As Russia reassesses its strategy and goals for its invasion, Ukrainian forces are mounting a counterattack against the southern city of Kherson, an important port city on the Dnieper River that Russia has controlled since the early days of the war, the New York Times reports.

Russia was so comfortable about its occupation of Kherson that it began introducing the ruble as the currency for the city weeks ago.  The Ukrainians strategy appears to make Russia stretch their troop strength and their supply lines.  They are also attempting to retake the city before the Russians complete construction of defensive positions.

“Russia has already lost not only the battle for Kharkiv, not only the battle for Kyiv and the north of our country,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said while touring the eastern front. “It lost its own future and any cultural ties to the free world. They all burned down.”

If you’re having flounder from Florida for dinner this week, you could be having your dosage of Lipitor, Xanax and a host of other prescription medications found in fish off the Florida coast, a new study finds, CNN reports.

The report, from Florida International University and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, a Miami-nonprofit focused on conservation, found that in the 93 samples they studied, the bonefish from Florida had measurable amounts of, on average 7 different pharmaceuticals; one had samples of 17 different drugs.

“These findings are truly alarming,” Jennifer Rehage, a coastal and fish ecologist and associate professor at FIU, said in the release. “Pharmaceuticals are an invisible threat, unlike algal blooms or turbid waters. Yet these results tell us that they are a formidable threat to our fisheries, and highlight the pressing need to address our longstanding wastewater infrastructure issues.”

Less than a week after a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a festival being held in an Oklahoma town of a few hundred people was raked with gunfire Saturday night, killing one and injuring at least seven, KOCO ABC-5 Oklahoma City reports.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has arrested 26-year-old Skyler Buckner, who turned himself into the county sheriff Sunday afternoon.

The town of Taft holds a popular Memorial Day weekend celebration which attracts 1,500 to the town of 125.  At some point Saturday night, a fight broke out during which someone pulled a gun, shooting into a crowd.

Thanks to Wilson Wade for the tip.

We’re *so* beyond Jewish Space Lasers.  Now Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Georgia) wants you to believe Bill Gates is developing plant-based food that will warn you off real meat, in vessels you have to hear her describe.

You have to expect the fact that the government totally wants ta-to provide, serv–surveillance on every part of your life.  They want to know when you’re eating.  They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.  You’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying, “No, no.  Don’t eat a real cheeseburger!  You need to eat the fake, the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.”  Um, they probably also want to know when you go to the bathroom and if your bowel movements are on time and consistent.  I mean, what else do these people want to know.

Somewhere around Moscow, the Russian version of Donald Rumsfeld is telling people, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”  And around Russia, civilians are stepping up to support their poorly-supplied troops, but on a more tactical scale.

While US troops faced shortages of up-armored vehicles and ballistic vests, the Russians are getting care packages from back home with lifesaving medical equipment:  Packets of hemostatic granules to stop bleeding, needles to relieve pressure from chest wounds, and even wheelchairs to help those evacuated.

As the New York Times points out, people from all over Russia are driving cars full of supplies to the Ukrainian front after hearing stories from returning fighters about chronic shortages of equipment.  The supplies sometimes reach into the tactical sphere, not just medical.

Fun fact: Tapping “No” just goes to the same page as “Yes”. So it doesn’t matter what you agree with Don Jr’s inadequacies and hang-ups about his terrible father and so on and so forth.

The President and First Lady traveled to Uvalde, Texas to pay their respects to the families, friends and community that lost 21 people to a heavily armed gunman who stormed Robb Elementary School last week, stopping at a makeshift memorial on school grounds, CNN reports.

President and Dr. Biden were greeted by the principal of the school and the superintendent of the school district before approaching the rows of crosses, each bearing the name of one of the dead, set up in front of the school.  Dr. Biden placed a large bouquet of white roses at the sign in front of the school.

The Bidens will attend a mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church before scheduled meetings with families of the deceased.  They will also meet with the first responders.

