“New York Attorney General Letitia James took action today to stop Donald Trump and the Trump Organization from continuing to engage in the significant fraudulent and illegal business activity outlined in Attorney General James’ September 2022 lawsuit pending trial. In a motion for a preliminary injunction filed today, Attorney General James is seeking several measures to stop Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization’s ongoing fraudulent scheme and ensure funds are available to satisfy any disgorgement award, including prohibiting the Trump Organization from transferring any material assets to another entity without court approval, requiring that any new financial disclosures to banks and insurers contain all supporting and relevant material, and asking for the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance with these measures. Attorney General James is also seeking the court’s permission to serve Mr. Trump and Eric Trump electronically, as both defendants and their counsels have refused to accept service of the complaints for almost a month,” says a press release from Letitia James’s office.

Cops in Beijing were searching for a group of protestors who hung anti-Xi banners and lit a small fire on a pedestrian bridge near a busy intersection in a rare show of protest against the ChiCom regime and its COVID lockdown policies on Thursday, Bloomberg reports. “We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns and controls. We want respect, not lies,” said one of the banners, which also called for elections and described Xi as a “lingxiu” – a term which literally means “leader” but was reserved for ChiCom founding father and lifelong dictator Mao Zedong. The other banner called for strikes and boycotts. The small but significant for China protest comes just days ahead of Xi’s bid for a third term at the ChiCom party’s congress in defiance of the two-five year term norm and, of course, with zero input from actual regular Chinese citizens.

The Consumer Price Index hit an annualized rate of 8.2% in September, only a slight decline from the 8.3% in August, which is great news for Republicans who love it when Americans pay higher prices for the goods and services they require to live their lives. Overall prices rose 0.4% last month, bringing excitement and joy to MAGA hatters everywhere. God has truly blessed them.

Fat former President Trump went on a Truth Social rampage over both of the legal setbacks he suffered Wednesday, first shrieking over the Washington Post’s damning report that an employee of his informed the FBI that the fat bastard had directed the employee to hide stolen documents sought by a subpoena, writing “There is no ‘crime’ having to do with the storage of documents at Mar-a-Lago, only in the minds of the Radical Left Lunatics who are destroying our Country, and were just forced by the Courts to give me back much of what they took (STOLE?) during their unprecedented and unnecessary break in of my home. The Clinton ‘Socks Case,’ which is law, says it all belongs to ‘the President,’ NO CRIME, and the Presidential Record Act is simple, ‘negotiate,’ and NO CRIME. These people are CRAZY!!!” along with a link to some shit about the “Socks case.”

Trump then posted a statement raging over a federal judge’s ruling that he would have to sit for a deposition next week in the defamation lawsuit brought by rape accuser E Jean Carroll, in which he wrote “This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job, and Our legal system in this Country, but especially in New York State (just look at Peekaboo James), is a broken disgrace,” and we’ll note that “Peekaboo” sounds a little more than vaguely racist because of a similar word.

“I don’t know this woman, have no idea who she is, other than it seems she got a picture of me many years ago, with her husband, shaking my hand on a reception line at a celebrity charity event” Trump continued “And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”

Trump includes a photo of Carroll to underscore his point that she’s “not his type,” which, no shit, of course she is not his type, she’s 78 years old, now in 2022 at her current age.

The DNC’s House campaign arm collected $56.5 million from donors during the period from July through the end of September, eclipsing the GOP’s House operation’s $42.3 million intake over the same stretch, CBS News reports, adding that $27.5 million came in September alone, with over half – $14 million – coming from small dollar “grassroots” donations of $200 or less.

“While House Republicans scramble to ‘moderate’ their extreme MAGA, out-of-touch candidates, House Democrats aren’t taking anything for granted as we continue our fight to lower prices, restore Roe’s guarantee of reproductive freedom, and safeguard our Democracy from those seeking to overthrow it in their own selfish ploy for power,” said DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney.

The Kyiv region suffered a fourth day of attacks from Iranian-made drones on Thursday, as Russian forces continued their retaliation for the Kerch bridge explosion, the AP reports. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the wave of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones, however Deputy presidential office chief Kyrylo Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram that “critical infrastructure facilities” had been hit. Ukraine’s air force command said Thursday their air defense shot down six Iranian drones over the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions overnight.

Suspected Missouri dog-collar kidnapping rapist may have more victims https://t.co/RtF9q7Vt5H

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2022

President Joe Biden designated a 53,804-acre region of Colorado the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, preserving a scenic area of the Rocky Mountains where soldiers in World War II trained for Alpine warfare, USA Today reports.  Biden also barred new mining and drilling on a 225,000-acre parcel for two years, pending public comment which could extend the ban for two decades.

