JustTheNews: “Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will speak at an upcoming New Hampshire Republicans event, fueling speculation he’ll run for president. New Hampshire is one of the first two early-balloting states in presidential election cycles. Candidates must do well enough in either New Hampshire of Iowa, the other first-in the-nation state, or both, to remain a serious contender. And visits to both ahead of a presidential election cycle is at least a sign that a potential candidate is seriously considering – or at least testing – a presidential bid.”

“Pompeo will speak remotely later this month at a fundraising event for GOP candidate Bill Boyd for the New Hampshire state House. ‘Liberal Democrats are bringing their radical national agenda to state houses across the country, including in Concord,’ Pompeo said Tuesday on WMUR Radio. ‘I look forward to joining the New Hampshire Republican Party and Matt Mowers to help elect Bill Boyd to protect the ‘live free or die’ values of the Granite State.’ Pompeo has not said whether he will run in 2024. However, he also spoke at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, considered a must-attend event for any potential Republican presidential candidate trying to win over the party’s conservative base.”

“The House GOP just voted in a secret ballot to reverse their internal ban on earmarks, meaning Republicans will now be able to take advantage of Dems’ new earmarks system” reports Politico Congressional Correspondent Melanie Zanona.

“Cherokee County Sheriff says, ‘[Suspect James] Long told investigators the crimes were not racially motivated. Long told investigators that he blames the massage parlors for providing an outlet for his addiction to sex.’ Sheriff just said that Long may have visited these locations in the past and that he suffered from sexual addiction. ‘It’s still early, but it may not be [racially motivated].’ ‘He does claim that it was not racially motivated. He sees these locations as places he wanted to…eliminate,’ said the Cherokee Sheriff’s captain” reports WXIA’s Brendan Keefe.

Washington Post: “Former president Donald Trump’s son Eric, who runs the family’s private company, touted the potential of transforming their Doral golf resort into a gambling destination amid a quiet push among Florida Republicans to legalize casinos in areas of the state that have long opposed them. Although Republican legislative leaders have not yet submitted a bill, word of a proposal has spread widely enough that both supporters and opponents already are gearing up for a fight that they say could be more intense than in previous years due to Trump’s potential interest and his close relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).”

“The bill would allow developers to transfer gambling licenses to properties in areas where casinos have long been prohibited and bar local municipal governments from intervening, according to a half dozen policymakers, lobbyists and other stakeholders, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the bill’s language has not yet been made public. ‘My understanding is they are trying to take the gambling permits that are in South Florida and make them portable, and preempt local governments from stopping them,’ said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber (D), a longtime opponent of gambling. Gelber wants the city to hire an attorney to challenge the legality of such a move, which the city commission is scheduled to consider Wednesday.”

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, when America celebrates the non-achievements of its least-valuable ethnic group, the Irish, by honoring a man who was actually French. Normally there would be much merriment and pointless bagpipe parades that serve as an excuse for the police and fire departments of New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities plagued by the scourge of the Irish to get drunk and beat the shit out of each other, but unfortunately the pandemic put most celebrations on hold until next year. Trump wasn’t the first Orange Man to ruin an Irishman’s day, but this one particularly hurts as this is two St Paddy’s in a row he fucked with his dereliction in the face of a pandemic. May the devil know he’s going to die a half hour in advance.

So sit tight, gather in a small group or alone, don’t drink any Bushmills or any other fucking Protestant whiskey, and get hammered in honor of the filthy, potato-eating lowbreds and their stupid Danny Boy song. Next year will be the time to order one Guinness and a small plate of corned beef before realizing they both suck and switching to Keystone Light and wings.

And yes I am Irish American. Nearly 100% as far as I know. I can call myself a potato-eating lowbred. I wouldn’t write this harshly about Jews on Passover or Hindus on Diwali. Maybe about the Italians on Columbus Day or the San Rocco Festival. We’ll see.