Calling the Fox morning show host “absolutely wrong” about her assertion that there was no fraud found during investigations of the 2020 election, Republican Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, a lovelorn Trump candidate for Senate continues to aggressively push the election fraud lie.  Book”You keep saying it every time, but that’s absolutely false.  You had 150 Congressmen and Senators who absolutely disagree with you on what you just said,” Brooks claims, “so what are you calling them?”

What I am calling them?  Partisan liars who are undertaking a fraud upon the American people to maintain their power.  That’s what they should be called.

Here are the 10 AM CDT Sunday, May 29, Key Messages for #Hurricane #Agatha. The hurricane is rapidly strengthening & additional intensification is forecast. Today is the day to complete preparedness actions ahead of the storm. Follow the latest at: https://t.co/Oy8uoeRKme pic.twitter.com/O6L8WBCC73

— NHC Eastern Pacific (@NHC_Pacific) May 29, 2022

Those Chinese bastards and their hurricane gun. They know Mexico doesn’t have its own nukes to defend itself from their artificial mega-storms. Chairman Xi must be made to pay for this evil.

It’s a sad thing to see when a moron makes his point, and thinks it’s the Most Important Point Ever in History, but in reality, it’s idiotic.  Would the Uvalde shooter have been as murderous if he had a bat, or a bomb, or a machete, as the suspected fan of Peruvian Marching Powder claims?  Well, obviously not.  But Junior thinks he’s onto something, and he’s really proud of himself.

For the record, there have been many, many cases of people attacking crowds with the devices Junior mentions.  Even the most famous recent case–the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013–left just three people dead–and they used two bombs.  But sure, Junior, tell us how an unstable individual with a bat would far against two teachers defending their students–when you’re not demeaning teacher for, y’know, teaching.

Republican New York Congressman Chris Jacobs said Saturday he would support legislation to ban assault weapons from private ownership after the slaughter of people in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, the Buffalo News reports.

Jacobs becomes the first Congressional Republican to explicitly state he would support any type of gun control measure, with many members of the GOP saying that they would block any attempt to limit the ownership, availability and use of guns.

“If an assault weapons ban bill came to the floor that would ban something like an AR-15, I would vote for it.  So I want to be clear: I would vote for it,” Jacobs said at the news conference.  Later, he added, “Individuals cannot buy beer, they cannot get cigarettes until 21. I think it’s perfectly reasonable that the age limit at least for these highly lethal, high- capacity semiautomatic weapons should be 21.”

Wayne LaPierre, the long-time leader of the National Rifle Association, received a vote of confidence from the members assembled in Houston for the organization’s conference despite throwing the group into chaos, Reuters reports.

During the meeting four hours from where an 18-year-old mass shooter wielding an assault rifle murdered 21 people including 19 schoolchildren, the NRA defiantly maintained its stance fighting any and all gun control proposals despite overwhelming public demand.

LaPierre has led the group to file bankruptcy because of failing finances and an investigation into massive self-dealing in the non-profit.  LaPierre has used NRA funds, allegedly, to benefit himself with a multi-million dollar mansion in Texas, custom made suits and exotic vacations, many of which led him to kill things.

Congresswoman and four-times arrested wife of a registered sex offender Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) tried to swipe at her primary challenger, state senator Don Coram, by claiming he sells “hot hemp,” a form of hemp that has THC levels above legal limits, which sent laughter through the crowd.  Reading from a script with a pre-written zinger, the child who demeans survivors of mass shootings said in her typical hyper teenage voice, “He voted for an anti-police bill.  But, hey, maybe with this decriminalization of hemp law, maybe I don’t understand it completely, and there were alternative motors, motives.  I’m thinkin’ maybe you were worried about being prosecuted as a felon yourself for selling hot hemp.”

