In what state media is spinning as “an emergency release of an air ordnance,” a Russian warplane dropped a bomb on the city of Belgorod – 25 miles outside of Ukraine – late Thursday, CNN reports.

“It happened at the intersection of one of the central streets, leaving a huge impact crater with a radius of 20 meters,” wrote Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. At least two people were “injured” in the explosion, which would seem to indicate that it was actually worse.

“And for young people in the ’80s, President Reagan was a bresh, a breath of fresh air.  He believed that we could all do better and we still can,” condescending white woman with a seven-figure salary Laura Ingraham drones.  “Most of the so-called problems that the Democrats are talking about–the end of the planet, threat to democracy and all the like–they’re simply made up and the real problems we face–a weak economy, a rising China, open borders–can all be addressed with the right policies.  We’ve seen it before, just a few years ago.  So we shouldn’t concede any young voters to the Democrats, no way.  Let’s explain how things can get better, and let’s encourage them to take on adult responsibility, because childhood is great, but only for children.”

Just a reminder:  The pontification of Ingraham about getting immature people to grow up comes on just before Gutfeld!, featuring paragon of maturity Greg Gutfeld, on the Fox cable network.

The shooter who killed five co-workers at a bank in Louisville wanted to demonstrate how easy it is for someone with mental illness to get an assault rifle and how tragic those consequences would be, according to CNN reporting about notes left by the shooter.

The murderer purchased an AR-15-style assault weapon seven days before he walked into the bank where he worked and opened fire; he was killed by police who arrived on the scene.  The shooter’s family said in a statement that they knew he suffered from depression, but did not think he was capable of carrying out such a violent act.

“But we have a president, he said this: ‘The single existential threat to the world is climate change.’  This is where this guy’s head’s at.  I can think of a few others like you won’t harden our schools so our kids are literally vulnerable. China. Russia. Saudi Arabia. These new alliances.  It’s huge.”

You’ll have to forgive former Trump talking head Kayleigh McEnery; she didn’t have her trademark binder with her.  Clearly she doesn’t understand what either “existential threat” or “to the world” is, because hardening schools isn’t the existential threat; the proliferation of guns is.  But that’s also not a global problem, which is what President Biden’s quote–which she has literally just read–referred to.

The North Carolina man suspected of shooting his neighbors after a ball rolled onto his yard surrendered himself at Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, Florida Thursday evening, ABC News reports.  Robert Louis Singletary is wanted in one of a series of insane shootings that happened the previous week where people were shot for innocently wandering onto a person’s property.

Singletary allegedly shot a father and a six-year-old girl trying to retrieve a ball that rolled onto his property, and then he turned the gun on other neighbors, shooting a man and leaving a woman with a bullet graze.  Singletary’s unlikely to get bail, given that he’s awaiting trial on charges arising from a separate incident in which he’s accused of keeping a woman confined against her will and assaulting her with a hammer.

Republican 2021 California gubernatorial recall election loser Larry Elder on Thursday announced his 2024 presidential campaign during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s propaganda show. We’ll wait until there’s a failed Senate campaign in 2028 to call Elder the California Republican version of Beto O’Rourke… Actually screw that since Beto O’Rouke at least served three terms in the House. Larry Elder never got elected to shit and by all accounts is an unhinged maniac in his personal life.

In one of the largest heists in Canadian history, thieves stole $14.8 million in gold and other valuables that were being stored overnight in a cargo facility at the Toronto airport Monday night, police acknowledged Thursday.

According to the BBC, the secure cargo carrier arrived at the airport Monday and was moved to a cargo storage facility.  Officials believe the robbery happened overnight as it was awaiting shipment.  Toronto’s airport is used as a transport site for gold mined throughout the province.  Police believe the heist was connected to local organized crime.

In the most Canadian crime possible, the largest robbery in the history of Canada is the 2011 and 2012 Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, the very slow theft of 3,000 tons of tree blood worth more than $18 million from the Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Quebec, depleting the entire nation’s reserve by one-eighth.  And yes, that is actually a thing.

An Anheuser-Busch spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that several of the brewing giant’s production and distribution facilities have recently been the subject of violent threats from MAGA terrorists angered over the Bud Light marketing partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

“The safety of our employees is always our top priority,” the spokesperson said. “We worked quickly with local law enforcement to ensure the security of our people and our facilities.” The company did not specify which locations were targeted, but the LAPD told CNN they’re investigating a bomb threat some asshole called into a facility in the Van Nuys neighborhood last week.

Can’t remember who wrote this, but some clever person tweeted recently that the real reason the right wingers are so pissed is probably because they thought Mulvaney was hot until they found out she’s trans, making their rage all the more volcanic. Crack open a Bud Light for that gem of a take.

In today’s media news, former Secret Service agent, losing Congressional carpetbagger and current free-agent media personality Dan Bongino is out at Fox cable network, losing his weekend show “Unfiltered” and his fill-in hosting opportunities, although he can still make guest appearances, the Associated Press reports.   Fox may be ridding itself of loyal supporters of Donald Trump and his conspiracies after a $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.

The Daily Beast reports Buzzfeed News is shutting down according to a memo founder and CEO Jonah Peretti sent company-wide Thursday.  Buzzfeed started its news reporting division in 2011 but it was challenged with financial difficulties.  Peretti also announced the company’s chief revenue officer and chief operating officer will both leave the company in coming weeks.

A Texas MAGA terrorist fired at local sheriff’s deputies who were visiting on a “wellness check” just prior to the man’s arrest on misdemeanor charges for entering the Capitol during the January 6th, 2021 insurrection after the man’s father had warned he was suicidal, Politico reports.

