Video of a reported missile attack on the US consulate in Erbil, Iraq on Saturday night. The Iranian allegedly fired multiple Fatah-110 missiles into the US positions.

The US State Department revealed it is spending more than $2 million per month to protect former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former envoy to Iran Brian Hook as credible threats remain after they’ve left office, the Associated Press reports.

Financial records show the State Department shelling out more than $13 million in security costs from August 2021 through February 2022.  As a former Cabinet official, Pompeo received six months of a federal protection detail after leaving office.  That has been extended in 60-day blocks by current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.  Renewal for the detail is scheduled for March 16th.

MAGA propaganda network OAN has sued DirecTV parent AT&T and its Chairman William Kennard over some vague breaches of contract like a “non-disparagement clause” related to DirecTV’s planned booting of OAN from its lineup in a complaint that insinuates Dominion Voting Systems (which is suing OAN for $1.6 billion for defamation) had something to do with it because Kennard (Obama’s Ambassador to the European Union, also kind of looks like Obama) also sits on the board of Dominion’s corporate parent. OAN’s lawyers can’t help themselves but litigate MAGA 2020 conspiracy shit in a complaint that has nothing whatsoever to do with the election.

“Dominion, which Staple Street acquired in 2018, has provided and continues to provide electronic voting systems for elections held in several states in the country, including for the 2020 presidential election. Long before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, voting machines and software created by Dominion were under intense public scrutiny for their lack of security and reliability. For example, in 2017, Georgia voters filed a lawsuit related to the security of Dominion voting machines, and in October 2020, the federal judge in that case credited testimony from an ‘array of experts and subject matter specialists [that] provided a huge volume of significant evidence regarding the security risks and deficits in the [Dominion] systems,’ finding that those risks were neither ‘hypothetical nor remote,'” says page 10 of the complaint. What a great way to get a case started.

The Premier League, the governing body of the pro kicking sportsball game in England, have disqualified Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich from owning the Chelsea team in step with the British Government’s freezing of Abramovich’s assets, The Independent reports. “Following the imposition of sanctions by the UK government, the Premier League Board has disqualified Roman Abramovich as a director of Chelsea Football Club,” the league said in a statement. The next step would have been an automatic triggering of the sale of the club, however Abramovich had already announced his intent to sell the club. British leadership are fine with whatever happens as long as Abramovich doesn’t see a dime from the sale. Whom the actual proceeds of the multi-billion dollar sale of the team would go to is still was not made clear however. Hopefully the UK government would spend it on weapons and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Chelsea cannot legally sell tickets or merchandise while the club’s ownership is frozen, meaning that unless a fan has season or pre-sold tickets, they cannot attend the home game against Newcastle on Sunday, per the Independent. However, there’s a real fucking simple solution to fill the remaining seats in Chelsea’s stadium: Print out the tickets for those seats and give them out in exchange for a nominal donation to humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Problem solved.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov has warned that weapons being trucked into Ukraine by western militaries will be treated as legitimate military targets, Financial Times Moscow Bureau Chief Max Seddon reports. “We warned [the US] of consequences from the insane transfer to Ukraine of weapons like mobile anti-aircraft systems, anti-tank missiles, and so on.”

• Ukraine got the better end of the “let’s make a TV star president” proposition.
• A man from Ukraine learned his wife and two children died in a mortar attack in Kyiv by seeing a viral photo online.  I cannot imagine a more horrific way to learn about your family’s annihilation.
• Trump’s idea to put Chinese emblems on US attack aircraft to bomb the Russian convoy outside Kyiv shows how little he understands military operations.  First, it’s not like that’s a war crime, and second, it’s not like every military in the world isn’t taught how to identify planes by silhouette.  
• They say one can judge you by the friends you keep.  Trump says that Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping are his friends, and he never got along with any democratically elected leader.  That tells you all you need to know about his aspirations.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LX”

Moments after telling the audience at (what appears to be) Open Mic Night at a California QAnon conference that Florida has zero homelessness and crime (which isn’t true), the Chuck Cunningham of the Trump clan, Ewic, tells them another whopper:  that his father paid for his entire 2016 campaign.  (That’s also a lie, as OpenSecrets details.)

