Why Ted Cruz is riding in the World Series Championship parade for the Houston Astros is a question for another day–likely answered by Cruz having no self-earned glory, only disgrace, so he must shine in the reflected glow of others–but the reaction Texans have to the poser prince is obvious by the volume of boos.

Republicans are reportedly freaking out over rumors their Orange God Emperor may “officially” announce his comeback attempt at the presidency at the Ohio rally for asshole Senate candidate JD Vance, according to multiple reports.

In a #MehmetMonday miracle, the Crystal Ball is on board with our Sultan. https://t.co/BYce2ITBAC

— Jeff Ditzler (@JeffDitzler) November 7, 2022

The final pre-midterms Politico/Morning Consult survey finds the party of Hunter Biden leading the party of investigating Hunter Biden 48 to 43 percent on the generic Congressional ballot.

“Voters often treat midterm elections as a referendum on the president and his [son], which suggests that support for [the party of smoking crack and selling overpriced paintings] is on the wane, and many polling averages indicate that voters are more inclined to vote for [investigating Hunter Biden and his laptop] as a result. The POLITICO-Morning Consult poll is an outlier on this question, showing support for [pro-Hunter Biden] congressional candidates at 48 percent, five points above support for [anti-Hunter Biden] candidates,” write Politico reporters, badmouthing their own survey’s findings for not going along with the anti-Hunter Biden mainstream media narrative.

A brigade of Russian marines wrote a letter complaining of “incompetent” generals using them as “cannon fodder” after with 300 of their men were reportedly killed or wounded in four days of heavy fighting in Ukraine, the Daily Mail reports. Marines from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade wrote an angry letter to a regional governor, claiming Generals Rustam Muradov and Zurab Akhmedov had walked them into a slaughter in the Donetsk region, a Kremlin-backed puppet state in Eastern Ukraine. The soldiers claimed Muradov and Akhmedov were “hiding” the battlefield setbacks and “playing down the number of losses for fear of being held responsible.”

The letter surfaced as reports of near-open mutiny among Russian troops in the Kremlin’s military circulated, with recent footage reportedly showing soldiers yelling “get out of here,” “shame on you,” and “down with Putin’s regime” at their general while being mustered at a training base in southwest Russia just prior to their deployment in Ukraine. Real savvy genius stuff.

“Should Donald Trump seek reelection to the presidency or any other office, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington will pursue his disqualification under the Fourteenth Amendment for engaging in the January 6th insurrection. In a letter sent to the former president today, CREW President Noah Bookbinder outlined how Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment bars anyone who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution they swore to defend from holding office, and let Trump know that CREW is prepared to take action. Nearly four years to the day after swearing an oath to the Constitution, Trump incited an insurrection that culminated in a violent attack on Congress. ‘The evidence that Trump engaged in insurrection is overwhelming,’ Bookbinder said. ‘We are ready, willing and able to take action to make sure the Constitution is upheld and Trump is prevented from holding office,'” says a statement by CREW from last week.

“In September, a New Mexico judge ordered Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin be removed from office, following a lawsuit brought by CREW and others, ruling that the attack on the Capitol was an insurrection and that Griffin’s participation in it disqualified him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision marked the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified a public official under Section 3, and the first time that any court has ruled the events of January 6, 2021 an insurrection. ‘Let our message be clear,’ Bookbinder said, ‘if you seek office despite being disqualified under the Constitution for engaging in insurrection, we and others loyal to the Constitution will defend it,'” the statement concluded and man that’ll be quite an entertaining shitshow if they force Donald to testify like the QAdulteress had to back in April.

Newly updated data from the US Elections Project on Monday counts 40,786,501 total early votes either cast in person or sent by mail which, per TargetSmart (which is current as of Sunday night so shows a total of 40,044,962) puts total early turnout at 8% higher than in 2018.

Should the same pace hold, total turnout will hit 128 million, nearly a full 10 million more than the historic 118.5 Americans million who voted in the 2018 midterm elections. The level of Dem early turnout has Republicans so freaked out that, in Arizona at least, the MAGA assholes are reversing course and going all out to encourage their fans to turn in ballots ahead of election day.

“Hey there! Here is the ‘ribbiting’ late night content no one asked for. Yet here we are. The Sonoran desert toad (Bufo alvarius), also known as the Colorado river toad, is one of the largest toads found in North America, measuring nearly 7 inches (18 cm). What sound does it make? Its call has been described as a ‘weak, low-pitched toot, lasting less than a second.’ Was that the toad or did something startle you?,” wrote the National Park Service on Facebook last week.

“These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth. As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking. Thank you. Toot!” added the NPS’s post.

The final Phillips Academy/Andover survey of the 2022 cycle in New Hampshire finds incumbent Dem Senator Maggie Hassan leading “litter box” MAGA dipshit Don Bolduc 48 to 45 percent, while incumbent Republican Gov Chris Sununu leads Dem challenger Tom Sherman 58 to 36 percent.

Russian interference hoax believer Yevgeny Prigozhin on Monday continued to promote the myth of Kremlin meddling in US elections in a post on shitty Facebook clone VKontakte, Reuters reports.

