Having ordered the invasion and occupation of a sovereign neighboring nation while abetting war crimes, Russian President Vladimir Putin (R-Moscow) announced that Ukrainians executed an attack on the only bridge linking Russia to Crimea, calling the attack an “act of terrorism,” NBC News reports.

“There’s no doubt it was a terrorist act directed at the destruction of critically important civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” Putin said during a Sunday meeting with the chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, parts of which were broadcast. “And the authors, perpetrators, and those who ordered it are the special services of Ukraine.”

Like Republicans, Putin believes that there should be no consequences for his actions, and that because Russian invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainians should just sit back and accept the consequences without doing anything to defend themselves or regain their liberty.  Just as the GOP feels that there should be no pushback to their oppressive policies and that they should feel no consequences or resistance in the political or legal arenas, Putin doesn’t understand that when you start a war, you will suffer retaliation.

Comedian Ariel Elias, a stand-up comic not particularly known for political comedy, apparently angered a couple Trump-supporting members of the audience at Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Mt. Pleasant, New Jersey because she made people laugh using Donald Trump as the punch line he is.  (Seriously, what standup comic wouldn’t include Trump in a set?)

Elias handles the hecklers efficiently–effectively turning the audience on them–when she moves on from humiliating the Trump supporters. Seconds later, a full beer can gets hurled at the stage, reportedly from the spouse of the woman who was heckling the comedian earlier. The comedy club is pressing charges against the man, and they’ve booked Elias back for another gig at the club.

For at least the fourth time since the February invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has replaced a senior military commander overseeing the military operation amid ongoing military and security failures in the region, NBC News reports.

Two days after his 70th birthday and a day after the bombing of a key bridge in Crimea, Putin announced that Sergei Surovikin would take over all military and security operations in the occupied Ukrainian territories, the first time Putin has named a unified commander for the operation.  Putin had previously replaced commanders when operations faltered in April, June and August.  In June, he also conducted what observers called a “purge” of senior military commanders overseeing the invasion.  In August, Putin also replaced the head of naval operations in the Black Sea after the sinking of the Black Sea fleet’s flagship.

The head of Russia’s Air Force, Surovikin oversaw Russian operations in Syria, where the Kremlin relies mostly on unofficial mercenaries to conduct its operations, with Russian military largely providing support functions so as to not face Western-backed faction directly.  While he was in command, the Russians undertook the devastating bombing of Aleppo in 2016, where hospitals and civilian facilities were destroyed in the wholesale destruction of the city that resulted in nearly 1,000 civilians dead in four months.

Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Rick Scott are headed to Georgia on Tuesday to fire up enthusiasm for their would-be future colleague, the pro-choice for his girlfriends but pro-forced birth for other women, mentally insane idiot Herschel Walker, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

The not very charismatic or popular Senators, stuck with no other choice but to continue to support the dipshit Walker if they want to break the chamber’s 50-50 Dem majority, only need to make it through the next 50-odd hours without any more credible evidence that the absentee father did in fact pay for at least one abortion in the last few decades. Would suck for them if the woman who had the abortion(s) came forward publicly and showed off the receipts and get well soon card.

A Norway-based Iranian rights group estimates that nearly 200 people have been killed by pro-government forces in Iran in the three weeks since large-scale protests erupted over the death in police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, Reuters reports. “At least 185 people, including at least 19 children, have been killed in the nationwide protests across Iran. The highest number of killings occurred in Sistan and Baluchistan province with half the recorded number,” the Iran Human Rights organization said on Saturday, adding that the number includes at least 20 cops.

The water superintendent of a Vermont town unilaterally decided to lower the amount of fluoridation added to the water supply–dropping it below state-recommeded levels–because he was concerned about the safety of the levels of the Chinese-manufactured products, the Associated Press reports.

Water fluoridation has been an accepted practice in municipal water systems in the United States since the 1950s.  The process, which involves adding three separate chemicals into the water processing system, increases the amount of fluoride in the water and allows the water system to provide supplemental fluoride which strengthens teeth, particularly with children.

Kendall Chamberlin, Richmond, Vermont’s water and wastewater superintendent, told the town water and sewer commission in September that he had unilaterally lowered the levels of fluoridation in the town’s system because he had concerns that two of the components used in fluoridation were manufactured in China. 

Two Words: Let’s Go Brandon!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) October 8, 2022

US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus told the Los Angeles Times this week that Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott’s bullshit games with shipping migrants north is actually drawing more of them to the United States. “It’s safe to say what’s going on is a pull factor, which is somewhat ironic given the criticism from some of these same governors involved in this about various pull factors that they claim already exist… when migrants hear that there are buses that will take them to locations where they are told they will receive benefits and jobs,” said Magnus.

Persistent Trump apologist and fainting couch enthusiast Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, told DC Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone and other officers who defended the Capitol during the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress that they should have shot the insurrectionists, the Guardian reports.

In a new book, Fanone recalls a meeting he and others had with Graham in May 2021, after Graham had expressed disgust with Trump on the Senate floor but before Graham started to prostrate himself to Donald Trump to garner political favor.  In that meeting, Graham told the officers they should have simply opened fire.

“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” Graham said, according to Fanone.  “We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”

Disgraced former President Trump last year told his minions to propose to the National Archives that he would return the documents they were asking for if they would give him the ones he believed would prove he was innocent of colluding with the Russians in 2016, the New York Times reports.