I’d think Ewic would be a little more upset if his father had actually spent $400 million of his own money (which he doesn’t have) and Ewic’s inheritance on a presidential campaign.  But then, maybe this explains all the problems at the Trump Org:  the Trumps believe that everyone else’s money is theirs.

[UPDATE 8:00 p.m. ET:  The judge overseeing the case issued a stay to any enforcement of governor’s directive, Politico reports.]

A supervisor with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services testified in court Friday that investigators were told to treat all cases involving transgendered children as a priority given Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate people treating gender identity patients as child abusers, the New York Times reports.

The employee, Randa Mulanax, said that investigators were directed to open cases for every person referred to them without exception, and the investigators were unable to close cases even when they found no evidence of abuse.

The plan seems to be a way to harass, pester and threaten families with transgender children and doctors treating the children using government authority.

The Indian government admitted that it accidentally shot a rocket into its next door rival Pakistan last night when a projectile accidentally fired while undergoing maintenance, Reuters reports.

“On 9 March 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile,” the Indian Ministry of Defence said in a three-paragraph statement.  “It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident.”

The border region on the east of India has been in dispute essentially since the British empire divided the Muslim and Hindu populations of its then-Indian colony, creating the modern states of India and Pakistan.  Both are nuclear powers.

A Trump fundraising email sent to National Zero from “Don Jr” on February 23rd (promptly flagged as spam by Gmail) said “On behalf of my father, I am officially inviting YOU to be his VIP dinner guest in NEW ORLEANS. If you are the lucky winner: We’ll cover your flight, We’ll cover your very nice hotel, We’ll cover your dinner, You’ll get to MEET my father, AND you’ll get to take a picture with the President. You’re one of my father’s VERY BEST supporters, and he REALLY wants to meet you, Friend. All you have to do is enter.” National Zero did not enter and thus did not win.

Neither did any of the fucking suckers who did send them money however, because the Washington Post reports that there was no private dinner between Trump and a fan in New Orleans last weekend (also when he had some plane trouble). Trump did however privately meet with rich Republican donors and probably had dinner with them. They were the real winners here.

“President Trump has awarded more than 100 prizes to contest winners across America, but due to an administrative error in this individual circumstance, the contest winner was not properly notified for last weekend’s event in New Orleans. Consistent with the rules of the sweepstakes, a substitute prize will be awarded to the winner,” Trump minion Taylor Budowich told the Post when asked. Budowich did not specify what the “administrative error” was. And, not for nothing, it would help if they would offer just some basic details about the winner. Nobody needs to know their name, but if we’d gotten just like “A 47 year old man from Arkansas who was awarded a trip to Mar-a-Lago” or whatever. That would certainly make this explanation more believable.

pic.twitter.com/HCB4OpLQUc

— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) March 11, 2022

Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced in a company-wide email Friday that the company would be suspending all campaign contributions in Florida following Napoleonic Governor Ron DeSantis’s tantrum over the company’s response to the draconian “Don’t Say Gay” bill banning any discussion of sexuality to kids under 10 in classrooms recently passed by the Florida state Senate. “How do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship from the Communist Party of China? Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune, and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices at the hands of the CCP,” DeSantis said Thursday after the CEO of one of his largest corporate donors had reached out to him with concerns over the bill.

Formerly one of the largest, for now at least. Will be quite interesting to see how this impasse breaks. Does Disney continue pipe campaign money to DeSantis through other channels like a PAC? Do they solely back any of his would-be Dem opponents instead of hedging and playing both sides like pretty much all big corporations do these days? Do DeSantis and his pals cave?

