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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that a neutral military status for Ukraine was being “seriously discussed” at the “businesslike” peace talks between the two countries as the invasion spilled into its fourth week, the Associated Press reports. Hopes for a peaceful-ish resolution to the conflict got a boost Tuesday after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly stated his nation would never be approved to join NATO, adding to the credibility of the “neutrality” solution.

“A neutral status is being seriously discussed in connection with security guarantees… There are concrete formulations that in my view are close to being agreed,” said Lavrov on Wednesday.

Russian forces invading Ukraine have reportedly taken around 500 people hostage at a hospital in Mariupol, using them as human shields to deter shelling, the Associated Press reports.

The Russians rounded up around 400 people living around the Regional Intensive Care Hospital, where about 100 staff and patients were located.  Everyone was herded into a basement, where doctors set up makeshift exam rooms to treat patients.

Ukrainian military officials say Russian forces have blocked the city on its western and eastern sides in an attempt to set up a siege of the city to drive it into submission.

Be sad for Mrs. Ewic Trump. She thinks her father-in-law was *such* a great president, he had to build a website to list all his accomplishments, and such a website probably existed, but it likely only listed Daddy Trump’s golf scores (which he lied about).

Donald Trump admitted that he totally misread Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention in sending troops to the Ukraine border, saying he thought Putin was doing it as a “smart way to negotiate,” an interview in the Washington Examiner states.

Such a self-own will have little impact in the Trumpiverse, where Donald can do no wrong even when he admits to being wrong, but it’s an unusually accurate assessment of his own misjudgment.  Trump has previously claimed he could predict what Putin would do, saying he had that ability because they were friends, or they were very similar, or some such nonsense.

“I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating,” Trump told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday evening during a wide-ranging telephone interview. … I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate. “I figured he was going to make a good deal like everybody else does with the United States and the other people they tend to deal with — you know, like every trade deal.  We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along.  And then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.”

Sending Biden to Europe for “High Stakes” NATO talks will only embolden our enemies further.
If you want to get something done right send Trump.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 16, 2022

Russian Major General Oleg Mityaev has been killed by Ukrainian defense forces during Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his democratic neighbor, becoming the fourth Russian general to be killed in Ukraine in the last 20 days, since the invasion began.

In the 20 year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military lost only one general, Brigadier General Harold Greene was assassinated by a turncoat Afghan soldier in Kabul.

The Canadian government on Monday seized more than one million dollars in bitcoin that were donated via a website to last month’s trucker “Freedom Convoys” that gridlocked cities and border crossings, Vice News reports.

After Canadian authorities declared a national emergency caused by the convoys, held in protest of vaccine mandates for truckers in the United States, the organizers of the convoys were barred from using fundraising platforms to get money.  However, some tried to raise funds on Bitcoin fundraising platform HonkHonkHodl, thinking they could outmaneuver law enforcement.

“Getting your money turned off is insanely harmful. One trucker I met ran a business and didn’t know when he was going to be able to pay his 10 drivers next,” a HonkHonkHodl lead organizer who goes by the pseudonym “NobodyCaribou” told Motherboard without realizing the business owner should be able to run his business remotely or he should stop griping and return to run his business. “Incredibly messed up.”

The chair of the Taylor County (Georgia) Republican Party and her husband have been arrested for their participation in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress aimed at overturning the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Mandy Robinson-Hand and her husband, Charles Hand III were charged with four misdemeanors related to their alleged entry into the Capitol after their arrest by the FBI Friday.  Taylor County is part of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, represented by Marjorie Taylor-Greene (Q-Ga.).

“The Georgia Republican Party has repeatedly condemned political violence, including any violence that took place on January 6, 2021,” said Executive Director Brandon Moye. “We have repeatedly urged, and will continue to urge, that political protest be peaceful and orderly.”  Robinson-Hand has not stepped down from her position within the Party nor has the Party demanded her resignation because participating in an insurrection is a bonus in the Republican Party.

One man is dead and another under arrest after a former employee of Shooters Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida decided he wasn’t ready to leave the shooting business and shot a current employee, Local10.com reports with a lede that starts literally with “A man died after a shooting outside the popular Shooters Waterfront restaurant along Fort Lauderdale’s Intracoastal Waterway, where witnesses say a verbal dispute preceded the gunfire.” Shooters management said “was a situation between a former employee and a current employee. We are fully cooperating with authorities,” in a statement. The owner of the unaffiliated Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado had no comment as she was currently being called a dumbass again on the internet.

