I love my new family at Smile Texas! The video says it all, and I am so grateful for their help fixing my smile for me. 😊🙌🏼😊 pic.twitter.com/z2kTmiY8td

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) March 12, 2024

…but why the hell is the currently sitting governor of a state filming an informercial for a teeth whitening clinic… One based in another state no less. Don’t the hard working dentists and hygienists and orthodontists and whoever else work at South Dakotan teeth whitening clinics deserve a shout out from their state’s leader? Actually forget that and ask maybe the more important questions about how much she got paid to promote the service and whether or not it’s legal to do so.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Tuesday determined that the MAGA petition effort to recall Republican state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for the crime of failing to decertify the 2020 election and other “election integrity”-related sins fell short of the minimum number of valid signatures to initiate a recall election by about 900, the Associated Press reports.

That the assclowns who slapped the effort together came up short was actually kind of a blessing for the Commission at least given the state Supreme Court’s decision to redraw the heavily gerrymandered state legislative maps would have created a situation in which the panel would’ve had no idea under which map to hold the recall election. “I’m lucky enough to be an attorney and it’s very, very murky to me,” said Dem member Mark Thomsen. “Nothing is clear about this process.”

Knowing that failing to do so could have serious consequences both legal and political, former President Trump’s shitbag lawyers and minions have been pleading with the Obese Orange God Emperor to keep his mouth shut and behave during his upcoming trial in Manhattan over his interfering in the 2016 election by paying hush money to pornstar Stormy Daniels, with whom he’d had a 45 second sexual encounter over a decade earlier, sources tell Rolling Stone.

So delicate is the situation that the lawyers freaked out when an outside adviser told Donald not to testify in the trial to avoid upsetting the jury because the fat bastard would defiantly do the opposite, and the teams is desperate to “prevent him from talking his way into a mess.”

“Nobody from President Trump’s team has advised what is alleged and the legal team does not share these absurd views peddled by cowardly unnamed sources. We won’t litigate this case in the media and those who try [to] do so clearly are speaking from ignorance and stupidity,” said large-headed Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung in a typically rage-filled statement.

Former Biden classified documents fuckup investigation special counsel Robert K Hur will testify before spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, just hours after the transcript of Hur’s October 2023 interview with the president revealed that the Republican prosecutor had at best grossly exaggerated the extent of Biden’s memory lapses – and more plainly exposed Hur as a partisan twat who wanted to help the GOP feel like they got a win politically when fat former President Trump faces trial for far worse mishandling of top secret info.

Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz nicely sums up the shitstorm Hur walked the media into with “The Washington Post ran 33 stories about Biden’s mental fitness in the four days following the Hur report, per @JuddLegum. After reviewing the transcript, the paper concludes that Biden ‘doesn’t come across as being as absent-minded as Hur has made him out to be.'” Here’s hoping House Judiciary Democrats drank some extra Red Bull this morning when they face this son of a bitch.

Republican Pennsylvania Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, situationally one of the good guys when it comes to Ukraine aid, on Tuesday opened up a discharge petition to signatures to do an end-run around Jesus dork Speaker Mike Johnson and get critical military supplies sent to the beleaguered ally as they suffer setbacks on the battlefield against Russia, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports.

The bill, originating in the Senate, also funds military support for Israel and Taiwan. All is needed are 218 signatures to get it passed, though some of the other specifics remain unclear to us.

In related news, NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard points out that the Trump campaign has not pushed back on Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban’s claim that Donald told him privately that “not another penny” of American aid would go to Ukraine should the Orange God Emperor reclaim his throne. This is as if it wasn’t already clear enough that Trump’s foreign policy goal is total Russian victory.

Barry County, Michigan MAGA Sheriff Dar Leaf – famous even before the 2020 election for being a fucking racist and wondering out loud whether the terrorists who tried to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in October of that year were simply performing a citizen’s arrest – is vowing to fight a grand jury subpoena for records of his long-running “investigation” into the 2020 election’s “irrefularities” and to sue the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Leaf and other “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theory assholes in the Great Lakes State, the Detroit News reports.

“I intend to file a motion to quash the subpoena… as well as a civil lawsuit against the Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson for attempting to usurp my investigation,” Leaf wrote in an affidavit on Friday. What he did not write was anything like “I have so much explosive evidence that will bring the Deep State to its knees and prove definitively that the 2020 election was stolen.”

Leaf has not been indicted yet and it’s unclear if he faces charges, but the same cannot be said of his co-conspirator MAGA lawyer Stefanie Lambert, who the Detroit News’s report mentions is still on the lam as of Monday morning after having fucked off from a Thursday court appearance.

UNDER BIDEN:

— Electricity is up 28.4%
— Food prices are up 21.2%
— Rent is up 20% https://t.co/axvCUDcOcU

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 12, 2024

A summary of the transcript of Biden classified documents fuckup special counsel Robert Hur’s October 2023 interview with the president by CNN seems to indicate that the punk-ass Republican prosecutor’s final report last month at the very least exaggerated the extent and volume of the memory lapses Joe displayed during the five-hour deposition, with really only one instance of it covered in the medium-length article printed with just hours to go before Hur sits down to testify publicly to spandex-wearing grapple freak Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee.