MyPillow dipshit Mike Lindell, who within two years at most will be on the hook for literally billions of dollars in judgements from defamation lawsuits brought by voting tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic, was at the Trump Wyoming rally on Saturday, claiming yet another election was stolen when asked about Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s no-runoff victories in last week’s Republican primary when asked by the RSBN lady.

“It was stolen! There were algorithms used in Georgia but we caught em! We were watching! Everybody was watching! Against Rassenberger [sic] there was Jody… um…” [RSBN lady says “Hice”] “Hice! The algorithm went through Georgia in I don’t know how many counties out of 159, I think it’s like a hundred and something. The same percentage of votes, like 17 percent,” said Lindell, getting increasingly agitated, adding “It’s called a SELECTION, NOT AN ELECTION!”

As usual, it’s hard to parse out what the fuck he’s talking about even to those of us vaguely familiar with the “algorithm” storylines in the MAGA Cinematic Universe. It’s not even clear if the RSBN lady even really gets it, but just operates as if Lindell is smarter than her so there no reason to challenge him on any of this. Anyone who uses the word “algorithm” has to be smart, right?

By the way, we had to embed this video from Rumble instead of YouTube because we’re pretty sure this clip would trigger the YouTube algorithm that automatically flags election lies. We’re not going to pretend we know exactly how it works at YouTube, we just know from experience that some content just pisses them off and makes no distinction between right wingers who want to propagate that kind of bullshit versus those who want to report on the lies MAGA clowns tell. Not lost on us is the irony that we have to use the shitty “free speech” YouTube knockoff to do that.

Pizza Hut is offering the “No. 1 Salted Chicken Pizza in Taiwan” topped with “flaming popcorn chicken,” fried squid, tempura, and parmesan-topped Oreo cookies ringing its cheese-stuffed crust, Brand Eating reports, confirming what we can only conclude is effectively the chain telling customers in the country “fuck you” with all the contempt and malice such an abomination could only mean. We get Taiwan is a little idiosyncratic, having seen in person that a very large portion of its main international airport is decorated with a Hello Kitty aesthetic, like the actual gates and terminals and even the planes themselves dolled up with the cartoon Japanese cat and her pals Keroppi frog, fluffy fluffy Cinnamoroll, and others. We just weren’t aware it was this weird.

Because this pizza is fucking weird. And if our first instinct was wrong, and that claim to “No. 1 Salted Chicken Pizza in Taiwan” is indeed accurate and not just a boast we’re going to have to expand our understanding of the Pacific island nation to encompass the fact that a pizza with both fried seafood and Oreos on it is popular. It’s not like a Baskin Robbins “Polar Pizza” which is really an ice cream cake made with Oreo crust shaped like a pizza, but an actual pizza with mozzarella, tomato sauce, and crust – topped with fried seafood, fried chicken, and Oreos.

We may never look at Taiwan the same way again knowing this. Even a headline like “Chinese navy lands marines on Taiwanese beaches, Biden orders nuclear forces deployed to Pacific” will make us kind of nauseous because it makes us of the tempura-Oreo-cheese stuffed crust tastes combined.

“Y’know, w-we need, it’s time that we keep talkin’ ’bout, y’know, treatin’ man-, mental health, addressin’ the issue, and we need to quit talkin’ ’bout…,” Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas (population 16,000) explains, relying on his vast domestic policy and foreign affairs experience, blames Washington for not addressing mental health issues in the nation, without noting that his spends 40% of his town’s budget on police–who proved ineffective–or acknowledging that Republican Governor Greg Abbott has cut more than $200 million from Texas social services since he was elected. “We give billions of dollars away to countries that don’t even like us.  We outghta be takin’ that money and investin’ in our own country.”

The Mental Health Justice Act of 2021, of which Democratic California Congresswoman Katie Porter was the chief sponsor, had 127 co-sponsors; only one was a Republican, fellow Californian Michelle Steel.  It is languishing in committee.