“… during the State of the Union because I thought the heroic members of our military deserved to be recognized,” Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.), sporting a new look but the same old idiotic vitriol, says in defending her outburst during President Biden’s address.   “Two things happened after, but only one was really reported.  Nancy Pelosi literally told me to shut up.  That got reported, along with plenty of other stories about ‘triggered liberals’ who were deeply offended about me speaking up.  You and I know that none of these radical libs have anything to say when Nancy Pelosi tore up President Trump’s speech at the State of the Union.

“But it’s the unreported part,” she continues breathlessly, “that I want you to hear loud and clear.  After I spoke up, a few of the parents of our fallen soldiers reached out to me and one of the moms encouraged me to share her thoughts with you.  ‘Hello, Mrs. Boebert.  I am Shana Chappell, the mother of Lt. Corporal…”

Shana Chappell is the mother of Lance Corporal Kareen Nikoui, a Marine killed in Kabul in August 2021 when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive at the airport as US forces facilitated the evacuation of the city.  There is no rank of Lt. Corporal, although for an episode of MASH there was a Corporal Captain.

Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker continued his stampede over reality by repeating an anti-science conspiracy theory about evolution during a weekend speech at a Georgia church, HuffPost reports.

“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? … If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it,” Walker toward worshippers at Georgia’s Sugar Hill church.  (The answer, of course, is that the two branches of the evolutionary tree emerged separately.  The fact that there are still monkeys and apes means that those species evolved into something other than humans over millennia.

Walker has a long history of ignoring modern society and science.  A former contestant on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice television show, Walker has stated his dislike of the coronavirus vaccine and promoted a mysterious mist that he claimed would kill the virus.  He’s also been diagnosed with various mental health issues.

A federal judge ordered Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to remain in jail as he faces conspiracy charges for his involvement in the Capitol riot on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports.

The Sunshine Protection Act just passed the US Senate with unanimous consent. This is a big, sensible step forward.

Long live Daylight Saving Time!

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) March 15, 2022

President Biden will join the NATO meeting in Brussels next week, NBC News reports.

I want to thank the Russian Academy for this Lifetime Achievement Award. https://t.co/4og9S3OCEp

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 15, 2022

Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was killed in the same attack that wounded correspondent Benjamin Hall, Fox White House Correspondent John Roberts reports.

Just shy of a year to the day after the Ever Given‘s blocking of the Suez Canal captured the overactive imaginations of QAnon fanboys because something something Hillary Clinton, another one of Evergreen Marine’s ships is stuck, this time here in the United States, the AP reports. Coast Guard crews are working to refloat the Ever Forward, sister ship to Ever Given, which ran aground in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay on Sunday night, after leaving the port of Baltimore and was headed to Norfolk, Virginia when somebody fucked up and steered the ship out of a dredged shipping channel. As such the Ever Forward isn’t blocking any other shipping traffic.

Meanwhile, in a fun twist, the Ever Given just so happens to be headed northbound into the Suez Canal as of Tuesday afternoon local time. The ship is again battling strong headwinds – exactly what caused the March 2021 blockage. Fingers crossed. They got this. Probably.

Enrique Tarrio, the reported former leader of the Proud Boys ultranationalist group, had detailed plans for overtaking and occupying numerous government buildings during the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, the Guardian reports.

Filed in court documents related to Tarrio’s arrest, the plans included instructions for Proud Boys and their sympathizers to capture at least six Congressional office buildings and hold them to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results which affirmed Joe Biden’s election victory.

The nine-page document showed how 50 Proud Boys and other supporters would execute the plan, divided into five sections:  infiltrate, execution, distract, occupy, and sit-in.  Tarrio encouraged the disrupters to chant “We the People” and “No Trump, no America” during the occupation.

Lawyers for Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who held up a handwritten sign and interrupted a live broadcast of state TV on Monday say they cannot find her after she was detained by Putin’s goons for the very public protest against the invasion of Ukraine, the BBC reports. Lawyer Anastasia Kostanova, told the BBC her calls to Ovsyannikova have gone unanswered and she’s “spent the whole night looking” for the missing journalist. “This means that they are hiding her from her lawyers and trying to deprive her of legal assistance and, apparently, they are trying to prepare the most stringent prosecution,” Kostanova said. Another lawyer for Ovsyannikova, also unable to find her, told the BBC he expects the journalist to be fined 30,000 to 60,000 rubles.

Independent monitoring group OVD-Info estimates about 14,000 Russians have been arrested for protesting the Putin regime since the invasion of Ukraine began on Feb 24th. 170 remain in custody.

UPDATE 3/15/22 10:35 AM: The Daily Beast reports Ovsyannikova appeared in court Tuesday to be arraigned on charges of illegal protesting. She will not be charged under the draconian new Russian anti-“fake news” law that threatens journalists with decades in prison for upsetting the regime.