“Maria Alexeyevna Lvova-Belova (Lvova-Belova) is Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights and, working directly under Putin, has led Russia’s efforts to deport thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. Lvova-Belova’s efforts specifically include the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families, the so-called ‘patriotic education’ of Ukrainian children, legislative changes to expedite the provision of Russian Federation citizenship to Ukrainian children, and the deliberate removal of Ukrainian children by Russia’s forces. Lvova-Belova was designated pursuant to E.O. 14024 for being or having been a leader, official, senior executive officer, or member of the board of directors of the GoR. Lvova-Belova is also sanctioned by Australia, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, and the UK,” says a list of new US sanctions targets published on the Treasury Department’s website on Thursday. Lvova-Belova is just one of 22 Russians now on the shit list.

There’s quite a few different directions we could go with comparing this cunt (sorry not sorry for using it appropriately here) to American right wingers. The Trump family separation policy, the QAnon shit about trafficking children, the DeSantis obsession with “patriot education,” and just the general affinity much of MAGA World has for Putin’s Russia which will not at all be dented by this horrific state-sanctioned abuse of innocent children caught up in a war.

Thanks for your concern, @wsj. To answer your question: yes, the trains are running on time. pic.twitter.com/ZpJIyFZJvL

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 15, 2022

ALERT! NOT A DRILL! The leaders of two major human trafficking syndicates have been identified! They’re both powerful politicians who publicly act like they support President Trump but have betrayed him on numerous instances! Texas Gov Greg Abbott and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis have transported innocent people to lawless liberal cities and put them in danger! Don’t let them get away with it! They’re violating the law and the authorities won’t do anything to stop them, so it’s time to take matters into your own hands! It’s your Constitutional duty and right to bear arms in the fight against tyrants! TAKE THEM DOWN PATRIOTS! WHERE YOU GO ONE YOU GO ALL!

Asked on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday if he would still run for president in 2024 if under indictment, disgraced former President Trump did not answer other than to say there’s no prohibition on him doing so, then warned “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” When Hewitt said “legacy media will say you’re attempting to incite violence,” Trump bullshitted and pretended he didn’t just say what he just said.

Florida-based MAGA commentator and former Newsmax TV host John Cardillo’s side gig as an arms dealer in Eastern Europe, which sounds like a lucrative business that turns out to be even more lucrative when one fucks off and don’t actually deliver the goods for which they were paid. According to the Daily Beast, Cardillo took $196,250 upfront from a Ukrainian-American businessman for an order of body armor to be donated to cops valiantly helping to keep order as their country suffers from a brutal Russian invasion and never delivered. The businessman, Florida resident Michael Bogachek, sued Cardillo on May 27th, alleging the obvious piece of shit just cashed the check and never sent the 250 high-grade, AK-47 round-resistant, armor kits – supposedly to have been sourced from Serbia – to an unspecified police agency in Ukraine.

Cardillo’s lawyers claim the sale was initiated but Bogachek never produced an end-user certificate showing the armor would reach its intended recipients with whatever police department Bogachek had meant to send it to. True or not, Cardillo hasn’t returned the money to Bogachek nor has he provided any proof that the armor was purchased but sitting in a warehouse somewhere for want of the certificate before it can be shipped. It’s also far from the first time Cardillo has faced legal trouble for ripping people off, as the Beast’s report details a semi-lengthy list of shit this scumbag has pulled, including a $16,274 judgement from iHeartRadio after Cardillo welched on some deal, and then refused to pay his lawyer in the case, $8,684.83 still outstanding.

The former Newsmax host also took the far-right stance on Ukraine itself earlier this year, tweeting he “couldn’t care less” if Russia invaded. “Just send us their hot women and call it a day.”

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018 reportedly warned the fat former president he had to issue to order to lower flags to half-staff after the death of Senator John McCain or otherwise something that’ll probably end up happening anyway would come to pass after the Donald’s long overdue death, Axios reports on a preview from the upcoming book “The Divider” by New York Times reporter Peter Baker and the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser.

