“But we’re doing everything right,” House Oversight Committee chair and guy who’s always quiet yelling Jamie Comer stammers as he tries to explain his inability to muster a slightly plausible impeachment excuse.  “It’s taking a lot longer than I wish it could, but I think we’re at the point now where Joe Biden’s got some serious legal issues himself.”  What those “serious legal issues” Joe Biden is facing is anyone’s guess given Comer and Republicans haven’t presented any evidence of any wrongdoing by the President.

As all cults eventually develop, MAGA now comes with an elite level:  Donald Trump’s latest fundraiser stratifies donors’ dedication to the Greedy Goldfish, allowing one to officially achieve the legendary “Ultra MAGA” status so many posers claim, CNN reports.

Much like another cult, Scientology, believers can gain higher levels based on the amount they spend.  To reach Ultra MAGA, an individual must donate $814,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, the new Joint Fundraising Committee (JFC) the Trump campaign shares with his daughter-in-law’s hobby, the RNC.

Lesser MAGAts can donate a cool quarter million to make it to Team Trump 2024, while a $100,000 contribution gets you into the Team America First tier, where Trump recycles merch with old campaign slogans.  “Club 47,” as hip as a 1990s disco, will cost you $50,000 (not $47,000), and MAGA 24 starts the titling at a triffling $24,000.

After Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged Judge Juan Merchan to extend the judge’s gag order against criminal defendant Donald Trump to include his daughter, Trump’s lawyers responded with a response where they argue that not only are Bragg and Merchan not covered by the gag order, but Merchan’s daughter is fair game because she’s working against the interests of Donald Trump.

Bragg’s letter to Merchan, sent to the judge Thursday morning, asks Merchan to clarify that the gag order issued earlier this week covers Merchan and Bragg themselves, as well as Merchan’s daughter.

“Contrary to the People’s suggestion, the Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in response.  “To ‘clarify or confirm’ the meaning of the gag order in the way the People suggest would be to expand it.”  Recent Trump social media posts naming and targeting the judge’s daughter would be outside the scope of the existing order, and besides, they argue, she started it by having political opinions that don’t support Donald Trump wholeheartedly [paraphrase].

The frameworks of the two major Party presidential candidates’ campaigns reflect their respective national infrastructure plans:  Joe Biden has improved and expanded on the existing operation to widen his outreach, while Donald Trump’s network has failed to materialize in key states.

Led by Biden, Democrats are opening “coordinated campaign offices” around the country, but with specific attention in battleground states, where the offices will allow the Biden campaign to blend efforts with those of Senate, House and state and local candidates.  In Pennsylvania, Democrats will have 14 such offices opened by the end of March; thirty campaign offices opened in Michigan.  In North Carolina, which Biden lost by 1.5 percentage points in 2020, the Biden-Harris campaign opened ten offices.  This all goes toward the campaign’s goal of opening 100 field offices and increasing staff by 350 people in battleground states by the end of the month.

Trump, on the other hand, has spent most of his money on his legal defense.  In Arizona, where Trump had around 60 people on staff four years ago, the campaign has fewer than ten.  With the Trump campaign facing a massive fundraising shortfall, the national staff was gutted earlier this month as pop “singer” Lara Trump took the reins and vowed donations would go to only Trump’s interests; she later softened that statement.  The Trump campaign appears to have made no announcements about opening offices in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan. 

The Arizona Republican party had six full-time staffers on payroll as of last month, literally a tenth of 60 they had in February 2020, the Arizona Republic reports. Add one Trump campaign manager and there’s seven, but that’s a fraction of the 19 that the Biden campaign and the 15 with state Dem staff at this point. The Republicans should probably get to work on that sooner rather than later.

At least 75 pharmaceutical research laboratory mice at the University of Notre Dame were either killed or euthanized shortly thereafter after some asshole accidentally double-dosed them with an unidentified drug currently under experimental trials, the South Bend Tribune reports.

It’s not clear if they figured waste not want not and fed the corpses to the lab snakes or if they even have any lab snakes. On a related note, Good Friday appears to be a slow news day.

“Anything is Possible,” the latest single by Autotune feat. Lara Trump, debuted Thursday night after the co-chair of the Republican National Committee posted it on her dead-named Twitter account (notably before she posted it to her Truth Social account).  An original composition with lyrics seemingly written in the margins of her social studies notebook by a bored high school sophomore who dreams of one day marrying a sociopathic billionaire’s unloved son, paired to a melody reminiscent of Sunday hymns with the pastor’s wife at the Yamaha keyboard, “Anything is Possible” shows what’s possible when someone who was once told she has a “pleasant voice” by the person in the pew in front of her learns how to use music apps on her iPhone.

