Ukrainian military forces have encircled the key Russian-held city of Lyman in the Donetsk region, threatening yet another serious setback for the Kremlin’s war machine, CNN reports.

“The Russian group in the area of Lyman is surrounded. The settlements of Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve, and Stavky are liberated. Stabilization measures are ongoing there,” said Ukrainian army spokesman Serhii Cherevatyi on Saturday. “of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas. This is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Severodonetsk. Therefore, in turn, it is psychologically very important,”

In a since-deleted tweet posted Friday, CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, celebrated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Russia had (illegally) annexed four Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories–or as CPAC called them, “Ukrainian-occupied territories.”  So obviously all those rumors about CPAC and the far-right, including Tucker Carlson, embracing the authoritarian rule of Putin are just Fake News from the Mainstream Media, right?

• After hearing the new Space Force theme song, I’m reminded that in space, no one can hear you sing.
• Add to Dark Brandon’s accomplishments:  competently dealing with the spread of monkeypox.  US infection rates are down 60% in six weeks after a rapid effort to get vulnerable people educated and vaccinated.  Nobody questioned the vaccine or lambasted efforts to stop the spread.  THAT’S effective leadership.
• Florida:  the state warning labels were made for.
• The privilege of being a conservative, powerful troll like Ron DeSantis is that when you’re in trouble, you know the opposing political party in power won’t be an asshole like you would be.  So when you need help, you know you can rely on the Democrat to do the right thing.  Democrats can’t say the same thing because conservatives are self-important authoritarians who would withhold assistance to people in need simply because they disagree politically with you.

Following a legally questionable decision by Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon, the Department of Justice has filed a motion for an expedited appeal to challenge the order for a special master to the 11th Circuit Court, which overruled an earlier Cannon order.

According to Politico, prosecutors claim that not only is the special master unnecessary, but the process would slow needed investigations into the fact that Donald Trump had a reported 200,000 pages of government documents, including some classified documents, at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home that just sustained $842 million in damage because of Hurricane Ian (an expected insurance claim will fraudulently claim).

The government also contends that the new timeline laid out by Cannon significantly slows the investigation into the theft of the documents to an unacceptable degree.  The motion notes that the Circuit Court overruled Cannon regarding her orders about the classified documents, and the need to continue the investigation into the remaining 1,000-plus documents also must proceed.

“[Indecipherable] Senator Warnock like ta talk about it ’cause he doesn’t wanna talk about inflation.  He don’t wanna talk about crime.  He don’t wanna talk about the border.  He don’t wanna talk about men and women’s sports.  Those are things he voted for, so it’s one of those issues.  He’s turned his back on the Braves.  He’s turnedin his back on the men and women in blue.  He’s turned his back on Border Patrol ’cause he don’t wanna talk ’bout those things.  And, ah, that’s ah, those are the things that we should be talkin’ about, not whether the Braves should change their name because they got nothin’ to talk about.  They don’t have anything to talk about.  We gonna talk about me.  They’re gonna talk about everything else.”

For the record, Herschel Walker, the Texan running as the Republican nominee for the Senate from Georgia, was asked about his thoughts on pressure for the Atlanta Major League Baseball team to change its mascot.

The American sailor accused of setting fire to the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard at Naval Base San Diego, California in July 2020 has been acquitted by a court martial, Reuters reports.

The defense for Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays argued that Mays did not set the fire, asserting that lithium-ion batteries onboard or a short circuit in a forklift sparked the fire.  Prosecutors stated Mays was a disgruntled recruit who did not take to Navy life and wanted to show his dissatisfaction.

It took four days for Navy firefighters and fire departments from the city, county and Coast Guard to put out the fire on the ship, which was largely vacated with crew on leave.  At least 60 people were hospitalized because of the fire, and the ship sustained so much damage it had to be scuttled.

“A Tennessee man pleaded guilty today to felony charges for his actions during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His and others’ actions disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election. Ronald Sandlin, 35, of Millington, Tennessee, pleaded guilty in the District of Columbia to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers. According to court documents, Sandlin and two co-conspirators – Nathaniel DeGrave and Josiah Colt – planned to interfere with the peaceful transition of presidential power, beginning in December 2020. For example, on Dec. 31, 2020, Sandlin posted to Facebook that he was organizing a caravan to travel to Washington and sought donations on a GoFundMe site.”