The designation, Biden’s first, would allow the continued, uninterrupted operation of existing ski resorts and slopes on the range.  The monument is inside the White River National Forest which provided the area with a number of environmental protections.

The ban on new mining and drilling permits in the Thompson Divide area of western Colorado does not impact any existing fossil fuel harvesting in the region.  But facts be damned, nine Republican House members including Colorado’s own former prostitute (allegedly) Lauren Boebert protested the designation.

You have to recognize greatness when you see it, and Trump advisor Sean Hannity, who moonlights as a host at Fox, demonstrates that greatness.  Exhibit A:  the “question” he asks Senator Ron Johnson (R-Moscow), a 51-second schedule of out-of-context, unsupported accusations that assert a Deep State plot against Donald Trump, a plot sooooooo deep, Trump’s hand-picked master investigator John Durham came up with bupkiss when trying to uncover it over the last three years.  Ya gotta hand it to him:  it’s hard to cram in so many talking points in under a minute.

In the allegorical penis-measuring contest that is the missile-firing matches being contested on the Korean peninsula, the North just upped the stakes by announcing it test-fired two nuclear-capable cruise missiles Thursday (local time), Reuters reports.

The state-controlled Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said North Korea conducted the test firings to “[enhance] the combat efficiency and might” of cruise missiles deployed “for the operation of tactical nukes.”

North Korean dictator and Amish fashion icon Kim Jong Un said the country “should continue to expand the operational sphere of the nuclear strategic armed forces to resolutely deter any crucial military crisis and war crisis at any time and completely take the initiative in it.”

A member of the Oath Keepers who spent 21 years in the military testified in the seditious conspiracy trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four other organizational leaders that the group had amassed a cache of weapons in a suburban Virginia hotel room larger than any he’d seen since he left the military, CBS News reports.

Testifying because he was subpoenaed, Terry Cummings, an Oath Keeper from Oregon, said on January 5th, he brought an AR-15 and a box of ammunition himself–strictly for defense use, he testified, in case lawlessness swept through Washington, DC–and went to a hotel room in a suburb of Washington to where he knew the group was stockpiling weapons.

“I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military,” Cummings told the jury.  The cache of weapons is a key part of prosecutors’ seditious conspiracy claim:  Rhodes and other members of the group said they staged a heavily-armed “quick-reaction force” in Virginia that would speed into Washington to take control of the Capitol.

“We’re supposed to accommodate Greta Thunberg ‘s disability, pretend her words are profound, just like the fake poet at Biden’s inauguration. ‘Oh, she was so great. We dare you to say she wasn’t!’ [Insert maniacal cackling here.] She was ridiculous.  But you [indecipherable] profound.  In Greta Thunberg’s case, of course the media loved it.”

Tucker Carlson was never truly loved as a child.  Nor as an adult, for that matter.  It shows.

A federal circuit court blocked a Texas law from going into effect that would have banned social media companies from blocking offensive content on their platforms, a law conservatives say would stop oppressive Big Tech from canceling them and “censoring” their views, Politico reports.

The Fifth Circuit Court ruled that the Texas law, known as HB 10, would cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs, tech trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, who filed the suit against the Texas Attorney General on behalf of their members.

The Texas law would remove legal protections for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram allowing them to not carry material the companies deem harmful, disturbing, or other offensive or dangerous.  Whiny conservatives feel that social media companies wield too much power by making sure users adhere to the terms of service they agree to.

You could contribute it to CTE.  You could say it happened because of the cloudy heritage of many African Americans and Native Americans.  Or you could just say Herschel Walker is a habitual liar.  But however you put it, Walker appears to be caught in a lie again, this time by asserting his grandmother was a “full-blooded Cherokee,” a claim his own mother dismisses, according to HuffPost.

At a campaign event in September, Walker told the crowd in Forsyth, Georgia something that he had alluded to in campaign events going back to May. “My mom just told me that my mom, grandmother, was full-blood Cherokee.  So I’m Native American!  I’m a super mutt,” he said.  “I don’t know what I am, but this was so funny. This was so funny. I said, ‘Mom, why you never said anything to us?’ She said, ‘Back in my days, a lot of the Native Americans were treated worse than Blacks.’”

At earlier campaign events, Walker said he learned about his Native American ancestry by having recently done a DNA test.  This time, it was from his mother “just” telling him, three months later. 