“This song, and those that will follow, have been a great creative outlet for me over the past several months,” Trump said in a statement threatening the release of more musical compositions.  “I have truly enjoyed every aspect: from writing, to recording in the studio, to tweaking the musical arrangements, and I’m excited to share my passion for music with the world.”  …which is exactly what the co-chair of the Republican National Committee should be focused on in an election year.

Four years ago today

Reporter: I want to ask you about some comments you made on governors not being 'appreciative'

Trump: I didn't say that

Reporter: These are direct quotes

Trump: Your statement is a lie. Thank you pic.twitter.com/rpcEEBqJ9D

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 29, 2024

Actually on second thought asking “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” backfired terribly on the GOP and MAGA propaganda industrial complex and we haven’t seen them using it in a few weeks. While it’s quite possible we missed a few tweets or on-air hits to that effect at this point it would seem like they backed off from it. Keep an eye out for more 2019 “messaging” though.

“Dear Supporters and Friends of the effort to recall Robin ‘CCP’ Vos, In our quest for genuine representation in Racine County, unity and resolve drive us. Our effort to recall Robin ‘CCP’ Vos highlights our community’s demand for meaningful change and transparent leadership. This campaign transcends the recall of one individual; it’s about amplifying our collective voice, demanding fairness, and pursuing governance that truly reflects Racine County’s values and needs.”

“In our pursuit of accountability and representation, we wish to clarify that our efforts to recall Robin ‘CCP’ Vos remain undeterred and more focused than ever. Contrary to any misunderstanding, the original petition for recall, which Vos has conceded has more than 6,300 in district and authentic signatures, has not been withdrawn. Recall Vos stands firm, awaiting a decisive court ruling concerning mapping issues and related challenges. In an empowering response to the community’s call, a new effort spearheaded by the Racine Recall Committee has been launched.”

“This concurrent petition drive is not a diversion but a reinforcement of our collective mission. It is a strategic endeavor to ensure that no voice from Racine County goes unheard. Reflecting on our initial recall petition, it’s clear that while our resolve was strong, the path was fraught with unexpected challenges. Learning from this, the Racine Recall Committee is committed to implementing stringent quality control measures. Our goal is to fortify the integrity of the recall process, ensuring that each step we take is marked by precision, transparency, and trust. A Positive Outlook and Cooperative Spirit: It’s imperative that our collective attitude remains positive, focusing on the synergies between the two recall efforts. Together, they form a comprehensive strategy, adaptable to the forthcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling,” says Recall Vos in a press release announcing a second crack at decapitating the powerful Assembly Speaker after the first try failed.

Folks in the central Mexican town of Taxco on Thursday participated in an angry mob-fueled public execution a few hours before local Catholics, likely with at least some overlap from the first group, recreated a famous historical angry mob-fueled public execution, NBC News reports.

First, a woman suspected of kidnapping and murdering an eight year-old girl was ripped out of a police vehicle and savagely beaten to death by an angry bloodthirsty mob. Reportedly there was video evidence showing the woman dumping the girl’s body, but who the hell knows when it’s an angry mob. Later, the Catholic Church reenacted the death of Jesus Christ at the hands of an angry mob as part of their Holy Week celebrations. It’s not clear if the guy playing Jesus and the two other dudes who were brutally executed alongside him in 33 AD were physically nailed to the crosses by their hands. That strive for authenticity might be more of a Philippines thing than a Mexico thing.

BREAKING: Dem Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson on Friday announced that the USDA Rural Development bureau “has awarded $405,435 in grant funds through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Loans and Grants” to two farms in his district as part of the Inflation Reduction Act that Thompson actually voted for.

Pillow Farms in Yazoo City, Mississippi will recieve $305,450 “to install an energy efficient grain dryer system,” while Rushing Farms in Lena will get $99,985 “to provide energy efficiency improvements by installing stir fans, vent doors, heaters, fans, service doors, and cool cell improvements to four poultry houses” located on the property. AND THOMPSON VOTED FOR IT.

