Only about half of the native-born Russians will remember the chronic shortages of products during the Soviet era, but younger generations are now getting their first taste of it as foreign products have disappeared from store shelves, the Washington Post reports.

With Russia products like cars and clothes being notoriously poorly manufactured, Russians with the wherewithal and means gravitate to foreign-made goods from countries like Germany, Japan and the United States.  Now, those products can’t be found.

The shortages are also impacting industry.  Airlines cannot get spare parts for their planes, many of which are from European manufacturers.  Communications companies can’t get replacement parts for cell phone towers and signal amplifiers. 

Apparently unsettled by the free market controlling insurance prices, Republican Florida Governor and sleestak Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would socialize the risk of private insurers by giving them a $2 billion reinsurance fund, the Associated Press reports.

Florida property insurance rates have skyrockets because Florida has a lot of problems with hurricanes that cannot be redirected by a Sharpie on a map.  Other factors include building collapses and sink holes that routinely occur in the state.

To make it more business friendly, DeSantis is making Florida taxpayers financially back private insurance companies who will still be able to reap profits even if they have significant outlays for their policyholders.  The reinsurance fund would limit the liability of the private corporations while increasing the risk for taxpayers. 

Spotted by a friend of Twitter user @50megatonFbomb.

The last tweets from the respective Parties.  [Narrator:  The GOP has not made a single mention of the Ulvade massacre on its Twitter feed, fewer even than the NRA (1).]

Congress needs to pass universal background checks, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and confirm Steve Dettelbach as head of the ATF.

It’s time to turn this pain into action.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 26, 2022

The numbers don’t lie, Democrats do ⬇️https://t.co/88e5W3UZAJ

— GOP (@GOP) May 26, 2022

“… is a person willing [wielding?] that weapon, y’know Cain killed Abel, y’know, and ahhhh, y’know that’s a problem that we have, and I said what we need ta do is look into how we can stop those things, y’know you talk about doing a disinformation, what about gettin’ a department that can look at young men that’s lookin’ at, ah, women that lookin’ at, ah, just social media.  What about doin’ that?  Lookin’ inta thinks like that and we can stop that that way.  But they wanna jus continue talking about taking away your Constitutional rights and I-I think there are more things we need to look into.  This has been happenin’ for years and the way we stop it by puttin’ money inta the mental health field, by puttin’ money inta other departments rather dan departments that wanna take away your rights.”

The GOP is not sending their best. They’re sending their spousal abusers. They’re sending their mentally ill, their brain damaged.  They’re sending people who have no idea about Constitutional rights. And with that, I present Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Georgia, who wants to expand government surveillance of internet users… because “small government conservatives” don’t care about the “First Amendment” and want to create a “Deep State” which will monitor everyone’s browser histories.

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) couldn’t respond to questions from Sky News reporter Mark Stone, who pressed the sentient wombat about why mass shootings are largely an event that happens regularly in the United States, and instead retreated to straight MAGA talking points about immigrants (which the GOP doesn’t like) coming to America, proclaiming America to be the “safest” country in the world.  Instead of answering the reporters’ questions, Cruz retreats, claiming the reporters are following their own “political agenda.”

Note Cruz continues to complain about Democratic policies to prevent gun violence without detailing any specific policy proposals of his own.

Cruz’s assertion that the United States is the safest country on the globe is objectively not true, with the gun death rate in the US (12.2/100,000) higher than countries like Mexico (11.5), the Philippines (7.72) and Costa Rica (7.59), nations derided by Republicans as “shit hole countries.” According to a ranking by US News & World Report, the United States ranks 38th in safety, behind nations like Singapore, Thailand and the UAE.

Joe Garcia, husband of Irma Garcia, one of the Robb Elementary school teachers killed by a man suffering from a mental illness or listened to too much rap music or played too many violent video games, died Thursday of a fatal heart attack, KABB’s Ernie Zuniga reports. The 41 year old Joe was married to Irma for 24 years. They were high school sweethearts and had four children together.

“There are things we need to be talking about, but we have to look at the whole picture of mental health, these violent video games, isolation coming out of the pandemic, so many factors lead into this,” GOP chairwoman and person ashamed of her family surname Ronna (not Romney) McDaniel proclaims on her Party’s second-tier propaganda network.  “Let’s let the investigation take place.  We know the Democrats have already jumped ahead and tried to make this a political issue while our whole nation is mourning.  It would’ve been nice if Joe Biden used that moment to lead a nation in mourning and bring us together instead of once again trying to divide.”

For the record, Joe Biden is voicing the concerns of 90% of the American people who support universal background checks which Republicans, for political purposes only, oppose.  Also, her Party has opposed “red flag” legislation that prevents people with mental health problems from possessing weapons, a common-sense measure to protect people.  Oh, and let’s not even get into the fact that Republican leaders–including the entire Republican cabal that runs Texas–have cut health care funding, including access to mental health care, in the name of the fictional “rugged individualism.”

In 2018, Andrew Abdullah pleaded guilty to weapons charges.

He was released on bail.

JUST LAST WEEK he shot and killed a man on the NY subway.