“The same day, he, DeGrave, and Colt began a private chat on Facebook to plan for Jan. 6. In the chat, they discussed ‘shipping guns’ to Sandlin’s residence in Tennessee, where they planned to meet prior to their trip. On Jan. 4, 2021, before heading to Washington, Sandlin posted to Facebook a picture of Colt lying on a bed holding a firearm, with the caption, ‘My fellow patriot sleeping ready for the boogaloo Jan 6.’ Sandlin understood at the time that the term ‘boogaloo’ referred to civil war,” says a DOJ press release that goes on for quite a while about why this scumbag is guilty.

The bottom line is Sandlin “is to be sentenced on Dec. 9, 2022. He faces a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and up to eight years in prison on the charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers.” Enjoy your stay Ronnie.

In a terribly non-shocking new report in the Washington Post, the lawyers working to slow down the felony criminal investigation into disgraced former President Trump are not on the same page as to how to handle their obese client, with $3 million dollar man Chris Kise pushing for a less combative approach – described as an “off-ramp” – and the others, naturally, still all in on the MAGA bullshit.

Kise’s role in the Mar-a-Lago docs case has been reduced and he’s been shifted into the Donald’s other legal issues, of which there are many (there still seems to be some confusion on this after it was reported earlier this week that he had been effectively demoted). Overall the picture remains not great for the MAGA Reich, as yes, Trump was rescued from an immediate jam on Thursday when shitty federal Judge Aileen Cannon overruled the special master on forcing the Donald to put up or shut up with his claims that the FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago, but the 11th Circuit Court’s ruling last week uncuffed the Justice Department from pursuing the criminal investigation into the theft of classified documents from the White House.

Photo tweeted by VOA’s Ostap Yarysh.

In a question probably framed as “Are you voting for the Democrats: the official party of Rainbow Fentanyl in Halloween candy or the Republicans: The party of Trump, Jesus, Freedom, Patriotism, Family values, election integrity, and the Nord Stream pipeline?” in the most recent Rasmussen poll found the GOP leading only 45% to 44%. So it’s probably 50% Dems – 45% GOP in real life.

Just as he was finally starting to get settled into his military junta office seized earlier this year in a likely Russian-backed coup, Burkina Faso leader Lt Colonel Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba is facing a challenge from some brash young upstarts as gunfire was reported around the presidential palace in Ouagadougou and the state TV broadcaster went off the air on Friday, the AP reports.

Well Damiba may’ve already lost the challenge as his whereabouts are currently unknown. So it’s kind of a jump ball, really. If he’s still in one piece, Damiba must be kind of pissed that the Wagner Group are currently getting their asses kicked in Ukraine instead of helping him out of this jam.

“U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (both R-AK) today introduced the Don Young Recognition Act, a bill to honor the legacy of the late Don Young, Congressman for All Alaska. The legislation designates one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands, currently known as Mount Cerberus, as Mount Young. In addition, the bill recognizes Congressman Young’s lifelong contributions to Alaska by designating the Federal office building in Fairbanks as the Don Young Federal Office Building and the Job Corps Center located in Palmer as the Don Young Alaska Job Corps Center,” says a Thursday statement on Murkowski’s Senate.gov website.

Mount Cerberus was a smart pick considering there are unlikely to be that many worshippers of the vicious mythological three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell who would feel like their culture is being squashed. It’s a safe bet Murkowski and Sullivan’s staffs double and triple-checked if there was any historic indigenous Aleutian name for the mountain and came up empty. Dead white men have been losing ground in the number of places and topographic features in Alaska named for them in recent years, so why not let the guy whose death gave way to the first ever Native Alaskan member of Congress’s election (and a Dem) have this one.

“Must be inherited money because that dude is stooooopid!!!!”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Florida Man’s $1 Million Car Waterlogged by Hurricane Ian.” We need not mention whom such an observation could also be applied to.

The Intercept have a solid writeup on how Katie Halper was fired following her push back against The Hill’s ownership for squashing this segment backing up Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib correctly calling Israel an Apartheid state. “I am a Jew and I am outraged. Not by Tlaib, but by the attacks on Tlaib. Rashida Tlaib is saying that Israel is an apartheid state and that people who claim to have progressive values cannot support an apartheid state. No matter how loose a definition of progressive we use, it certainly excludes supporting a racist apartheid system,” said Halper in the segment that led to her being fired from the shitty political news site we all love to hate.

