https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1504795392449277956

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov threatened attacks on Western supply convoys in Ukraine in an interview Friday, ABC News reports. “We clearly said that any cargo moving into the Ukrainian territory which we would believe is carrying weapons would be fair game. This is clear because we are implementing the operation the goal of which is to remove any threat to the Russian Federation coming from the Ukrainian soil,” said Lavrov – in English – on the RT news channel.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday he will formally submit a proposal for a NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, Reuters reports on a pretty ballsy move signaling a willingness, at least on Poland’s part, to put its forces in direct confrontation with Russian troops.

QAnon terrorist Joshua Macias, who on November 5th, 2020 was arrested after being pulled over while armed with a handgun and an AR-15 on his way to the Philadelphia Convention Center while ballots were being counted in the presidential election, faces revocation of his bail after the Daily Beast reported he was likely in violation of its terms by participating in a number of pro-Trump events, most recently filming the “People’s Convoy” clustertruck as they gathered outside of Washington, DC. Macias and his November 2020 accomplice Anthony Lamotta, who were hit with election interference and gun charges over the incident, had also been caught attending the “Stop the Steal” rally just prior to the Capitol riot and were definitely present on the grounds during the insurrection. However, since there was no evidence they had entered the building or otherwise committed a crime that day they were let off the hook with increased restrictions – which Macias has now definitely violated and is headed behind bars to await trial.

Three Tennessee National Guard members Russian state media falsely claimed were killed in action as “mercenaries” in the Donetsk breakaway region of Eastern Ukraine are very much alive and well in their home state says a National Guard spokesperson, NBC News reports. “The Tennessee Guard is aware of the fake news coming out of Russia,” said Tracy O’Grady, a Pentagon spokesperson for all National Guard detachments. The Guard members were deployed to Ukraine on a training mission in 2018, the Pentagon suspects at some point which their personal info and images were collected by pro-Russian agents and used in the propaganda this week.

“They are accounted for, safe and not, as the article headline erroneously states, US mercenaries killed in Donetsk People’s Republic. All members of the Tennessee National Guard returned safely to their home state in 2019 after a successful mission,” the Tennessee National Guard said in a statement. No American military personnel are publicly acknowledged to be on the ground in Ukraine currently in officially sanctioned operations. Russia will have to work harder to find them if there are any there. An unknown number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have signed up to join Ukraine’s foreign volunteer legion, however, and if any of those soldiers are killed or captured in action it’s likely the Russians will use that as “evidence” of direct American intervention.

The Fox cable propaganda network, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media network, filed a motion with New York state courts to reverse a lower court ruling allowing Smartmatic’s defamation suit to continue, Reuters reports.

The network claimed that the $2.7 billion in damages sought by Smartmatic is “pure fiction.”  It submitted a report by a University of Chicago law professor claiming that Smartmatic was a “failing enterprise” that was tens of millions of dollars in debt.

Fox also countersued Smartmatic to try to recoup legal fees.  “New York’s anti-SLAPP statute was made for lawsuits like this one,” Fox claimed in the filing. “The best way to deter baseless attacks on the freedoms of speech and efforts to chill the press is to provide robust protection for speech on matters of public concern.”

High drama at the opening round of NCAA tournament:  the ball gets stuck above the backboard and the players need some assistance to get it down.  Props to the highly-energetic play-by-play announcer.

An now, back to our regularly scheduled snark.

“Look to the past.  You’re the historian,” Trump advisor and Fox host Sean Hannity tells emaciated Boris Yeltsin cosplayer Newt Gingrich.  “We watched Ronald Reagan.  He never, ah, put, ah, a single American, ah, foot on the ground when the former Soviet Union went into Afghanistan, but he did provide them Stinger missiles and those Stinger missiles to the mujahideen did make a difference.  He did provide the freedom fighters, the contras in Nicaragua the weaponry that they needed.  Uh, ah, that proved successful.”

Let’s parse this, shall we?  First, Gingrich is no historian; he rewrites history.  There were CIA operatives on the ground helping the mujahideen, and those arms were used by Osama bin Laden to slaughter thousands.  The contras weren’t successful during Reagan’s term in office.  And let’s not forget Reagan illegally got weapons to the contras in the Iran-Contra affair, starring his generation’s Mike Flynn, Oliver North.

