Daily Beast: Trump’s Joint Chiefs Pick Throws Prez Under the Bus in Confirmation Hearing

President Donald Trump’s pick to be chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to lie for the president and instead threw his prospective boss under the bus at a confirmation hearing.

Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine told a Senate committee on Tuesday morning that he was not wearing a red MAGA hat when he first met Trump in Iraq in 2018—after the president claimed he was.

“For 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission,” Caine told Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, according to Politico. “And I have never worn any political merchandise.”

Trump’s Joint Chiefs Pick Throws Prez Under the Bus in Confirmation Hearing

CBS News: Wisconsin Supreme Court race won by Democrat-backed Susan Crawford

Up yours, Musk! Take your money and shove it!

You and your corrupt cronies flushed $81,000,000 down Wisconsin sewers, and you still don’t own a judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Wisconsin voters have a lot more brains and integrity than you give them credit for, certainly a lot more than you have.

Susan Crawford, who was endorsed by the Democratic Party, won the closely-watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday night in what was the most expensive judicial election in American history. 

What would have normally been a sleepy nonpartisan judicial race turned into an expensive battle between Crawford, a Dane County judge, and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, who was endorsed by the Republican Party. The campaigns and their supporters have spent more than $81 million, attracting endorsements and campaign appearances from Elon Musk, Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and other national political figures.

With 70% of the vote in, Crawford led Schimel by 55% to 44%, a margin of about 189,000 votes. 

Wisconsin Supreme Court race won by Democrat-backed Susan Crawford

Christian Post: Elon Musk thanks pastor for invoking ‘hedge of protection’ around him

‘I think we’re going to need divine protection, frankly’

SpaceX CEO and DOGE chief Elon Musk thanked a pastor who publicly prayed for him during a large town hall in Wisconsin.

The pastor, who remains unidentified as of Monday, asked for divine protection amid what he framed as Musk and President Donald Trump’s battle against evil.

Elon Musk thanks pastor for invoking ‘hedge of protection’ | Politics

Christian Post: Trump advisor Paula White-Cain promises ‘supernatural blessings’ for $1,000 donation ahead of Passover

Site Icon

Paula White-Cain, a televangelist and spiritual advisor to President Donald Trump, is facing criticism for a video in which she claims “supernatural blessings” will be released to those who donate to her ministry ahead of the Passover holiday.

In a video titled “Passover Season: God’s Divine Appointment With You!” posted March 23 on YouTube, White, 58, claims that honoring God during Passover, which begins April 12 at sundown, will unlock divine — and monetary — rewards.

“I believe that when you honor God on Passover starting on April 12th at sundown through Good Friday on the 18th and concluding on Easter Sunday, you can receive these seven supernatural blessings for you and your house,” she said.

Trump advisor Paula White-Cain promises ‘supernatural blessings’ | U.S.

Karen Wells: Charles Pierce Writes

CHARLES PIERCE WRITES: “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.”

I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over.

I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City.

I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job.

They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators.

Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.

We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents.

They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

https://www.facebook.com/karin.wells.7/posts/10226527699715625

Raw Story: ‘Worst of the lot’: Veteran columnist heaps scorn on ‘revolting’ Marco Rubio

“I think he’s the worst of the lot,” Rubin said of Rubio. “The rest of them are so stupid and so ignorant that they really don’t get it; they’re just playing a game or they’re following Trump or they’re trying to be with the cool kids. Rubio knows better. First of all, he was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. If anyone should know about preserving security, it’s he — and he was on that same Signal chain.”

“He also has spent his entire life fighting communism, fighting oppression, fighting Cuba,” she said. “You know what they do in Cuba? They disappear people and they throw them into a hellhole of a jail. He has become the very thing that he has spent his entire career railing against. He used to be a great defender of Ukraine; now he’s instrumental in turning it over to Russia. So the glaring hypocrisy, the soullessness, the willingness to sell down the river all of the dissidents, all of the freedoms, all of the besieged countries that he once defended is really beyond the pale.”

‘Worst of the lot’: Veteran columnist heaps scorn on ‘revolting’ Marco Rubio

CBS News: Minnesota State University student detained by ICE near Mankato campus

In a statement released Monday, the president of Minnesota State University-Mankato said a student was detained by ICE at an off-campus residence last Friday.

“No reason was given,” Edward Inch said. “The University has received no information from ICE, and they have not requested any information from us.”

The detained student is currently in the jail in Albert Lea, a facility that partners with ICE.

Inch said he has contacted elected officials to share his concerns and ask them for assistance in “stopping this activity within our community of learners.”

“Our international students play an important role in our campus and community,” Inch said. “They are a valued part of our campus culture. This action hurts what we try to accomplish as a university—support all learners to receive the education they desire to make the impact they want in their communities.”

Minnesota State University student detained by ICE near Mankato campus – CBS Minnesota

The Atlantic: The Hungarian Model

MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

But the nationalist kitsch and tourist traps hide a different reality. Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom—which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025—puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.

Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. 

What is this Hungarian model they so admire? Mostly, it has nothing to do with modern statecraft. Instead it’s a very old, very familiar blueprint for autocratic takeover, one that has been deployed by right-wing and left-wing leaders alike, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Hugo Chávez. After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system; and repeatedly changed the constitution to give himself electoral advantages. During the coronavirus pandemic he gave himself emergency powers, which he has kept ever since. He has aligned himself openly with Russia and China, serving as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy at EU meetings and allowing opaque Chinese investments in his country.

Orbán’s Hungary Could Be America’s Future – The Atlantic

Business Insider: 17 Teslas destroyed following blaze at Rome dealership

A fire broke out at a Tesla dealership in Rome early on Monday, destroying 17 cars and damaging the building, firefighters told Business Insider.

Emergency services were called to the site in Torre Angela at about 4:30 a.m. local time, they said.

No injuries have been reported and investigators haven’t specified the cause of the fire, adding investigators were looking into multiple causes, including possible malice.

Possible malice?

Imagine that!

17 Teslas destroyed following blaze at Rome dealership

Mediaite: MAGA Influencer Says She’s Selling Her Tesla Because ‘Vindictive’ Elon Musk Slashed Their Child’s Support 60%

The Daily Mail reported the 26-year-old watched the company load up the $100,000 black Model S in Manhattan on Saturday.

“I’m selling it because I need to make up for the 60 percent cut that Elon made to our son’s child support,” she said.

St. Clair was asked why she believed Musk reduced her child support and whether she viewed the move as “vindictive.”

“Yeah, that’s his modus operandi, when women speak out,” she added.

St. Clair added she had not spoken to Musk since Feb. 13 and pointed to the Tesla stock price as evidence “I’m not the only one who is cleaning up after his messes.”

MAGA Influencer Sells Tesla After Musk Cut Her Child Support