Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday told CBS’s Margaret Brennan that “as a Christian I’m required to” forgive his fat former boss for trying to get him killed on January 6th, 2021. He probably wanted to reference something along the lines of Luke 23:34 in which Jesus said “Forgive them father, for they do not know what they are doing” while dying on the cross, but that might’ve seemed a little overdramatic considering that the rioters did not actually publicly execute Pence.

More seriously, Mike’s apostasy to the Orange Pharaoh might just be worth watching going forward, provided of course that he doesn’t come out in October and say publicly that he’s “prayed on it” and decided to endorse Trump for president again or some other such bullshit.

NEW: Statement from @MAGAIncWarRoom’s @__Pfeiffer on this outright and dishonest lie from Politico

Full statement and background: https://t.co/wie2Dzqis4 https://t.co/OPyAXsm9ql pic.twitter.com/U6BhMvuiMx

— Kaelan Dorr (@KDORR_USA) March 17, 2024

Here’s Trump propagandist Kaelen Dorr stuck spending his weekend trying to spin the fat former President’s deranged and violent “bloodbath” rhetoric from the Saturday Ohio rally when he should be stuck spending his weekend trying to spin all the other stupid, crazy shit Donald said at the rally.

At the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, DC on Saturday night, President Biden needled his Republican opponent for his age and ongoing legal difficulties, commenting that Donald Trump exhibits signs that his advanced age has led to mental decline and lapses in judgment, the Associated Press reports.

“One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president,” said in his ten-minute address.  “The other is me.”  Noting that 77-year-old Trump failed to correctly identify two of his wives in a photo, Biden also commented that Trump seemed confused about the 2024 campaign.  “Don’t tell him, [but] he thinks he’s running against Barack Obama.  That’s what he said,” Biden commented.

This was Biden’s first address as president at the Gridiron Club, a professional organization for journalists that has become a traditional stop for presidential candidates.  After taking shots at Trump, Biden then reminded the assembled journalists of their import role in maintaining American democracy.

An anonymous Republican Senator spoke to CNN’s Manu Raju and described the Ohio GOP Senate primary between bi-curious car dealer Bernie Moreno and Cleveland Indians Guardians ownership scion state Senator Matt Dolan (screw dipshit Secretary of State Frank LaRose) as a “bizarre situation in which JD Vance, Donald Trump, and Chuck Schumer are all on the same side” in trying to get Moreno nominated to face incumbent Dem Senator Sherrod Brown in November.

“It looks to me like the Democrats believe [Moreno is] the easiest to beat,” the Senator continued, which is kind of no shit since Dems have been spending to boost him (and to get a special endorsement). “It’s illustrative of some of the problems we’ve had in recent years, with Trump dictating the nominations,” and lol this source definitely already endorsed the Orange Slob.

Delegations from Israel and Hamas restarted negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza, even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling Hamas’s first set of demands “absurd” as he continues to plan for an expected attack on Rafah, a city in Gaza along the Egyptian border where more than 1.2 million Palestinian refugees have gathered, Politico reports.

Hamas wants Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners its holding, and in exchange, Hamas has promised to initially release many of the remaining hostages it took during the October 7th attack, including women, the sick and the elderly, in addition to female Israeli soldiers it captured.  Hamas also laid out plans to release the remaining hostages after a long-term cease-fire has been agreed to.

Gaza is in the midst of a major humanitarian crisis as shortages of food, water and medical supplies in the besieged area are scarce.  Various nations and humanitarian organizations have tried to deliver supplies to the residents and refugees via truck convoys and airlifts with limited success.  On Saturday (local time), a Cyprian tug pulling a barge carrying 200 tons of rice, flour, lentils, beans, tuna and canned meat became the first vessel to deliver supplies via a new sea route to Gaza.  The shipment was arranged by Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen, a humanitarian organization that helps feed people in strife-stricken regions.  A second barge will depart Cyprus when the final supplies from the first are distributed.

Protesting in a way murdered dissident Alexei Navalny had outlined prior to his death, Russians lined up in lines at polling stations on Sunday to cast their ballots opposing the continued rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is destined to win his fifth six-year term in office, the Washington Post reports.