A 28-year-old Minnesota man is missing after being removed from a bus at a highway checkpoint Saturday as he was trying to flee the war zone to Turkey, NBC News reports.  He has not been heard from since.

Tyler Jacob was traveling to Turkey with a busload of other refugees when the bus stopped at a checkpoint in Russian-controlled Crimea.  Jacob moved to Ukraine last year to be with his then-girlfriend.  The couple were married in January and they stayed, with their child, in Kherson, Ukraine, where Jacob taught English.

“This was and has been the beginning of my worst nightmare. I was afraid he was going to get captured. And I don’t want to even think about the next two fears of never seeing him or having him killed by them guys,” his mother told NBC News.

Unfaithful wife and white supremacist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, in media res: “…the US has funded contracts not only to take over the labs, reconstruct them, but also build them and this goes through grants, though private companies, at millions and millions of dollars. Now, what if these biolabs are handling very dangerous pathogens that may lead to the deaths in people in the areas? There are reports of possibly deadly pathogens escaping these biolabs in places like Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan that is responsible for killing people.”

“What if that’s true? I think these are the questions that we should ask, because no American citizen wants to be held morally and ethically responsible and the US government should not be funding something that’s killing people in a country that’s not even our own, let alone here at home. These are worthy questions, and so for that reason, because it’s become such an issue and because it upsets sooo may people that I talk to constantly, I have introduced a bill to stop taxpayer funding for bioweapons and eliminate these programs from the federal government. Because no government should be creating bioweapons. That’s evil and wrong. Now the name of this bill is the ‘Stopping the Spread of Taxpayer Funded Bioweapons Act’…”

Texas officials say the pickup truck that hit a van carrying a college golf team Tuesday night, killing at least nine people, was being driven by an unlicensed 13-year-old boy, who was one of the people killed, the New York Times reports.

Six members of the University of the Southwest golf team and a coach were killed when the van they were riding in was hit head on by the pickup truck driven by the boy.  The vehicles caught fire upon impact.

Investigators said the unnamed boy and a 38-year-old man named Henrich Siemens were in the pickup when it hit the van.  The left front wheel on the pickup was a spare, and it apparently had blown out before the accident.  Investigators have not yet uncovered why a 13-year-old was behind the wheel. 

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to end normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, with eight pro-Russian Republicans voting against the measure, Yahoo News reports.

Republicans Andy Biggs (Arizona), Dan Bishop (North Carolina), Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Matt Gaetz (Florida), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), Glenn Grothman (Wisconsin), Thomas Massie (Kentucky) and Chip Roy (Texas) all voted to maintain Russia’s and Belarus’s trading status.

The bill also authorized President Joe Biden to enforce at his discretion the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which allows punishment if president deems Russia or Belarus committed human rights abuses.

In its continuing effort to slant coverage of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia attempted to introduce a bill to the UN Security Council that would require all members to adhere to humanitarian laws, but withdrew it when other ambassadors objected because it did not recognize the atrocities Russia is carrying out in Ukraine, AFP News Agency reports.

The proposal was seen as a transparent attempt to color Russia’s attacking Ukraine as a humanitarian mission and not as a blatant land grab.  Russia would have tried to use the proposal to say it was providing humanitarian aid while it attempted to roll through the nation.

However, Russia could not even garner support for the proposal from the two nations on the Security Council seen as most sympathetic to Russia’s rationale for invading Ukraine:  China and India.  Both opted to decline Russia’s invitation to co-sponsor the proposal.

Even though study after study have shown it to be ineffective in fighting coronavirus, Republican lawmakers in Kansas have proposed legislation that would allow students to forgo vaccinations for coronavirus and a dozen other diseases while opening up requirements to treat people with ivermectin if they request it, the Associated Press reports.

The GOP would allow parents to claim a religious exemption to avoid giving their children vaccines against Covid and other diseases like measles, whopping cough, polio and chickenpox.  The legislation would also prevent pharmacists from declining to fill prescriptions for ivermectin to treat coronavirus, and it requires pharmacies to fill any off-label prescription issued by a doctor to treat Covid.

The bill was passed out of the Republican-dominated state senate committee and will be voted on in the full senate, where it is expected to pass.