“If you don’t support John McCain’s funeral, when you die, the public will come to your grave and piss on it,” Kelly told Trump during his meltdown after McCain’s August 2018 death from brain cancer. Trump did end up issuing the order, but not before National Zero publisher Spartan drove past a McDonald’s on Long Island, New York and saw that the American flag (and the “Golden Arches” flag flying below it) in front of the location had been lowered to half staff. To think a fucking McDonald’s (which maybe the franchisee is a Navy veteran, who knows) had its flag at half-staff to honor a vetern and war hero hours before the President had to be cowed into issuing an order to do so was one of the moments that truly underscored the absolute malevolence of the Trump Reich.

And Kelly was lying. There’s no way anyone who would want to piss on Trump’s grave (which there are tens of millions) would ever be allowed to get close enough for at least a decade or two after it finally happens. The grave will be a 24-7 pilgrimage site for the type of people who would shoot anyone spotted chugging a 72 ounce Big Gulp cup of iced tea, even if disguised with a MAGA hat.

Here are the 5 AM AST Thu, Sep 15 Key Messages for Tropical Storm #Fiona. For the latest forecast updates, visit https://t.co/tW4KeGe9uJ pic.twitter.com/T8C7gHmINr

— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 15, 2022

PresidentJoe Biden announced early Thursday that a tentative deal had been reached to avert a strike by railroad workers that had threatened to seize up American commerce, the AP reports.

“These rail workers will get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs: all hard-earned,” Biden said. “The agreement is also a victory for railway companies who will be able to retain and recruit more workers for an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the American economy for decades to come.”

Trump’s last White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has complied with the subpoena issued as part of the Justice Department investigation into actions and events surrounding January 6th, the effort to issue fraudulent slates of electors and other Trump efforts to undermine the 2020 election results, CNN reports.

The Justice Department instructed Meadows to turn over the same documents and information he provided the House Select Committee investigating the Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, and Meadows complied.

The request for the same tranche of information given to the House Committee shows the Justice Department investigators are now following a pathway laid out for them in the televised committee hearings, though it may not be the other path investigators are following.

Hamstrung by state law, an Iowa judge ordered a 17-year-old victim of serial rape who killed her rapist to pay $150,000 to the family of her rapist, the Des Moines Register reports, with a GoFundMe page set up to help nearly doubling that among in a day.

Pieper Lewis pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury for stabbing to death 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, whom Lewis said raped her multiple times when she was 15-years-old.   She was sentenced to five years of probation and a deferred judgment that will allow her to have her record expunged if she completes probation without issue.  Also, Lewis was ordered to pay Brooks’ family $150,000, a stipulation for guilty pleas and verdicts in criminal cases where the life of another is taken put into effect in 1997.

Once the news of the payment stipulation hit the internet, wallets opened up, with a GoFundMe page set up for Lewis’s financial needs surpassing $286,000 at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, raised from 7,142 donors.  Social media campaigns boosted the story, and victim advocacy groups and rape survivors started raising money for her.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday revived hundreds of lawsuits against Ohio State University over sexual abuse by a an athletic department doctor that had been previously dismissed over the statute of limitations expiry, ruling that the plaintiffs had not fully discovered their claims until 2018 when the scandal became public, likely opening Ohio State to discovery and certain current and former personnel – demented ex-OSU wrestling team assistant coach Jim Jordan included – to depositions, MSNBC legal contributor Tristan Snell reports.

Disgraced former President Trump in 2018 told King Abdullah II of Jordan he could have the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Washington Post reports on an excerpt from “The Divider” by New York Times reporter Peter Baker and the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” Abdullah II told a friend in 2018. “I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled-over.” It should go without saying the United States does not control the West Bank and Trump was in no position to offer it to the monarch. Plus the Palestinians kind of hate the Jordanian leadership.

The book also recounts Trump not ignoring Melania’s early 2020 pleas to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. “You’re blowing this. This is serious. It’s going to be really bad, and you need to take it more seriously than you’re taking it.” Donald “just dismissed her,” Glasser and Baker write.

With a 12:01 a.m. Friday deadline to resolve the labor dispute between rail workers and rail freight companies quickly approaching, Amtrak has canceled most of its long-distance routes starting Thursday, USA Today reports.

The routes along the popular Northeast corridor, including the Acela, will not be impacted.  Although Amtrak is not a party to the labor dispute, it share rails with the freight trains that are, and the organization is planning for some tracks to be blocked by freight that cannot be unloaded.