The “Noon Against Putin” action encouraged Russians to line up on the last day of the three-day voting people to show the unification of the opposition against the long-time Russian autocrat, who put rules in place that will ensure he wins this election and the next one, leaving him in place until at least 2036.  Putin has ordered opponents murdered or exiled, or as in the case of Navalny, both.

The polls were largely empty before noon when people started queuing up to vote, forming long lines to enter the polling stations despite the Russian government warning people against participating in “extremist action” and protests.  The Kremlin attempted to suppress such in-person demonstrations by introducing a completely trustworthy online voting system to ensure Putin got all the votes he wanted.

In an op/ed published in a state paper earlier this week, the former mother-in-law of Nevada Republican Elizabeth Helgelien accused the Congressional candidate of being an adulterer who “raised a murderer,” the daughter she had with the woman’s son.

In the Nevada Globe, Christine Halseth asked if Helgelien is “The Worst Congressional Candidate Ever?” and then goes on to detail how Helgelien had multiple affairs when she was in an 11-year marriage to her son who lived with the family in Las Vegas as she served as a state senator in Carson City.  “It was quite the hypocritical turn for someone who was elected to state senate on a platform of family values and who called for then-U.S. Sen. John Ensign to resign after his extramarital affair became public, Halseth wrote.  “During that time, Elizabeth was also caught lying about her education, claiming she was pursuing an MBA when she didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree.”

After describing a really screwed up family life which saw Helgelien try her hand at modeling and moving herself and her children to Texas, Halseth said her son also moved after one of the children made a claim Elizabeth was abusing them, but it ended badly. “In April of 2021, deeply affected by her mother’s scandalous infidelity and her parents’ public divorce, Sierra and her 18-year-old boyfriend murdered Daniel in cold blood, stabbing him more than 70 times.”  The pair are now serving life sentences.  “In other words, Elizabeth raised a murderer and now wants to be a member of Congress,” Halseth summarized making a damn good case that her ex-daughter-in-law actually is the worst candidate for Congress this election cycle.

When Republican Texas Governor and King of Wombs Greg Abbott introduced his program to bus migrants from Texas to Democratic-run cities or other perceived liberal havens, he promised that the bulk of the cost of the $150 million effort would be picked up by donors.  CNN reports, however, that the state has received only $1.45 million in pledges over the last two years–and the bulk of that coming from an apparent fraudulent account.

Data provided by the state show an individual making a $900,000 donation to the program, which Abbott has cited as one of the many ways he screws people over to “own the libs.”  But no related deposit has been made to the state treasury, indicating the online submission was either a mistake, a fraud, or turned down by a financial institution. Reporters could not locate an actual person matching the information provided with the donation.

The online site promoted by Abbott to track donations reduced its total to $460,000, although it’s unclear how much of that the state has actually collected versus what was pledged.  Checking with other donors, one, a GOP donor, said he had not authorized the charge.  Another said he had filed a complaint with the state that his donation for a border wall had instead been used on Abbott’s busing program.

With hospitals in rural America struggling to stay open because of corporate consolidations and market competition, the Biden Administration introduced a new program that would redesignate the facilities as “emergency care” only, paying them to eliminate long-term care to streamline networks, ABC News reports.

The program creates a new designation called a “rural emergency center,” where patients, ambulances, and others can seek immediate care as they would at a more conventional hospital, but there will be no beds or scheduled operations.  These facilities will provide care to stabilize the patient, but patients would be moved to another facility for additional medical treatment or told to seek follow-up care at another medical center or provider.

Nineteen hospitals in the Southeast have joined the program, which targets small hospitals that have already seen significant drops in in-patient care because larger, more modern facilities in nearby towns have taken the patient load.  To support these hospitals that continue to play a vital role in providing immediate emergency care for the community, the program has a $3 million budget to split between the participating hospitals, and they’ll receive higher Medicare reimbursements as well.

In another sign that Vladimir Putin’s ambitions do not stop with the Donbas region of Ukraine as his American admirers would have you believe, the Latvian national security services started a criminal investigation into a Latvian member of the European Parliament believed to be a Russian spy, the Associated Press reports.