President Zelensky is a very bad character who is working with globalists against the interests of his own people. I will not move one inch away from that assessment—ever—no matter how flowery the media depictions of him are.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 17, 2022

A United States citizen was killed during the Russian shelling of the Ukrainian town of Chernihiv in the northern half of Ukraine near the border with Belarus, the Washington Post reports.

A local police official confirmed the shelling and confirming that an American was among the fatalities from the attack.  An unknown people were killed in the shelling.  The US State Department confirmed the death of an American in Chernihiv, but did not have details.

North Carolina state Attorney General Josh Stein has asked the State Bureau of Investigations and the State Board of Elections to open an investigation into former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for voter fraud over his blatant lie about his residency in the state on his voter registration in September 2020, WRAL reports. The person who owned the home at the time told WRAL that Meadows “never spent a night down there,” though Meadows’ wife did rent it briefly.

Meadows should be executed by firing squad if these charges prove to be true. We’re not actually advocating for such an extreme punishment for a relatively minor crime, we’re just saying that since many of them have called for anyone caught committing voter fraud to be executed, then Meadows should be no exception. Blindfold, cigarette, unmarked grave in the yard behind the fort.

My colleague is correct on this. https://t.co/j9WWYIXKah

— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 17, 2022

Again, we’re not experts, but some smart people against NATO and/or the US implementing a no-fly zone over Ukraine have argued that it’s effectively a declaration of World War III, while the people arguing for it have not said anything indicating that they’re necessarily opposed to that. Even a fucking mutant like Paul Gosar can understands that it’s a bad idea – or maybe he just loves Russia and doesn’t want a war with them, whatever. It’s getting harder and harder for cooler heads to prevail on this, and very understandably so as the atrocities against innocent Ukrainians – children, babies, pregnant women – and the red line, whatever it is, draws closer. But stay frosty.

“Speaker Robin Vos, of the Great State of Wisconsin, just said there was ‘widespread fraud’ in the 2020 Presidential Election, but that the State Legislature cannot do anything about it. Wrong! If you rob the diamonds from a jewelry store, if you get caught, you have to give the diamonds back, votes should be no different. There is already a very powerful resolution in the Wisconsin State Assembly that calls for the decertification of the 2020 Election and reclaiming of Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes. There is so much fraud, as Vos knows, that this should be done quickly and easily.”

“The highly respected Special Counsel, Michael Gableman, has exposed so much already, including election bribery with Mark Zuckerberg’s $8.8 million, horrific fraud stealing votes from the elderly in nursing homes, and rampant ballot harvesting and phantom votes. Far more votes than is needed for the Republican candidate, me, to win. Our Country would not be in the mess it’s in if Republicans had the courage to act. We would be energy independent, no inflation, the Ukraine desecration would not be happening, our economy would be strong, there would have been no surrender in Afghanistan, and so much else. Speaker Vos should do the right thing and correct the Crime of the Century – immediately! It is my opinion that other states will be doing this, Wisconsin should lead the way!” says the Orange God Emperor of Speaker Vos, who probably is figuring out which flavor of soda mixes best with rat poison right about now.

White Trump supporting domestic terrorist Brandon Fellows wants everyone to know how oppressed he is.  His plight, he says in a new court filing, is comparable (if not worse) than those Black Americans who were denied their rights during the Jim Crow era.  In fact, Fellows asserts, is worse than the conditions Dr. Martin Luther King faced when imprisoned in a Birmingham jail.

In a spectacular 32-page motion, Fellows claims that the limit on his rights cause by his imprisonment with no bail pending his latest trial is a suppression of his human rights because even his “black brothers” were even allowed to go to church during racial segregation in the South.  (Fellows failed to note that unlike him, they weren’t being held in jail without bail.)

“In the event the court or government subtly or outwardly agrees with another often heard dismissive argument that ‘I’m white and shouldn’t/ have no right to relate my suffering to MLK, or others in the black community of that era’, this again is history repeating itself,” Fellows, who is representing himself in court, said.  “The Democrats did the same to the black population in 1950s Montgomery. For many years Democrats argued black people weren’t smart enough, human enough, or citizen enough to vote. They argued they should have no say on voting and tried to silence them or scare them. Race does not matter, Martin Luther King Jr. was a man just as I am, tired of the oppression of his people and hoping for better days.”