FBI agents arrived on the scene shortly afterward, but both they and the Hunt County Sheriff’s Office deputies backed off after being unable to coax 40 year-old Nathan Pelham to come out peacefully. The FBI arrested Pelham the next day instead. While of course the correct take on this is “If he was Black these cowboys would have fucking killed him right then and there no question,” the silver lining is that instead of just doing a few months tops on the Capitol misdemeanor charge, Pelham will now likely do serious time for felonies after shooting at the cops. Probably.

President Biden plans a video announcement to officially launch his 2024 reelection campaign next week, probably on Tuesday the 25th, given that would be the fourth anniversary of his third presidential campaign launch (and first successful one) in 2019, the Washington Post reports.

Preparing for @SecretaryPete’s next derailment! pic.twitter.com/UiCqTTv09e

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) April 20, 2023

Tennessee state House Republican caucus Vice Chairman Scotty Campbell – one of the MAGA assholes to vote to expel his Dem colleagues Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson, resigned on Thursday after an ethics inquest found him guilty of sexually harassing female interns, and just six hours after News Channel 5’s Phil Williams, a fucking ace reporter racking up an increasing number of Ws against MAGA fascists in the state, confronted Campbell on camera.

Prosecutors in New Mexico have dropped the charges against douchebag actor Alex Baldwin in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of a lame western, CNN reports.

It’s good that we’re not more the center-left mirror image of a right wing site. Then we’d be celebrating this “exoneration” like the fanboys did when Kyle Rittenhouse walked on his double murder rap in 2021. Alec Baldwin fucking sucks and there’s no enjoying this – not least of which because an innocent woman is dead – but even without that it’s not like just because he’s a Hollywood leftist that we have to reflexively high five this. Let’s just hope the civil case is expensive.

Asked to comment Thursday on Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin’s invitation to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to testify over his buddy Clarence’s corruption, Senator John Cornhole told reporters he “would not recommend that the chief accept his invitation because it would be a circus,” Politico reports on a weasel telling a weasel to protect another weasel.

Come on fanboys, let’s hear it. Tell us how it wasn’t enough for Secretary Mayor Pete to screw up the nation’s air and rail infrastructure so this time he had to do both to up the ante in Flint, Michigan on Thursday. Explain why he should resign when no one was injured, according to the Detroit News and the Michigan State Police (credit to them for the photo). Come on, let’s hear it.

“A federal indictment was unsealed today in Mississippi charging a former professional wrestler with misappropriating millions of dollars in federal safety-net funds intended for needy families and low-income individuals in Mississippi. According to court documents, Theodore Marvin DiBiase Jr, 40, of Madison, along with co-conspirators John Davis, Christi Webb, Nancy New, and others, are alleged to have fraudulently obtained federal funds – including from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program – that they misappropriated for their own personal use and benefit… DiBiase allegedly used these federal funds to buy a vehicle and a boat, and for the down payment on the purchase of a house, among other expenditures,” says a Justice Department press release on new indictments in the ongoing Mississippi welfare scam in which Ted’s brother Brett has already been convicted.

Their dad, former pro-wrestler Ted “Million Dollar Man” DiBiase’s involvement in the fraud is, as we’ve written before, the MAGA-est thing ever. Here’s hoping he and Brett Favre get cuffed next.

An Arizona appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s rejection of the Arizona Republican Party’s post-2020 election lawsuit challenging the results of Maricopa County’s audit of the ballots from almost two and a half goddamned years ago, and awarding legal fees to the Secretary of State’s office to boot. We’ve seen enough. Joe Biden wins Arizona in the 2020 election.

Legendarily uncourageous and compromising Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Thursday refused to address the still ongoing revelations about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being owned by a Texas MAGA billionaire with a Hitler fetish. In related news, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin on Thursday invited Chief Justice John Roberts to come in and testify about the court’s ethical shitshow, which ought to be interesting either way if Roberts declines or accepts.

“I invite you, or another Justice whom you designate, to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 2, 2023, at 10:00 am in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building to testify at a public hearing regarding the ethical rules that govern the Justices of the Supreme Court and potential reforms to those rules. In extending this invitation, I offer that the scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from Senators regarding any other matters. Your last significant discussion of how Supreme Court Justices address ethical issues was presented in your 2011 Report on the Federal Judiciary.”

“Since then, there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally. These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable,” wrote Durbin.

The Manhattan federal judge overseeing next week’s trial in writer EJ Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against disgraced former President Trump on Thursday rejected Team Orange lawyer Joe Tacopina’s request that the court inform the jury that Trump really wanted to be there for every day of the proceedings but didn’t want to burden New Yorkers with his presence and security requirements.

“Mr Trump’s lead counsel expresses Mr Trump’s alleged desire to testify at trial but seeks an order from the Court excusing his presence unless either party calls him as a witness and, in the event he does not testify, instructing the jury that his ‘absence… by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.’ First, the Court neither excuses nor declines to excuse Mr Trump from attending the trial or from testifying in this case… the Court notes but does not accept Mr Trump’s counsel’s claims concerning alleged burdens on the courthouse or the City were Mr Trump to attend or testify. Mr Trump is entitled by law to the protection of the United States Secret Service, which he now has enjoyed as a former president for more than two years… Moreover, the Court notes from Mr Trump’s campaign web site and media reports that he announced earlier this week that he will speak at a campaign event in New Hampshire on April 27, 2023, the third day of the scheduled trial in this case. If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse.”

“The question of the requested jury instruction is premature. Mr Trump is free to attend, to testify, or both. He is free also to do none of those things. Should he elect not to appear or testify, his counsel may renew the request. In the meantime, there shall be no reference by counsel for Mr Trump in the presence of the jury panel or the trial jury to Mr Trump’s alleged desire to testify or to the burdens that any absence on his part allegedly might spare, or might have spared, the Court or the City of New York,” wrote Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling siding with Carroll’s team.