“Donald Trump seems calm. Hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, his palatial club in West Palm Beach, Florida, the former president plays golf, mingles with members of the club, calls old business friends in New York and Florida. The frustration and anger that followed his election loss is not visible on the surface, friends say. But, they add, the anger is still very much there. According to several Trump allies who spoke to Newsweek, the former president has spent much of his time at Mar-a-lago plotting what to do – and what not to do – between now and the midterms.”

“They say he has not decided whether to run again in 2024, and won’t anytime soon, because his presence freezes the Presidential race for the GOP. They also say he has ruled out trying to start a social media or digital broadcasting company – widely rumored in 2020 – saying it would be too time consuming and too expensive to pull off. Even though Trump remains ‘intensely frustrated’ with the bans on him on Facebook and Twitter, the idea of starting some sort of competing presence ‘was always mostly speculation; there wasn’t much to it. It’s too heavy a lift,’ says a former senior campaign aide who requested anonymity to speak freely” – Newsweek.

Politico: “As President Joe Biden embarks on an ambitious plan to sell his massive coronavirus relief package to the public, conservatives are starting to ask: Did we botch this? The overwhelming sentiment within the Republican Party is that voters will turn on the $1.9 trillion bill over time. But that wait-and-see approach has baffled some GOP luminaries and Trump World figures who expected Republicans to seize their first opportunity to cast newly-in-charge Democrats as out of control. Instead, they fear the party did little to dent Biden’s major victory – a victory that could embolden the administration in forthcoming legislative fights and even the lead up to the midterm elections. ‘The lack of response to this bill in an organized messaging and aggressive media push back is shown by the fact that Democrats have now gone from $2 trillion to a $4 trillion infrastructure package. If Covid relief was that easy, why not just run the table?’ said former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.”

“‘It’s a fairly popular bill that polled well because it’s been sold as a Covid relief bill with direct cash payments to Americans – what’s not to like?’ he added. ‘However, that’s not what the bill is. That’s a huge problem because 2022 has already started and you don’t see the fight here.’ Bannon isn’t alone in his lament. Elsewhere in conservative circles, a feeling of missed opportunity has taken root in the wake of the passage of the Covid-relief bill last week. Republicans were never expected to support the measure and unanimously opposed it when the time came for a vote. But in interviews with top GOP operatives, Trump confidantes, and congressional aides, there was a common refrain that the party could have done more to frame it for the public. Instead, periodic claims that the bill was bloated with progressive add-ons and bailout money for blue states were overshadowed by a more relentless focus on the culture wars du jour.”

“Watch the MSM twist this creep into a Trump/Maga Supporter fighting against the China Virus. After all, didn’t creepy Uncle Joe say there was rampant violence against Asian Americans?”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Eight Dead in 3 Shootings in Atlanta-Area Massage Parlors”, posted Tuesday night.

“There’s a popular view of the last few weeks of American politics that goes something like this: Under Joe Biden’s leadership, the Dems are not only easing the current national crisis by handing out $1400 checks and distributing COVID vaccines to American citizens, but has also already enacted some of the most ambitious liberal policy change since the Great Society, making Biden a potentially transformational president after just two months in office. And what are Republicans doing while all this historical achievement is going on? Ranting and raving about ‘cancel culture.'”

“This account isn’t necessarily wrong as a simple description of recent events, though it’s really too soon to evaluate the long-term importance of a American Rescue Plan Act that has been law for less than a week. As I recently remarked to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, the lack of a sustained conservative attack on the bill eased the political pressure on moderate Democratic members of Congress who might otherwise have worried about its $1.9 trillion cost: ‘the case against Democrats [right now] is being made on Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, not the debt.'”