After some very brave journalists in Latvia, Estonia, Sweden and particularly in Russia published uncovered communications between 73-year-old Tatjana Ždanoka and her Russian handlers, the Latvian federal security service started criminal proceedings against her on February 22nd, alleging she had been an agent for the FSB, Russia’s spy agency, since 2004.

Ždanoka has been an outspoken advocate for the minority Russian populations in Latvia and Estonia, claiming they are being oppressed by the ethnic majority populations in each nation.  Communications with her handlers allegedly show some of those themes being coordinated with Kremlin efforts to sow unrest within those enclaves.  The claim of oppression by Russian populations in Ukraine was one of the excuses the Kremlin has used to take Ukrainian territory. 

This rally in Ohio is apparently one for the ages in a campaign cycle already marred by some like serious deterioration of the fat bastard’s mental state. This might not even be the worst moment.

“So there’s something you need to know about me,” Ohio Republican Senate candidate and Trump-endorsed car dealer Bernie Moreno, who was recently found to have once placed an ad for a male sexual companion on an online hook-up site, advises the crowd as he warms up a Trump rally in Ohio.  “I am one of the luckiest people you’ll ever meet because 35 years ago, I won the lottery and got to marry that woman right there.”  Which is a completely normal way for a politician who’s really, really not sexually attracted to men to open his speech, right?

Here was soft-chinned Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen warning this week that his party’s dumpy orange slob of a presidential nominee’s relatively weak showing in the primaries – relatively as in they would’ve been absolutely apocalyptic for Biden and it’s a fair enough comparison given how Donald’s been dubbed a “quasi-incumbent” – spells trouble for him in the general election, something not even the mainstream media is really entertaining these days. In fact Politico is saying the opposite, even though you know they’d be like “OMG BIDEN IS SO FUCKED IN NOVEMBER” if Dean Phillips had put up anywhere close to the kind of numbers Nikki Haley did.

That’s Thiessen in his TV gig. In print he’s with the Washington Post, and pouring way more emotion into being down on the Orange God Emperor with a piece titled “I want to support Trump. He keeps making that harder for me,” writing “I want to vote for Donald Trump in November. The question is: Will he let me? I’m not a Never Trumper. To the contrary, I’ve spilled gallons of ink in the pages of this newspaper defending him. Based on his record in office, Trump should be considered one of the greatest conservative presidents we’ve had. But I’m deeply concerned that his second term, if he is elected this year, would not be the one that millions of Americans voted for in 2020.”

Cops in Middletown Township, Pennsylvania on Saturday issued a “shelter in place” order after “confirmed shootings” in neighboring Falls Township that resulted in “several gunshot victims,” the AP reports on more 2nd Amendment rights being expressed openly in the suburbs outside Philly.

“A Republican congressional candidate’s claims drew a correction from Gov Ron DeSantis’ office over criticisms that Florida has no true authority to deal with illegal aliens attempting to enter the state from its southern waters, but that agents deployed this week will merely ‘do nothing.’ The claims were made by Anthony Sabatini, who is running for Congress to represent Florida’s 11th District,” writes some propagandist for “Florida’s Voice,” an outlet described by Sabatini himself in 2022 as a “Fake News propaganda site” and alleged by Trump fans to be paid by the DeSantis campaign for positive coverage in the lead-up to and during his failed presidential run.

Apparently Tiny D’s regime is on a PR offensive while the security situation in Haiti goes to shit, prompting the custom-booted governor to hold a presser Friday touting the interdiction of a single boat originating in Haiti… that happened more than two weeks earlier. From a Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission press release on the stop: “On Feb 29, at approximately 7:30 pm, two Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officers conducting nighttime water-based patrol near Sebastian Inlet stopped a 42-foot vessel returning from offshore. Immediately upon stopping the vessel, the officers knew they had intercepted a human smuggling operation. The operator of the vessel was armed and onboard; lying prone on the deck of the boat, they discovered 25 individuals, including five unaccompanied children, illegally entering the country. In addition to the individuals onboard, officers discovered firearms, night vision gear and drugs. The vessel operator and a passenger, both US citizens, were turned over to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office and the case was referred to US Customs and Border Patrol and the BCSO for further investigation.”

It was dated March 15th, the day that Florida’s Voice printed the above article and linked from another headlined “Florida intercepts, turns over suspected Haitian illegals with weapons and drugs, authorities say.” No they don’t have Disqus. It’s some other lame commenting CMS.