What’s even fucking crazier is that there could be hundreds – maybe even thousands – of similar press releases from other members of Congress informing their constituents that they “secured” funding for this or that project in their district or state – and for them to do so is entirely consistent with their voting record on the legislation that appropriated the funds. Hell, there may even be more such factually honest press releases than those heralding concomitantly financed projects by members that claim to have “secured” the funding despite having voted against the legislation.

Interesting answer from the guy who the Washington Examiner this morning referred to as “his VP front-runner,” with the “his” in that meaning “Trump’s.” First off it’s wrong as any Black American with even the most rudimentary education in civics should be aware that the Voting Rights Act passed by Congress in 1965 expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from implementing any measure resulting “in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color.”

Second, it’s also “wrong” in that it’s exactly the opposite of what the Orange God Emperor wants to hear from one of his most loyal toadies. This is literally the reason he ordered Ronna Not-Romney fired: She was spending too much money pretending there was a presidential primary and not enough on “election integrity.” It doesn’t matter if some piece of jerkoff legislation banning mail-in ballots nationally probably wouldn’t even make it to the floor of the House let alone pass. Just pretending that they’re working on trying to address the fat fuck’s “priorities” would probably be enough for now. If Trump was watching this it’s a safe bet Donalds got an angry call about it and is now scrambling to figure out how to mollify him with some performative “legislating” when he could’ve just mumbled some empty bullshit in response to Maria Bartiromo’s question.

The leader of the right-wing nationalist Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland’s National Assembly on Friday resigned following his arrest for a “non-recent sexual offences,” which in American means “non-recent sexual offenses,” and in plainer American means it did not happen recently but we don’t really know where the line drawn between recent and non-recent.

Anyway, typically of the British media and justice system the BBC’s reporting on the arrest and subsequent resignation of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP contains no details of the allegations against him other than that an unnamed 57 year-old woman had been charged with “aiding and abetting additional offences.” However that he’s a conservative and a scumbag is enough for us to pick it up.

Donaldson’s apparent downfall should also be a welcome development to the Catholic whiskey drinkers in our audience as by nature of his party he is definitely not a Jameson kind of guy.

“As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now. This is plainly unfair. Indeed, there has long been support for axing the Twenty-second Amendment due to the artificial limits it places on voter choice. Many popular presidents have agreed. In 1985, the Washington Post reported that Ronald Reagan supported repealing the amendment, saying in private remarks that the lame-duck label being applied to his second term left him feeling ‘handicapped.’ In 2016, Barack Obama told David Axelrod that he was sure he would have coasted to a third term if such a thing were permissible: ‘I am confident in this vision, because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.'”

“The case of Donald Trump, however, makes an even more forceful ethical argument against the Twenty-second Amendment and for its repeal: If a man who once was president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second nonconsecutive term – as Trump seems bound to do—to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play. If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?” writes right wing “intellectutal” douchebag Peter Tounguette in the American Conservative, a guy who – surprise! – Media Matters reports is a “partner” in the ultra-fascist “Project2025” agenda to destroy American democracy.

It’s far more realistic that Trump would simply ignore the 22nd Amendment and dare the scant remnants of the systems dedicated to the rule of law to stop him from running again. Actually probably more realistic than that is for Trump to cancel the 2028 election and rule for life.

Baby-food pouches make parenting easier, writes @yeahyeahyasmin. So why does it feel so bad to feed one to your kid? https://t.co/T2fLBW0RUL

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 29, 2024

There’s a hidden danger in the declarative verbiage used in The Atlantic’s headlines and sub-heds that one non-expert says indicates that the constant neuroticism and ruminative babbling in the magazine’s pieces is getting kind of fucking old and maybe the writers should go outside sometimes. Studies that don’t actually exist show that if you can slap together 800 words about the social costs of a certain popular brand of multigrain bread that people are buying at Trader Joe’s then you would probably benefit from self-medicating with whiskey and muscle relaxers.

The Atlantic’s subscriber base may benefit as well if the writers would just lighten the hell up and stop printing tedious worry porn like “What might feel like good parenting in the short term might, paradoxically, threaten a kid’s ability to make safe choices in the long term.” But as long as people keep paying $79.99 a year to hear two of their experts “discuss what happens when Americans lose faith in the experts” on an exclusive podcast, don’t expect them to just fucking chill out.