“Leading conservative media voices and prominent Republican politicians alike have rallied to the defense of these pop-culture figures and other symbols of traditional Americana supposedly in danger of permanent suppression by the censorious left; Rep. Jim Jordan argued last month that ‘cancel culture… is the number one issue for the country to address today.’ But the cancel-culture preoccupation isn’t necessarily a mistake for Republicans – at least if their main objective is electoral success, not substantive influence. Polls have consistently shown that Biden’s COVID response efforts gain wider popular approval than any other major policy or presidential quality. Meanwhile, as Harry Enten of CNN recently pointed out, the assertion that political correctness has ‘gone too far’ receives broader agreement from the American public than the Republican Party’s positions on many other political issues. Rather than trying to convince voters that legislation containing immediate four-figure cash payments for everyone in their family is actually a bad idea, it’s strategically easier to simply move the partisan battle to more favorable terrain” – Honest Graft.

AP: “White supremacist propaganda reached alarming levels across the U.S. in 2020, according to a new report that the Anti-Defamation League provided to The Associated Press. There were 5,125 cases of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and other hateful messages spread through physical flyers, stickers, banners and posters, according to Wednesday’s report. That’s nearly double the 2,724 instances reported in 2019. Online propaganda is much harder to quantify, and it’s likely those cases reached into the millions, the anti-hate organization said. The ADL, which was founded more than a century ago, said that last year marked the highest level of white supremacist propaganda seen in at least a decade. Its report comes as federal authorities investigate and prosecute those who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, some of whom are accused of having ties to or expressing support for hate groups and antigovernment militias.”

“‘As we try to understand and put in perspective the past four years, we will always have these bookends of Charlottesville and Capitol Hill,’ group CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said. ‘The reality is there’s a lot of things that happened in between those moments that set the stage,’ he said. Christian Picciolini, a former far-right extremist who founded the deradicalization group Free Radicals Project, said the surge in propaganda tracks with white supremacist and extremist recruiters seeing crises as periods of opportunity. ‘They use the uncertainty and fear caused by crisis to win over new recruits to their ‘us vs. them’ narrative, painting the ‘other’ as the cause of their pain, grievances or loss,’ Picciolini told the AP. ‘The current uncertainty caused by the pandemic, job loss, a heated election, protest over extrajudicial police killings of Black Americans, and a national reckoning sparked by our country’s long tradition of racism has created a perfect storm in which to recruit Americans who are fearful of change and progress.'”

A house that contained a large quantity of commercial-grade fireworks exploded in Ontario, California, killing two people and forcing the evacuation of people for blocks around the location as firefighters cleared the scene, USA Today reports.

Two horses and a dog survived the explosion and had to be rescued by first responders.  Local police, fire department officials and the FBI are investigating the explosion.

Videos of the explosion show a billowing cloud above the site where the house was, with fireworks exploding around the cloud.  No neighbors are heard cooing “ooh” or “aah” as the fireworks burst in the sky, perhaps because their glow was dampened because it was daylight.

In a very convoluted statement made on Fox News, Donald Trump sorta kinda encouraged some people to get the coronavirus vaccine, an inoculation he and his third wife got secretly in December when they still lived in Washington, DC.

As Politico reports, Trump told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, “I would recommend it.  And I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.  But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also.  But it is a great vaccine.  It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works.”

The rather weak endorsement of the vaccine by Trump comes after polling shows that 50% of people who supported Trump said they would “never” get the coronavirus vaccine.  Trump downplayed the dangers of the virus throughout his term or claimed that there was nothing he could do because the Obama administration “left the cupboard bare”–even though the virus hit the US three years after Trump took office.

The Federal Savings Bank of Chicago filed a foreclosure suit on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s home in the Hamptons, New York, claiming Manafort owned more than $9 million on the home and had not made a payment since November 2017, court documents show.

The case notes that Manafort and his wife reside at a home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida which they claim is their primary residence.  According to Zillow, that residence has a value of $1.3 million.

In November 2016, ten days after the presidential election, the Manaforts took a $9.5 million mortgage on the Hamptons house, with a current market value of $11.2 millions.  They missed the payment due one year later, on November 2017, as part of the lending agreement, and they have not made any subsequent payments.