Cokehead moron Donald Trump Jr is warning malevolent razorback Elise Stefanik to back the hell off of Tucker Carlson’s son Buckley – an aide to MAGA Congressman Jim Banks – in some internecine power struggle among the House GOP, Politico reports. The article itself is obviously the product of a warning shot leak at Stefanik and, while it doesn’t make any mention of Buckley having gotten a college recommendation letter from Hunter Biden back in 2014, the implication is pretty clear: Stefanik wants to use that to hint that Banks, her rival for the House GOP Whip post should they take majority next year, is somehow compromised because Hunter bad.

For his part Tucker is no fan of Stefanik, calling her and Kevin McCarthy “puppets of the Democrats” on his show last month. No reason was apparent at the time, but it would seem quite possible now in retrospect that the Hunter Biden “liability” for Buckley Carlson and – by extension – Jim Banks was what drove Tucker to go after her. They’re all irredeemable assholes, but it’s still funny to see Republicans deploying the same bullshit half-truths and thinnest of threads they use on Democrats to knife each other inside the MAGA Reich. Who gives a fuck if Tucker asked Hunter to write a letter of recommendation for Buckley eight years ago? It makes Tucker look like the weasel he is, sure, but what the hell does it have to do with Jim Banks? So what if he hired the kid?

The Hunter recommendation is an even dumber “liability” than the campaign donation former Trump aide and New Hampshire US House candidate Matt Mowers took from the New Jersey GOP guy who opposed the “legitimate political discourse” resolution at the RNC meeting back in February. That Mowers would accept $1,000 from a GOP official from his home state before the official, Bill Palatucci, complained correctly about that batshit resolution and over the party spending millions on Trump’s legal defense was touted as evidence that Mowers is a RINO to his rival fellow former Trump aide, 24 year old Karoline Leavitt. Who comes up with this shit?

Don’t they have any real dirt on each other? Or is it that they do, but they know MAGA voters don’t care about things like corruption and personal degeneracy so they just go with whatever makes them look “disloyal” to Trump? How many more of these obnoxious rhetorical questions can we add without sounding like Tucker Carlson ourselves? A dozen? Two dozen?

• I know I don’t have all the answers, but I know none of them will come from anyone currently with an (R) behind their name.  And I’m not just talking about gun violence.
• Hi, GOP.  We tried it your way.  Your policy promoting proliferation of guns hasn’t worked.  More people with guns hasn’t reduced gun violence; it’s made it worse.  Now it’s our turn to find a solution to your gun craze.
• I’d rather have every American have to go through background checks to buy everything from guns to bullets to bubble gum than require children to have active shooter drills.  
• Texas police like to wear their costumes–the colorful braiding, the cowboy hats, the boots, the guns–reminiscent of rodeo shooters.  Maybe they should be more concerned about their tactics and less about their fashions.  The only people who should properly wear cowboy hats are ranchers and strippers.  Everyone else looks ridiculous.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LXXI”

“You are not our enemies. We are not yours. We extend our hand opened and unarmed in a gesture of peace and fellowship,” Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke tells attendees to the NRA Convention in Houston, happening three days after the murder of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, about 4 hours from Houston.  O’Rourke’s message is one of acting on widely popular gun control measures favored by the vast majority of Americans–and NRA members–but which are being blocked by Republican politicians swimming in NRA PAC donations.

A new group formed with Democratic activist Bakari Sellers has raised $1 million to try to oust progressive Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a member of The Squad, in favor of a more reliable vote for President Biden’s policies, Politico reports.

Made up primarily of Black and Jewish business leaders, Urban Empowerment Action PAC is supporting Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey in the upcoming primary in the 13th Congressional District to promote “her campaign to restore infrastructure, improve educational opportunities in the district and support the Biden-Harris agenda in D.C.”

Tlaib has been a vocal opponent of the US relationship with Israel and a proponent of stronger relations with the Palestinian Authority.  She vocally pushed back against administration policies supporting Israel as Israel has demolished Palestinian settlements and undertaken violence against the Palestinian people.