“The transcript shows that the president brought up his son amid a broader discussion about his handling of sensitive documents as he mulled his future after leaving public office after five decades. Asked where he kept papers that he was working on, Biden began a story framing the context as the 2017-2018 era. The president brought up his son Beau, who he said had encouraged him to remain politically engaged. ‘Remember, in this time frame, my son is either deployed or is dying,’ Biden said, according to the transcript. The president brought up his son’s death and he remembered the month and day: ‘What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30th.'”

“Several people in the room interjected to remind him that his son died in 2015. The muddle of years in the answer appears to cover the years Biden was dealing with his son’s death from cancer, while also deciding his political future. He didn’t run for president at the end of the Obama administration, ceding to Hillary Clinton. Then the Trump years prompted him to run, he said,” CNN writes in their story, which we copied verbatim to not mince the isolated nature of that lapse.

Two sources with knowledge of the conversation tell the Washington Post that fat former President Trump tried to get ketamine-brained tech tycoon Elon Musk to buy his second-rate social media platform Truth Social last summer, a proposal that obviously went nowhere, but indicates that the two mentally ill billionaires have been communicating more than is publicly known.

It also speaks to how lame Trump’s QAnon-infested personal network is in comparison to Twitter since Musk pissed away $44 billion to buy the premier social media platform but wouldn’t shell out what was no doubt a tiny fraction of that to buy up Truth Social and bail out Donald’s investors.

Asked by the Post to comment, a Trump Media and Technology Group spokesworm responded only with “We heard Trump and Musk were actually discussing buying the Washington Post but they decided it had no value,” which is about as butthurt of a non-denial as one could hope for.

“Dean Phillips, who just ‘quit’ in his hapless campaign against Crooked Joe Biden, was not very good at his craft, politics. In fact, I would say that he was far worse than the Republican challengers to me, with a few exceptions. I’ll give you those names if you like, but I’d rather get down to the serious business of defeating the worst President in the history of the United States, by far, Crooked Joe Biden!!! For the good of our now failing Nation, and in order to inform the American people of what is going on in our Country, we must immediately have a full scale debate between Crooked Joe and Honest Don. I’m ready to go, ANY TIME, ANY PLACE!” posted fat former President Trump at 1:26 AM EST on Tuesday, seemingly trying to justify his refusal to engage in the GOP primary debates.

Can’t think of any other reason why he’d mention Dean Phillips, who to our knowledge was not particularly vocal in needling Biden to face him in a debate. Even if he was, the mainstream and MAGA media both downplayed it because it would’ve come well after the Orange Weasel bitched out of the Republican primary face-offs. Either way, it’s interesting that Trump is so eager to make it happen well before the traditional final stretch considering he’s supposedly leading in the polls.

The losing candidate is supposed to be the one agitating for a debate, so maybe Trump’s internal polling is telling a different story than the ones commissioned by the mainstream media.

If you speak truth to power – evil people will come for you. https://t.co/8p815dHELa

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) March 12, 2024

Less than a month after its launch, the GoFundMe page set up with the goal of funding the entirety of Donald Trump’s “$355 Million Unjust Judgment”–their words, not ours–in the New York civil lawsuit appears to have fallen $354 million short of its goal.”  Launched by the wife of a wealth fund manager who runs 10xGrowthCon–The “con” is right there in the name, people! He’s telling you!–the effort has stalled at around $1.3 million for the last three days.

Rest easy, though: the money will go to Donald Trump, however, as organizer Elena Cardone confirms from the site:  “We are currently in communication with President Donald Trump’s team to ensure that he can and will accept the funds raised. It’s crucial that we navigate this process carefully and legally, and we appreciate your patience as we work through these details.”

Brian Butler, Trump Employee #5, spoke with CNN Monday night, explaining that he came forward for an interview because he wanted to control how his story was released given the potential threat of his identity being revealed by Trump’s lawyers, who moved for the personal information of witnesses in Trump’s Florida documents case be made public.  In this snippet, Butler explains just how transactional Trump was:  an Australian billionaire became a member of Mar-a-Lago to get access to Trump, Butler says, and with that access, he got classified information about US submarine capabilities.

A group from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, visiting Saudi Arabia on a good will mission, cut short its trip and is returning to the US after a Jewish member of the delegation was told to remove his head covering before entering a historic site, the Guardian reports.

Upon approaching Diriyah, a world heritage site outside Riyadh to which two members of the delegation had been invited to visit by the government, the commission’s chair, Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Abraham Cooper, was asked to remove his kippah and to keep it off “while at the site and any time he was to be in public, even though the Saudi ministry of foreign affairs had approved the site visit.”