An Eastern Colorado Republican Committee late Thursday selected former gubernatorial candidate and wife-beater Greg Lopez as their nominee for the June 25th special election to replace now-former Congressman Ken Buck, the Denver Post reports. The good news for current 3rd District QAnon fan Congresswoman and complete jerkoff Lauren Boebert is that Lopez announced afterward he won’t be running in the regular primary on the same day and would only serve for the less than six months remaining in the term in the likely event he’s elected. Which makes Boebert’s carpetbagging move into the 4th that much easier to pull off. There are still eight other candidates in the field and she can probably just cruise on name recognition if there’s no consolidation.

Bankrupt alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Guiliani told a court Thursday that forcing the sale of his Palm Beach condo would “be forced to incur expenses for alternative housing” and would likely “join the ranks of the homeless” since he’s already agreed to sell his Manhattan home to satisfy debts including a $148 million defamation judgment a jury awarded in December to former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss over his 2020 conspiracy bullshit, the Independent reports.

Rudy’s filing also claimed that he needs the home to “operate the Podcast from if he is to earn money therefrom” and the money he earns from the podcast “would only serve to benefit creditors.”

Rep. Tim Burchett, told Newsmax that House Oversight Chair James Comer's invitation to President Joe Biden to testify before the committee is a serious offer, but he doesn't think the president will take him up on it.https://t.co/hzJRNxqFok https://t.co/J8yA1cHdJ6

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 29, 2024

If we’re talking about doing the work to boost their candidate in the presidential election and flexing the power to set an investigative agenda they have with a majority, Senate Dems have been utterly chickenshit in comparison to the House GOP this Congress – “comparison” doing a lot of lifting there because there is none. At least something would have been nice to see.

That being said, it would be fucking stupid for a Dem Senate committee chair to invite fat former President Trump to come testify publicly about his corruption, knowing full well that he wouldn’t show up, the only “victory” there being able to say that he’s too much of coward to face them. Far too few of the Dem voter base would give a shit. Obviously the incentives are different for the House GOP, that in a vacuum they can actually get the kind of favorable coverage from Newsmax from it.

But this isn’t happening in a vacuum, it’s happening after 15 months of just absolutely humiliating failure and simply further telegraphing their weakness and impotence. The returns have diminished to nothing and it’s at the point where the MAGA base are beyond fed up with them.

Axios’s coverage of a new Public Religion Research Institute survey, headlined “Americans continue to lose their religion as GOP pushes it,” seems to be very strongly suggesting that the Republican Party’s batshittery is singularly responsible for the ongoing decline of religious identity.

“The findings suggest that Republicans who focus on evangelical priorities – such as former President Trump, who’s now hawking Bibles, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La), who flies a flag favored by Christian nationalists outside his office – are preaching to a loyal but dwindling audience,” they write about the collapse of church attendance that is particularly pronounced among Americans from Catholic backgrounds, which would make sense given how the US’s political geography concentrates a lot of its Papists in Blue States. PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman says another major factor is younger Americans turned off by “Christian” hostility to LGBTQ folks, that 60 percent of respondents under 30 “cite the treatments of LGBTQ as a reason they stop going to church.”

That was about as close as the survey’s content itself got to politics. It was Axios that made the connection to Mike Johnson’s Jesus-themed assclownery and Trump’s Bible infomercial bullshit.

“Leaked video shows Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell attending a meeting held by Abolish Abortion Texas where they supported the death penalty for women who seek abortions or use IVF, including pregnant minors. London and Harrel have also signed onto a pledge from the same group vowing to abolish all circumstances of abortion care in Texas. The video was obtained by Hood County Democrats Chair Adrienne Quinn Martin and took place at a True Texas Project chapter’s meeting in Granbury, Texas. The event was hosted by Monica Brown – who is known for her attempts to ban books she deems inappropriate – and originally streamed from her Facebook page in January.”

“Paul Brown, who is the Director of Policy for Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX) said that IVF is a form of abortion and that when a fertilized egg is destroyed it should be considered murder, saying ‘Their lives [women] don’t matter any more than the babies’ they are killing.’ Brown also said how the group is against basic contraception pointing to the emergency contraception pill Plan B, saying that it ‘terminates or kills a baby prior to implantation – which is an abortion’ Brown went on to say that they will ‘never be okay with abortions in the instance of incest or rape’ with several audience members suggesting that pregnant woman and doctors who perform abortions should be ‘held accountable’ to the highest extent of the law. The True Texas Project, which is a separate group that hosted the event, has hosted several events with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Senator Ted Cruz, was labeled as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has deep ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes,” says a press release from the Texas Democratic Party.