The Denver District Attorney’s office will drop the 2nd degree murder charge against Pinkerton Matthew Dolloff who on October 10, 2020 shot MAGA asshole Lee Keltner dead during a brawl at a “Patriot rally” outside of the Civic Center, the Denver Post reports. Dolloff, who had been hired as security for a camera crew from 9News as they covered the libs vs MAGA battle royale, was scheduled to stand trial in April. However the DA’s office decided the 32 year-old’s self-defense claim was too much to overcome and confirmed to the Post the charge would be dropped. “I’m just really happy for Matt and his family that the DA finally realized what we’d known all along,” Dolloff’s attorney Doug Richards told the Post. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t happy for Matt too.

Like his fictional counterpart Darth Vader did to Imperial officers every time they fucked something up, Vladimir Putin is reportedly punishing his lieutenants for their failures to deliver victory in Ukraine, as both the head of the Federal Security Bureau’s intel division Sergey Beseda and his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh were placed under house arrest Friday, per the Daily Mail.

The FSB agents’ alleged transgressions include telling Putin that Ukraine would be steamrolled easily prior to the invasion and embezzling money from the agency’s budget which is funny because wow, they were being normal supplicants by telling Putin what he wanted to hear rather than an honest assessment and since when is stealing from public funds a crime in Russia, lol. Separately, Putin reportedly fired eight high ranking military officers on Friday, but it’s a safe bet that simply having to look for another paycheck might be the least of their worries.

A Manhattan federal judge has dismissed Trump’s attempt to counter sue writer E Jean Carroll in her defamation case against the Orange God Emperor over her accusations of a rape that occurred at an NYC department store in the early 1990s, Reuters reports. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan accused the Donald of acting in “bad faith” with his endless, cunty delays to the legal proceedings in the suit which Carroll filed in November 2019. “The defendant’s litigation tactics, whatever their intent, have delayed the case to an extent that readily could have been far less,” wrote Kaplan on Friday, adding that allowing the countersuit would “would make a regrettable situation worse.”

An autopsy performed on a male moose that terrorized drivers in Minnesota’s Iron Range region before a wildlife officer brought it to justice revealed the bull was infected with an array of different parasites that drove it into a homicidal rage, the Grand Forks Herald reports. The University of Minnesota veterinarians who performed the examination of the velvet-horned ungulate’s remains made the chilling discovery of hepatitis due to liver flukes, hydatid cysts in its lungs, a moderate winter tick infestation, and brainworm in its eyeball. The other eyeball was presumably unaffected.

“There are quite a few more tests pending. But we can make a fairly educated guess that parasite infestation, especially brainworm, was a contributing factor to its behavior,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager Penny Backman told the Herald. The moose, who was not named in the report (presumably to protect the privacy of his family during this difficult time), had attacked a truck belonging to a logger near Eveleth, Minnesota and stared menacingly at a driver on a road near US Highway 53. The driver made a U-turn and left the area.

Breaking:  The Texas Supreme Court ruled unanimously that state licensing officials do not have the legal authority to enforce SB8, known at the Texas Heartbeat Act, the oppressive anti-choice law that empowers ordinary residents to sue people associated with a woman getting an abortion.

The question before the Court was whether SB8 provides authority for the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing, the Texas Board of Pharmacy, or the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, “directly or indirectly, to take disciplinary or adverse action of any sort against individuals or entities that violate the Texas Heartbeat Act.”  The plaintiffs in the case sought to negate any professional discipline by state-run licensing boards for civil cases stemming from the law.

Senate Bill 8 provides that its requirements may be enforced by a private civil action, that no state official may bring or participate as a party in any such action, that such an action is the exclusive means to enforce the requirements, and that these restrictions apply notwithstanding any other law. Based on these provisions, we conclude that Texas law does not grant the state-agency executives named as defendants in this case any authority to enforce the Act’s requirements, either directly or indirectly. We answer the Fifth Circuit’s certified question No.

As of now, 9th dettachment of boarder guards is observing how the enemy is trying to occupy the town!#StopRussia #StopPutin @EmmanuelMacron @vonderleyen @eucopresident @EP_Edinburgh @EU_Commission @Europarl_EN @UN @NATO @OlafScholz @BorisJohnson @AndrzejDuda

— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine – Ukrainian Parliament (@ua_parliament) March 11, 2022