The Commission is a Congressionally-chartered organization designed to help promote religious tolerance and serve in an advisory function to Congress.  Ever the diplomat, Rabbi Cooper noted Saudi Arabia was making progress toward its announced goal of having a more open society by 2030.  “However,” he noted, “especially in a time of raging antisemitism, being asked to remove my kippah made it impossible for us from USCIRF to continue our visit.”

Advising that Republicans should find their “offense talking point” and just hammer away at it even if it has nothing to do with the question asked, former three-ring binder aficionado and Trump Administration spokesliar Kayleigh McEneny advises Republicans that they should duplicate disjointed South Carolina Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s interview with George Stephanopoulos as a model. 

“Not fair that the Radical Left Democrats are attempting to take me to trial right smack in the middle of Election Season. It’s a Political Witch Hunt. This cannot be allowed to happen. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” writes fat former President Trump on Truth Social after his lawyers tried – and will hopefully fail – to derail this month’s trial using the same “presidential immunity” bullshit that’s been attempted in his vast swath of other civil and criminal cases with varying degrees of success so far.

What’s great about the New York Stormy Daniels hush money case is that, maybe even more so than the other indictments, that every time Trump or his chode-lickers screams that the trial is “election interference” then the response is “well what the hell was he doing when he paid off a pornstar to keep quiet about 45 seconds of sex with just days to go before the 2016 election? Wasn’t that interfering too?” which makes it sound proportionally justified, and thus “fair” by their own zero-sum rules. Right wing nihilists don’t cope well with that sort of situation. Tends to get them upset.

In an interview with disgraced CNN host Chris Cuomo–fired for secretly advising his brother, former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a sex scandal–Cuomo directly asks former Fox propagandist and resident overt white nationalist Tucker Carlson while Cuomo was the target of Carlson’s on-air ire so frequently.  “‘Cause I’m a dick, probably,” Carlson responds meekly, as bullies do when confronted, before cackling.  “… ’cause it was easy and I don’t like CNN and I really mean that in my heart of heart.”

To settle a lawsuit brought by LGBTQ and civil rights advocates, Florida Republican Governor and guy who named his failed presidential campaign’s PAC “Never Back Down” Ron DeSantis has backed down from his signature culture war piece of legislation–the infamous bill known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law–and will now allow discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in state schools, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

While the settlement keeps certain parts of the Parental Rights in Education Act such as input on books available in the library–although DeSantis has already said he intends to pare that back to eliminate extremists–it restricts only classroom instruction the particular subjects of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” but it does not ban discussions on gender or sexual orientation.  It also lifts any bans–real or construed–on literature by LGBTQ authors, reinforces discrimination policies and provides for anti-bullying efforts in schools.

“This settlement … re-establishes the fundamental principle, that I hope all Americans agree with, which is every kid in this country is entitled to an education at a public school where they feel safe, their dignity is respected and where their families and parents are welcomed,” Roberta Kaplan–yes, the E. Jean Carroll lawyer and the lead attorney in this case–told the Associated Press. “This shouldn’t be a controversial thing.”

On their first day in charge at the Republican National Committee, Trump’s hand-picked leadership team has purged its ranks of dozens of executives and staffers, presumably to fill the ranks of the Party with Trump loyalists, Politico reports.

More than 60 employees were let go on Monday, mainly in the political, communications and data teams; the RNC should expect more staff to quit as those fired get hired by campaign teams that need to bulk up given new co-chair Lara Trump’s promise to put “every dollar” into Donald Trump’s personal legal and political efforts.

Firing such a large portion of the national team as campaign season heats up and primaries are still occurring undermines long-standing relationships those staff had with key figures, be they in the local organizing efforts or with local and national outlets.  In the last few election cycles, the RNC has typically hit a peak of 1,000 paid employees, but with the national committee raising just $73 million in 2023–even though outgoing chair Ronna Romney McDaniel claimed a record $23 million haul in January and February–the national coffers are still too light to help failing operations in Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota, key states for the GOP in 2024.

The Long Island Roller Rebels, a roller derby league part of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, asked a New York court to overturn a Nassau County executive’s order banning transgender athletes from playing on women’s sports teams, saying the regulation violates state civil rights laws, NBC 4 in New York reports.

Founded in 2005, the Roller Rebels has hosted try-outs, exhibitions and competitions in parks around Nassau County for the last number of years, but now that Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman signed the ban last month, the league believes it will be refused a permit to operate on park grounds because it does not discriminate if a prospective skater is nonbinary or trans.  Park applications demand permit applicants specify if an organization that will use public facilities be for “male,” “female,” or “co-ed” teams.  The league, represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the county regulation violates the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act and numerous state regulations regarding public lands.

“This cruel policy sends the dangerous message that trans people don’t belong in Nassau County,” Roller Rebels member Amanda “Curly Fry” Urena said in a statement. “We hope the court sees this policy for what it is — transphobic and unjust — and makes sure Nassau County is a safe space for trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people.”