“We have interfered (in US elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do,” wrote the kooky tinfoil hat-wearing leftist Prigozhin, also known as “Putin’s Chef,” and the man behind the brutal mercenary outfit the Wagner Group and the so-called “troll farms” that libs claim have promoted totally accurate news about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden being deeply corrupt.

“During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once,” added Prigozhin, who should be investigated for hyping this hateful Russia Russia Russia hoax.

Happy two year anniversary of the famous Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference! Thanks for the wonderful memory of you ranting about fraud and how Trump actually won only for the Associated Press and all the other major networks to call the 2020 election for Biden while you were standing in a parking lot between a porn store and a crematorium, former Mayor Rudy!

Disgraced former President Trump has been calling his minions in Congress to ask not just if or when they’ll vote on articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, but “how many” times they plan on doing it, Rolling Stone reports on what says a lot about what Donald’s thinking is on the topic.

It’s obvious he knows there will never be a conviction in the Senate nor does he care what such impeachment articles will actually be about, he just doesn’t want to be the only President to have been impeached twice and likely also wants Biden to have broken his ignominious record, if only via completely manufactured and scurrilous bullshit charges from a GOP House majority.

Nevada early vote expert guy Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent on Sunday called the state’s squeaker US Senate election for incumbent Dem Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican gubernatorial challenger Joe Lombardo based on his assessment of the early returns. Ralston also says Dems will hang on to two out of the three House seats they hold in the state.

“I was correct in 2020 about Donald Trump losing Nevada and even foretold of costly Democratic legislative losses – the election denier cabal has never explained how THAT happened two years ago. I was prescient in 2018 in foretelling Jacky Rosen’s Senate ascent and Steve Sisolak’s gubernatorial win, among a host of other bullseyes. I predicted the blue wave of 2016 and the red wave of 2014, although I missed how two heavily favored Democrats would lose, too. And in 2010, while the national conventional wisdom said Harry Reid was as likely to win as a skyscraper appearing in Searchlight, I said he would,” says Ralston of his pre-election day track record.

Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning.

This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022

After a number of “blue check” accounts tested Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech by changing their Twitter screen names to “Elon Musk,” the Chief Twit immediately implemented a new policy that barred people from doing something he personally found annoying. 

Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton announced that he will not seek the 2024 GOP nomination for president, the first of the large expected crowd to make a public statement of his status, Politico reports.

In calls to donors and supporters, Cotton has said a presidential campaign would take him away from his two young sons, ages five and seven.  However, it could more likely be that Cotton–an arguably less clownish Republican than the field is expected to be–simply doesn’t want to be part of the circus.

After spending years telling their members that increased voting access was a bad thing because something, Republicans in Arizona are now frantically urging voters to get to the polls early after they concluded their previous strategy was really stupid.

According to the Washington Post, Arizona GOP leaders are looking at early vote totals and realize their campaign to stifle early voting and push people to vote only on Election Day may suppress voter turnout because people don’t want to stand in lines.

While literally everyone who investigated voting tallies in Arizona found no significant fraud, manipulation or fake ballots after at least a half dozen done around the state after the 2020 election, state GOP leaders have continued to stoke doubts about the validity of the vote count and the legitimacy of early voting to the point that their cult members are camping out, armed, watching ballot drop boxes to prevent non-existent “mules” from dropping off non-existent fake ballots.

DeSantis is an extremely effective conservative governor who has had real policy wins and real cultural wins. Trump isn’t going to be able to take this one down with a dumb nickname. He better have more than that up his sleeve. https://t.co/dOpugSGEBP

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 6, 2022

The final 2022 NBC News national survey finds Democrats statistically tied with Republicans, 48% to 47% on the question of “What is your preference for the outcome of this November’s Congressional elections – a Congress controlled by Republicans or a Congress controlled by Democrats?”

Respondents were also tied on the enthusiasm question at 73% each for Dem and GOP voters, an improvement for Dems over October’s survey which found Republicans leading 78 to 70 percent.

Russian bots and trolls have been hitting the digital bricks to help get Republicans elected ahead of the midterms, this time seeing a clear link between GOP control of Congress and getting an edge on the battlefield in Ukraine, the New York Times reports. “It’s clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine,” said former Pentagon Army info ops official Alex Plitsas, now with Providence Consulting Group. Other consultants say the effort is smaller scale than the 2016 Russian disinfo campaign, probably owing to the fact that plenty of American right wingers are saying pretty much the same shit. It’s also mainly focused on MAGA social media networks like Gab, Parler, GETTR, and Truth Social. “The audiences are much, much smaller than on your other traditional social media networks. But you can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims,” said intel analyst Brian Liston.

At one point last week, more than 2,000 barges filled with hundreds of millions of dollars of cargo sat idle on the Mississippi River as Army Corps of Engineers dredgers cleared a navigable course.  In some areas of the river, cargo loads have been limited because heavier barges would ground in shallow channel draught.

According to a report in USA Today, the low water levels in the Mississippi River have caused 25 separate closures to traffic since October 11th.  Each stoppage is estimated to cost $300 million per day to the US economy, and could devastate some markets:  60% of the nation’s corn and soybean exports rely on the Mississippi to get to customers.

Barges are instructed to carry just 65% of their capacity to navigate available channels.  Areas that previously had 30 or 40 feet of water now have ten.  At capacity, a barge can carry around 70 tractor-trailers’ worth of products.