Fulfilling the first step of putting all of Eastern Europe under the Kremlin’s control like it’s 1939, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially proclaimed Russian has illegally annexed four Ukrainian districts that conducted a sham referendum earlier this week, the Washington Post reports.

Putin declared the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine to now be a part of Russia, although the regions are not under Russian military control as Ukraine stages a punishing counteroffensive and retakes territory.  Only a handful of the world’s nation–like Turkmenistan, Belarus and likely Saudi Arabia–with recognize Russian claims to the territory.

In a list of grievances that would make a Republican proud, Putin took the opportunity to blame “Anglo-Saxons” for the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream II pipeline this week, a move that injected tons of methane into the air and water causing an environmental catastrophe.

Yeah we’re going to preface this article with another insufferable “self-affirmation” of our dedication to not covering what we subjectively deem to be extraneous bullshit: We liked and respected Queen Elizabeth, she was an exemplary leader and we will again express our deepest condolences to the British Commonwealth people on their loss. That said, we’re Americans, she wasn’t our queen, we were proud to not join the MSM’s fucking wall-to-wall coverage of her funeral and her son’s accession and then the goddamned death certificate revealing that she died of old age. Like wow, holy shit, a 96 year old woman died of old age. Next you’re going to tell us a woman whose number one hit song was about not going to rehab died of alcohol poisoning.

That said, earlier this month we pledged we would cover anything related to Elizabeth’s death we deemed to have actual political significance (or at least was entertaining) and damned if this new report in the Daily Beast doesn’t hold up to that standard: A friend of the Queen says they believe she purposely stayed in Scotland when she knew the end was near in order to save the union amid Kilt Country’s ongoing agitation for independence from the United Kingdom.

“She was frail and there was an argument that she should be back in Windsor where it is significantly easier to get hospital treatment,” said the unnamed friend. “Of course she had access to medics at Balmoral, but nothing like at Windsor. Balmoral is very isolated, but that is where she wanted to be, precisely because she thought the end might be near. She planned to die in Scotland to save the union.” Others are not so sure, especially given the Scottish National Party’s semi-firm commitment to remaining a realm of the Commonwealth in the event of independence, but it sure was a hell of shrewd move if Elizabeth did it on purpose. There’s definitely some kind of chess metaphor in there that we’re not bold enough to attempt because we’ve never played the game.

The leader of the Kremlin-puppet Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine complained Friday that Kyiv’s offensive against the Russian stronghold of Lyman in his pseudo-state is ruining the special occasion of his submission to Putin, Reuters reports. “[The villages of Yampil and Drobysheve] are no longer fully controlled by us,” and “the Ukrainian army is trying with all its might to blacken this historic event for us,” Donetsk People’s Republic leader Denis Pushlin wrote on Telegram.

Pushlin’s disappointment kind of calls into question what was the whole fucking point of even having a fake “People’s Republic” in the first place. If the aim was self-determination and independence against the evil machinations of the “Nazis” in Kyiv then why was he so excited to submit himself and his people to a new master even further away? We all know it was a complete sham, of course, but authoritarians didn’t always used to be this blatantly transparent, did they?

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman writes in her upcoming book that the Orange God Emperor had threatened to go after her phone records in order to find out who was leaking to her.

Besides himself, of course. “Trump, angry about my published stories, would bellow that he wanted administration officials to obtain my phone records and identify my sources,” Haberman wrote, according to yet another preview of “Confidence Man” in Axios.

A now-former Texas prison warden and his brother have been arrested for shooting into a group of migrants at a roadside water station, killing one and wounding another, ABC News reports.

Mike Sheppard, a former warden at the West Texas Detention Center in Sierra Blanca, and his brother Mark were arrested after the shooting in a rural county outside El Paso.  Reportedly, the pair were in a pickup that approached a group of migrants and opened fire randomly into the crowd.  A man was killed and a woman wounded.

ABC News called the West Texas Detention Center to confirm Mike Sheppard’s employment, and a person at the prison said Sheppard had been terminated “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment.”