Officials from the neighboring West African nations Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo tell CNN that fat former President Trump’s claims that “the Congo” is emptying their prisons and sending convicts as migrants to the US “is not true” and “very bad for the country,” per DRC government spokesman Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, who added “we want him to stop.”

The Republic of Congo’s ambassador to the US, Serge Mombouli, emailed to CNN on Friday to say “There is no truth or any sign nor a single fact supporting such a claim or statement,” as if Trump cares and isn’t just playing upon his racist fans’ perception of Africans as being violent animals and just using the most African-sounding word he can think – “Congo” – of to stoke fear in them.

• There is no VP addition to a Trump ticket that will add value to the GOP pairing.  No one Trump can select will move the needle for anyone who was not already going to vote for Trump.  Even Tulsi Gabbard won’t help:  she won’t draw away from the left-wing conspiracy nutters who are now in JFK Jr.’s camp.  
• Robert Hur’s testimony in the Mr. & Mr. Comer-Jordan performance art panel is exactly why Americans are losing faith in government institutions:  it was clear Hur was working for the same political goal as the majority Party.
• There’s really no way around it:  the Willis/Wade relationship was inappropriate, and it made the case messier than it needed to be.  The judge’s decision makes it clear that it was a professional problem.  However, in no way did it compromise the case or change the facts of the crime presented.  The Trump side wanted a circus; they got one.  It worked at denigrating Willis’s reputation, but it did nothing to stop the case.
• Gotta love how Ken Buck put a knife in the proverbial back of the extremist GOP Brat Pack leaving the House early.  He’s screwing Boebert over by allowing someone to fill the seat to run as an incumbent in November.  And he’s left the thinnest of margins in the House.  He is not the first to break from the radicals but so far, he is the most calculating.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXIV”

The League of Women Voters, acting on behalf of three New Hampshire residents who received the calls, sued Steve Kramer, a Dean Phillips campaign consultant, and two companies that make robocalls, asking for tens of thousands of dollars in injunctions, NBC News reports.

Made in the nights before the New Hampshire primary, the calls purported to be from President Biden saying that the voter would only get one vote this year and they should not waste it on the primary.  This, of course, is untrue.

“These types of voter suppression tactics have no place in our democracy,” said Celina Stewart, chief counsel at the League of Women Voters of the United States. “For over 100 years, the League of Women Voters has worked to protect voters from these unlawful crimes and will continue to fight back against bad-faith actors who aim to disrupt our democratic system.”

Addressing the two unique arguments presented by disgraced former Republican Attorney General Edwin Meese in an amicus brief in Donald Trump’s federal documents case in Florida, Jack Smith Special Counsel’s office called the claims “meritless” in a filing Friday evening.

Meese argues that the status of the Special Counsel must be resolved before the case can go forward because there are SO many questions about the appointment of Jack Smith to the post.  Plus, Meese claims, a Special Counsel must be appointed by the President, not the Attorney General.  Therefore, Meese claims, no one can prosecute Donald Trump.

Smith notes that the first issue has been addressed, but any future challenges may be pursued after the investigation and trial are complete.  And as far as the second challenge, relying on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Smith says that his position is not a “superior officer” requiring Presidential nomination and that the Attorney General has authority.

Basically, Meese argues that because Smith supervises lawyers under him, his position is a “superior officer” over “inferior officers” and must therefore be nominated by the President.  Smith counters that the Special Counsel is itself an inferior officer by the nature of it reporting to the “superior officer” of the Cabinet department, the Attorney General, even though he has the authority to bring charges on his own authority.

Never one to accept a loss–like in an election or a court case–Kari Lake has resurrected a lawsuit she filed during her failed 2022 Arizona gubernatorial campaign to ban the use of electronic voting machines, the focus of many MAGA conspiracy theories, Politico reports.

It’s unlikely the suit will succeed:  it was thrown out by a federal court in December 2022 for lack of standing, and the lawyers representing Lake and fellow losing conspiracist Mark Finchem, who ran for Arizona Secretary of State, were sanctioned for repeatedly making “numerous false allegations about Arizona elections” in their filings.