding in Indianapolis.

Watch it here.

New Website Collects MAGA-GOPers’ Praise of Putin

Pensito Editors


I know it is tiresome, listening to Comrade Tucker Carlson and his ilk suggesting that we choose Russia over Ukraine, Putin over Zelkenskyy. But for your convenience, the Republican Accountability Project collects them as they are uttered and preserves them for all to read.

Here’s how they describe what they do:

Only 5 percent of Republicans support Russia over Ukraine, but the MAGA wing of the GOP has continually sided with Putin and against Ukraine.

Current and former elected officials, candidates for office, and media figures who are popular with the MAGA base have a history of pro-Russia comments. Now, they have decided that they should disparage Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy despite Russia’s invasion. Some of them have walked back their comments once they saw Putin’s war machine target innocent people, but many still see Russia as an ally.

We’ve collected their quotes below to make sure they can never forget where they stood.

GOPers Taking Credit for Things They Voted AGAINST

Pensito Editors


It has long been the practice of Republican lawmakers to take credit for local benefits of bills they voted against. Politico shares these examples of Republican lawmakers taking credit for projects in the government spending bill even though they all voted against it:

  • Claudia Tenney (R-NY): She lists eight projects that she “secured” while noting: “While I could not support this portion of the bill, I am pleased that the bill includes several Community Funding Projects I advocated for to benefit our local communities.”
  • Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA): The Louisiana conservative lists four projects that will get funding “specifically requested and secured” by the congressman. “Despite my objections to the bill in its totality, we worked closely with the House Appropriations Committee to secure funding for several important Louisiana projects.”
  • Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY): He lists seven community projects while noting he opposed the overall legislation due to “partisan policies that erode the Second Amendment and grow domestic spending.”
  • Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA): He touts $14 million going to eight projects for his district in a press release. “Passage of this bill is the culmination of more than a year of working with stakeholders in our communities to identify and secure federal support for their critical needs.”

    • Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-NC: Zelenskyy Is a ‘Thug’

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    WRAL-Raleigh: “U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina told supporters he thought Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a ‘thug’—a comment that runs counter to the overwhelming share of Republicans with a favorable view of the leader fending off a military invasion from Russia.

    “‘Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug,’ Cawthorn said in a video obtained by WRAL. ‘Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.’…

    “On Thursday afternoon, one hour after WRAL reported the comments, Cawthorn appeared to walk back his remarks, saying on Twitter that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions are ‘disgusting.’

    “‘I am praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,’ he added.”

    Trump to Putin in 2007: ‘I’m a Big Fan of Yours’

    Pensito Editors
    Trump to Putin I'm a Big Fan
    Trump wrote this fan letter to Putin in 2007

    Forbes in 2020: “Donald Trump wrote Vladimir Putin a personal letter in 2007, congratulating the Russian president on being named ‘Person of the Year’ in TIME magazine, according to a nearly-1,000-page report that the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released Tuesday.

    “’Dear President Putin,’ the letter began. ‘Congratulations on being named Time magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’—you definitely deserve it. As you probably have heard, I am a big fan of yours! Take care of yourself. With best wishes, Sincerely, Donald J. Trump.’ The future U.S. president put his famous signature on the letter with a thick marker, which he also used to underline the words ‘I am a big fan of yours!'”

    Biden’s Poll Numbers Get SOTU Bounce

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    2022 State of the Union Speech
    2022 State of the Union Speech

    NPR: “After what’s been a bleak several months politically for President Biden, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey finds he is seeing a significant boost in his approval ratings across the board following his State of the Union address and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…

    • Overall approval rating jumped to 47%, up 8 points from the NPR poll last month. Presidents don’t generally see much, if any bounce, out of a State of the Union address. Since 1978, there had only been six times when a president saw an approval rating improve 4 points or more following State of the Union addresses, according to the pollsters. Three of those bounces were for former President Bill Clinton.
    • Ukraine handling is up 18 points to 52%.
    • Coronavirus pandemic handling is now 55%, up 8 points.
    • Economic handling up 8 points to 45%.

    Russian Official Says the Quiet Part Out Loud on State TV

    Pensito Editors

    DailyBeast: “On [‘The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev’]—an Orwellian environment, typical of the Russian state media—the host and every panelist repeatedly denied the obvious, attempting to disprove the notion that Russia is at war with Ukraine. Soloviev asked: ‘Are we de facto at war with NATO?’ Kartapolov concurred: ‘De facto, we are at war with NATO, because all of Ukraine’s military formations are carrying out NATO’s tasks… NATO is also solving another problem, getting rid of Europe’s excess migrants by sending them to fight in Ukraine.’ He pompously concluded: ‘God is not in power, but in truth.’

    As to the Kremlin’s aims in Ukraine, [Andrei Kartapolov, who heads the Russian parliament’s defense committee,] explained them in detail: ‘Our position is clear and transparent, including during these negotiations. The essence is as follows: Ukraine will recognize Crimea as the Russian Federation, as well as DPR/LPR [‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’] within their administrative borders. Ukraine will change its social and state system and become a neutral, demilitarized country. That’s it.‘ [Emphasis added.]

    Lawmaker Konstantin Zatulin, who is deputy chairman of the Duma commission on relations with the former Soviet Union, seemed unsettled by Kartapolov’s revelations and angrily replied: “When a horse has something to say, a saddle shouldn’t be the one to talk. This is not the time to tell everything. First of all, we’re not the ones who should be saying that, they [Ukrainians] need to be the ones who say that. But that situation has to ripen first. It won’t be done during the thunder of cannons. Until our operation has concluded, it won’t be clear what ‘denazification’ will consist of.’”