Trump’s lawyers never made the proposal, probably because doing so would be an admission that he committed a crime by taking the documents from the White House as his failure of a presidency ended, not to mention God knows how many other federal felonies by turning the back and forth with the archives into essentially a hostage negotiation. The Times’s reporting also tracks with a Friday piece by ABC News about the Donald’s failed 11th hour attempt to declassify documents he and asshole John Solomon selectively identified as exonerating when viewed completely out of context.

A truck bomb killed at least three Russians and severely damaged the Kerch road and rail bridge that serves as the only connection between the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Russian mainland on Saturday, CNN reports. A spokeswoman for the Russian Investigation Service said the agency “has opened a criminal case about the incident at the Crimean Bridge. According to preliminary information, this morning a truck was blown up on the automobile part of the Crimean Bridge from the Taman Peninsula [the westbound lanes of the bridge], which led to the ignition of seven fuel tanks of a train travelling toward the Crimean Peninsula. As a result, two car lanes of the bridge partially collapsed.” Yeah that sounds pretty fucking bad for Russia, lol.

• Ten million new jobs in 20 months.  Way to go, Brandon.  
• Here’s the thing Republicans don’t get:  if Trump loses a primary–not just the nomination, but any state primary–his mob will see those results as invalid and turn their violence and anger on the GOP candidate who won, claiming that candidate cheated.  The same is true for any Trump-endorsed candidate:  the mob will claim they were cheated.  The GOP has not reined in its most vile element, and they’ll be the first ones to experience its wrath first this coming presidential election cycle.
• Herschel Walker will become the GOP advocate against absentee fathers the same way Bristol Palin lectures about pre-marital abstinence.
• How bankrupt are conservatives?  Watch Ron DeSantis:  “Let’s go, Brandon!” is now “Help me, Brandon!”  Their staged principles go out the window when they’re the ones in need. 
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XC”

And the plot thickens….  Texan Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for the Senate from Georgia, has confirmed to NBC News that he does know the woman who had an abortion at Walker’s urging, but he claims he didn’t know the woman had an abortion.

“The first I knew about any of this was when some reporter asked me about an abortion. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s a lie.’ And then I was asked if I paid for an abortion, and I said No.  I did not pay for an abortion,” said Herschel Walker. “I’m not saying she did or didn’t have one [an abortion]. I’m saying I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know.”  He added:  “I have nothing to hide. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

Walker’s wife has been communicating with the unnamed woman over years, trying to act as a middleman between Walker and the woman, arranging for payments to get to the mother of Walker’s child.  Walker reportedly had little to no contact with the woman, who again is the mother of his child.

We’re at this point in the Wisconsin Senate campaign: when candidates must prove how much of an alcoholic they are drinking drinks quickly. For some reason, they didn’t include the shot of Russia vodka incumbent Republican Senator and Putin puppet Ron Johnson (allegedly) took before downing the chaser.  This might also explain Johnson reportedly bad performance in tonight’s debate against Democratic nominee Mandela Barnes.

The shooting of three people at a low-budget resort north of Montreal by three men who drove a black SUV involved a former business partner of a woman who claimed to be an heir to the Rothschild fortune and gained access to Mar-a-Lago while Trump hid a horde of government documents there, CBC News reports.

A Russian-speaking Ukrainian-born Canadian entrepreneur, Valeriy Tarasenko was one of three people shot at at the Estérel Resort hotel complex in Estérel, Quebec.  He survived the shooting but was in serious condition with non-life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.

Tarasenko was a business partner with Inna Yashchyshyn, another Russian-speaking Ukrainian who pretended to be a member of uber-wealthy Rothschild family who was photographed with Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham, among others, at various Mar-a-Lago functions, spotlighting the lack of security screen for people while Donald Trump had hundreds of thousands of pages of government documents, including classified information, scattered around the supper club and wedding venue.

Senator Lindsey Graham was so upset by the mother of slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick’s mom badmouthing disgraced former President Trump he said “we’re going to end the meeting right now,” if she wouldn’t stop, Politico reports on a preview of former DC Metro cop Mike Fanone’s upcoming book, Hold The Line. That Lindsey acted in such a way is somewhat surprising given Lindsey’s reputation as kind of a weak cowardly little bitch. Here he is completely shutting down a dead cop’s mom for talking shit about Trump, which is kind of badass if you’re on Team MAGA.

With Friday’s job creation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, President Joe Biden surpasses 10 million jobs created to this point in his administration, by far the most of any post-World War II president in his first 20 months in office.  But you can’t really appreciate the difficulty of this feat until you compare it with his predecessors.

Looking at the total jobs created is a bit misleading, given that Biden has been in office less than half a term, but as you can see, his job creation numbers rank him sixth of all post-war presidents.

One of the mothers of Herschel Walker’s children who previously had an abortion at his urging that he paid for told the New York Times that Walker wanted her to abort a second pregnancy he was responsible for, a prospect she refused and ultimately gave birth to one of Walker’s sons, the New York Times reports.

Walker and the unnamed woman had a years-long relationship.  In 2009, she became pregnant and at Walker’s urging, she aborted that fetus.  Walker allegedly paid for the abortion and later sent her a get-well card.  The woman kept an image of the canceled check, the receipt from the procedure and the card Walker sent.  Walker completely denies the claim.

Walker and the woman kept up their relationship after the abortion, and the woman again became pregnant by Walker in 2011.  Walker urged her to terminate the pregnancy, which the woman refused to do.  The two ultimately split up over the decision and the woman is raising the now-10-year-old boy on her own.