An employee of disgraced former President Trump told FBI agents the fay bastard had instructed them to move boxes full of government documents from one location to another inside Mar-a-Lago, specifically to evade a subpoena for the materials, the Washington Post reports, adding this person’s statements are corroborated by security camera footage of the boxes being moved.

“The Biden administration has weaponized law enforcement and fabricated a Document Hoax in a desperate attempt to retain political power,” Spokesworm Taylor Budowich lied in a statement. “Every other President has been given time and deference regarding the administration of documents, as the President has the ultimate authority to categorize records, and what materials should be classified.” It should be noted that former presidents are granted access to the papers after being processed by the Archives, even if they did it in a former Chinese bowling alley.

The New York Times has an informative story on a growing trend in hospital management:  eliminating inpatient beds for pediatric patients and swapping them out for rooms for more profitable adult patients, eliminating hospitals where ill children can be treated.

The change is spurred specifically by profit motive:  adult patients tend to be in the hospital for more expensive–and profitable–procedures like hip replacements, heart surgeries, or elective procedures.  Children, on the other hand, primarily use up hospital beds for low-margin treatments or observation:  a sick child needing a drug or a chronically ill patient who is medically unstable.

In April, a Richmond, Virginia hospital, Doctor’s Hospital, announced it was closing its pediatric in-patient unit.  Tufts Children’s Hospital in Boston–note the name:  Tufts Children’s Hospital–said in July it was closing its unit.  Shriners Children’s New England in Springfield, Massachusetts will close its pediatric inpatient unit by the end of the year.  Other hospitals in Colorado and Pennsylvania have also closed or are in the process of closing their units. 

The Russian national security police, the FSB, has arrested eight individuals it says are responsible for the truck bomb that damaged the Kersh Bridge, the only over-road link between Russia and Crimea that Russia was using to bring supplies to its troops occupying Ukraine, NBC News reports.

Saying Ukraine’s military intelligence service and its chief, Kyrylo Budanov, was responsible for the attack, the FSB announced that it arrested five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia it claims were the operatives who carried out the attack.

A press officer for Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Andrii Yusov, trolled Russia excellently, saying of Russia’s claims, “We are not commenting on the statements made by terrorists.”

A Connecticut jury on Wednesday absolutely annihilated conspiracy shitbrain Alex Jones to the tune of $965 million in damages in the defamation case brought by 12 of the families of the children massacred at the Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, the AP reports. Jones had for years tormented the families with his “false flag” and “crisis actor” bullshit and will now be paying for it for the rest of his life. Gay frogs rejoice, for your oppressor has been vanquished.

Jones reacted by pleading to his fans to send him money, assuring them that since he’s bankrupt, it would go to him personally and not them. Now setting aside the obvious ghoulishness of such a claim, isn’t that like an open admission of conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud or something?

Let’s go ahead and assume this assclown, whatever his name is, patronized the Taco Bell on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, the one nearest to Wall Street. It is indeed an expensive location relative to ones out in the suburbs – a basic bean burrito that costs $1 on Long Island goes for $2.39 at Fulton Street. But that’s still fucking nine bean burritos before sales tax, or 10 if you skip the soda.

There is virtually no way an adult human could eat $28 worth of food at Taco Bell in one sitting and still be able to function the next day. If he ordered two of the $9 Modelo Especial drafts they have there and had a Crunchwrap plus a taco or two then okay, maybe it really was a $28 lunch.

Actually that might make a lot of sense as an explanation, that he was about to explain that part of the bill but suddenly realized mid-sentence that he probably shouldn’t be telling a national television audience he had been day drinking at Taco Bell on a Tuesday.

Like most Republicans, GOP Florida Governor and kid picked last for the kickball team Ron DeSantis keeps getting himself in trouble:  now, the federal Treasury Department has opened an investigation into Florida’s claims that he directed federal money sent to Florida for Covid relief programs for his political stunt, Politico reports.

The Treasury’s inspector general’s office confirmed to members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation that they were investigating the claimed use of Covid funds to fly asylum seekers from Venezuela from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts after a brief stopover in Florida.

The agency “review the allowability [of Covid-19 relief funds sent to Florida] related to immigration generally, and will specifically confirm whether interest earned on (the) funds was utilized by Florida related to immigration activities, and if so, what conditions and limitations apply to such use,” Richard K. Delmar, deputy inspector general for the Treasury Department said in a letter sent to Democratic Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and five Democratic House members from the state.