At 12:01 a.m. Friday, a federally-mandated “cooling off” period ends, and 115,000 rail workers could choose to go on strike or the freight carriers might lock them out, essentially shutting down rail freight across the country.  With the help of federal mediators, the coalition of six freight companies have reached agreements with eight of the 12 unions involved, but not the two largest that represent the conductors and engineers.

Trump Justice Department coup attempt plotter former Acting Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Clark told the DC Bar Association he’s under federal criminal investigation for felony violations of false statements, conspiracy, and obstruction, CNN reports on what’s kind of a “no shit” revelation given they seized his computers and phones in a 6 AM raid on his home back in June.

Clark, who was nearly installed by Trump as Acting Attorney General in the days before the Capitol riot before the Donald backed off at the end of a tense confrontation with DOJ leadership in the Oval Office over his insistence they declare the 2020 election to be “corrupt,” made this disclosure of the ongoing criminal investigation to the DC Bar Association as part of their inquiry into professional misconduct for the very same treasonous attempt to seize power at the DOJ.

Democrats lead Republicans 44% to 41% on the generic ballot question on the September 2022 Fox News polls survey, improving from last month’s tie at 41% each. For comparison Fox shows their September 2018 generic ballot poll finding of Dems 46% to GOP 40%, a 6% delta on the way to the eventual result of an 8.6% popular vote win nationally for House Dems. We know a few people who would be pretty fucking happy for the 2022 House popular vote to be +5.6% Dems, as that is a few points more what they need to hang on the majority and likely netting them 5 to 10 more seats.

In what he likely thought was an aspirational portrait, Donald Trump keeps a framed Time Magazine cover in which he is depicted as royalty, featuring the words “King Me,” on the wall of an office at one of his clubs.  And unlike other depictions of him on Time covers that he fabricated, this one is real.

The cover comes from the June 18, 2018 issue of Time, which covered Trump’s 500th day in office.  In the issue, Trump is characterized as acting as though he were an untouchable monarch.  “This portrait of Trump gazing into a mirror and seeing a king gets to the heart of how he and his legal team have approached this past week and the past 500 days, actually,” artist Tim O’Brien says.  It could be used today for the same reason.

Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox Jewish college located in New York, must recognize an LGBTQ student group organized on campus, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision, Reuters reports.

The university claimed that recognizing the student group would be a violation of its religious rights, and their sect does not condone LGBTQ relationships, considering it against their teachings.  Recognizing the group, the university argued, would be a tacit endorsement of the members’ sexuality.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented from the majority, with Alito claiming the mere fact that the university may be legally directed to recognize LGBTQ people or the groups they belong to, violates the university’s religious freedom.

The insanity of the GOP is quantifiable, and that quantity is 64%.  That the percentage of House Republicans who voted against the “National Aviation Preparedness Plan Act of 2022.”  It’s an innocuous-sounding bill, right?  That’s because it is quite an innocuous bill:  it directs the Secretaries of various Cabinet departments–Transportation, Health & Human Services, and  Homeland Security–to work together to develop a plan to address potential problems from the next pandemic that could dramatically impact US and global transportation.

See, that’s a good thing.  While the US transportation industry–from trucking companies to airlines–was caught flatfooted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic and suffered greatly, particularly during 2020 when there was absolutely no leadership coming from the White House, Democrats led the effort to have leaders develop a plan to direct resources and responses in a pre-planned, coordinated way.  And more than a third of House Republicans agreed with Democrats that, yeah, it would make sense to plan for that.

Coming of his right wing bloc’s surprise victory in legislative elections, Swedish Caucasian leader Jimmie Akesson declared it’s “time to put Sweden first,” (like we haven’t heard “[insert country here] first” from every other goddamned white nationalist party for decades so how about fucking come up with something else already) as Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson threw in the towel and conceded the majority to the four-party bloc, Sky News reports. While the center-left Andersson is gone for now at least, she won’t be replaced by the anti-immgrant Akisson, due to a condition imposed by the less MAGA parties in the bloc, the leader of the Moderates (capital M, that’s literally their name), Ulf Kristersson will take the premiership.