In the summer of 2018, Manafort was convicted or pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges including crimes relating to money laundering, tax evasion and making false statements to investigators, for which he was sentenced to 90 months in prison.  He received a pardon from Donald Trump on December 23, 2020, less than one month before Trump left office.

The street outside Rockway Middle School in Westchester, Florida will be renamed in memory of slain FBI agent Laura Schwartzenberger, one of two FBI agents slain while executing a warrant on a suspected child pornographer last month, the Miami Herald reports.

Schwartzenberger, who was 43 when she was killed, became popular with students at the school for presentations she would give about social media and the danger of online predators.  “Laura has been an integral part of the Rockway Law Studies magnet for the past five years. As an FBI agent, Laura taught our students each year about the dangers of social media and much more,” the school said in a statement after her death.

Schwartzenberger and fellow agent Daniel Alfin, 36, were killed outside a Sunrise home while trying to serve a warrant related to a child-pornography investigation.  Both specialized in investigations involving crimes against children.

At least seven people have been killed in three different shootings at two spas and one massage parlor located in two Georgia counties, according to NBC News.

Cherokee County sheriff’s deputies were called to a massage parlor where they found two dead of gunshot wounds and three wounded. One of the victims later died at a hospital. About an hour later, Atlanta police responded to a call of a reported robbery at a spa to find three people shot. Another person, at a spa across the street, was also shot and killed. Police describe one location as a spa and the other as an aromatherapy spa.

UPDATE (9:02 p.m. ET): Police have arrested a male individual suspected in the Cherokee County shooting, where four Asian women were killed, with one death recently occuring.  Robert Aaron Long (spelling unverified), 21, has been arrested.  The four victims in the Atlanta shootings were also Asians. From reports from Atlanta Journal Constitution and MSNBC.

EXCLUSIVE: @GStephanopoulos on Gov. Andrew Cuomo: "If the investigation confirms the claims of the women, should he resign?"

"Yes," Pres. Biden says. "I think he'll probably end up being prosecuted, too.” https://t.co/a6qfOJ9Byp pic.twitter.com/EiC63wtnUo

— ABC News (@ABC) March 17, 2021

The House will vote on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act which was allowed to expire in 2019 amid Republican objections of provisions to include protections for LGBTQ people and a tightening of gun ownership restrictions for people accused of abuse, Roll Call reports.

The bill is likely to get some Republican support in the House and the Senate, although the vote will be tight in the Senate.  This session, however, Republicans will have to go on record to vote against VAWA, whereas in 2019, Mitch McConnell, then majority leader, refused to bring the reauthorization to the floor, protecting his members from having to vote down a popular piece of legislation.

“It is a shame that we have not in the last Congress passed this bill that we sent to the Senate and, like so many other very important pieces of legislation, Sen. McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate simply ignored,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.

Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general are planning to file suit against the Biden Administration over a provision in the American Rescue Plan that prevents the use of federal aid provided to cities and states to fund tax cuts, the Washington Post reports.

The stimulus package sets aside $350 billion to help state and local governments who have been hit with a loss of tax revenue because of the business downturn that resulted from the pandemic and the lack of economic preparation from the federal government.

A provision in the ARP Act bans municipalities and states that accept federal aid from shifting that money from back-to-work efforts to tax cuts.  The GOP attorneys general claim that the provision is an “unprecedented and unconstitutional” limit on states’ abilities to regulate their own taxes.

https://youtu.be/VHvqgqV838Q

Steven Crowder, a so-call “conservative comedian” who hosts a daily podcast, and three of his white male co-hosts who obviously have never stepped foot on a farm, had a horrifically racist rant about minority farmers.  First claiming he didn’t know any–therefore, obviously, they don’t exist–Crowder deride a $5 billion aid program aimed at helping Black, Hispanic, Native Americans and other minority farmers who have traditionally been discriminated against in federal aid programs.  After Crowder demonstrates his poor math skills–claiming that 1965 was “a hundred years ago”–he and his buddies go on their bigoted screed.