If Democrats REALLY cared about stopping violence, they would prosecute criminals, not let them go free.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 26, 2022

Congresswoman and restaurant patron poisoner Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo) is oblivious to her hypocrisy.  The child who appeared in a Zoom call with unsecured weapons displayed behind her because… guns… now seems very upset that a person wasn’t prosecuted for possession of a gun, which is a law that Boebert wouldn’t pass because she believes everyone should have free and easy access to weapons because…. 2nd Amendment.  As she hypocritically and retroactively whines about this individual not being prosecuted for something she doesn’t think is a crime, she also puts the entire responsibility for stopping gun violence on the opposition party.

And for the record, I use the moniker “child” when referring to Boebert because she dismissively called a survivor of the Parkland massacre a “child” when he went to Washington to lobby for gun control.

Election officials in Michigan are “confident” that the five Republican gubernatorial candidates caught submitting fake ballot access signature petitions, including polling frontrunners former Detroit police Chief James Craig and self-funding businessman Perry Johnson – who already sank millions into the campaign, and are pretty much fucked no matter how much the MAGA party wants to whine over rules against election cheating being applied to them, the Detroit News reports.

“Disqualifying two of the highest polling candidates in this primary, as well as three others who have expended significant resources in their campaigns is disenfranchising to Republican voters who ultimately should be the decision-makers,” said Michigan GOP Chief of Staff Paul Cordes to the four member State Board of Canvassers on Thursday, basically telling the canvassers that the fake signatures should count anyway and these rules are stupid and gay.

“There is nothing to suggest that there are valid signatures in there,” said Michigan Elections Bureau director Jonathan Brater. Naturally the five candidates are going to take state elections officials to court, but their chances of overturning the board’s decision are shaky at best, as state law puts the burden of proof on them to show the tens of thousands of fake signatures on the petitions are real. “They have the ultimate responsibility,” said election lawyer John Pirich.

Ordered by a court, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office released a list of 305 Baltimore City police officers it deemed to be unreliable witnesses because of previous incidents of lying or obfuscating during trials, even though the prosecutors continued to use their testimony in criminal trials, the Baltimore Sun reports.

The list, representing more than 10% of the 2,900 sworn officers and civilian employees of the department, tripled the number that were on a list called the “Do Not Call” list when it was first disclosed in October 2021.  On the new version of the list, the vast majority of officers listed were still on active duty.

The Baltimore Police Department has suffered from pervasive internal corruption for decades, leading to a tense relationship with the residents of the city, particularly the Black community who has been the target of many of the corrupt officers.  The current HBO series “We Own This City” dramatizes the corruption of the notorious Gun Trace Task Force, which had a years-long campaign of corruption, drug dealing and death, which likely played a direct role in the city’s response to the murder of Freddie Gray in 2015.

Right wing Colorado governor candidate Greg Lopez, already famous for his proposal to create a state-level electoral college for counties and being “pro-life” despite his 1993 arrest for assaulting his pregnant wife, now has made an even more “maybe they’ll accept me as ‘almost white’ even though I’m pretty tan” statement to MAGA voters by pledging to exclude Jews, Muslims, and atheists from his search for a running mate on his gubernatorial ticket, OnlySky.media reports.

When asked at a debate last weekend if he would pick a Muslim, Jew, or atheist to be his Lieutenant Governor running mate, Lopez said “Choosing your lieutenant governor is one of the most serious decisions that a governor makes out of the chute – a candidate. So I’m looking for someone that not only believes in my Lord and Savior the way I do, but also that… should something happen to me – because, really, that’s why you’re selecting the lieutenant governor – is that if something should happen to me, and I’m not able to fulfill my term, that they are able to carry on the agenda,” as if he couldn’t simply keep it to himself and then pick a Christian if he wins the nomination to take on incumbent gay Jewish liberal Governor Jared Polis.

Having stopped pretending Antifa is a terrorist threat, House and Senate Republicans have decided that domestic terrorism is actually kind of part of their party’s platform, Connecticut Dem Senator Chris Murphy has concluded after the Senate GOP fucked off on making a bill increasing enforcement of homegrown extremists happen, despite it being passed unanimously by the House GOP two years ago. When “Antifa” scares were all the rage in MAGA Land.

“This is a party that is falling apart at the seams, if their path forward is to make it easier for white supremacists to get away with crimes in this country,” Murphy told Politico about Republicans. “This is a super anodyne, inoffensive, apolitical piece of legislation that just seeks to be more coordinated in taking down violent white supremacists. I mean, if we can’t find consensus on fighting white supremacists, what can we find consensus on?” he added.

Make Australia Great Again fans, bummed out by their crushing losses in Saturday’s elections, are coping with the defeat by denying reality altogether and launching an “election integrity” crusade to look for “voter fraud”, just like their American pals, ISD Global reports. The story goes pretty deep into the weeds of Aussie election bureaucracy – or at least what right wingers there think how it’s supposed to run – because just like their American compatriots, they became instant experts on all the vagaries of ballots and tabulation after they lost an election. Then there’s the made up shit, like the “kinematic artifacts” and “carbon isotopes” plus the classic “bamboo ballots” that the Aussie bogans haven’t come up with yet, but will no doubt make it into their mythology sooner or later.

Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Dean Knudson, one-third of the Republican side of the six-member panel who was set to become its chief commissioner, abruptly quit his post Wednesday after taking a lot of shit from MAGA activists for not buying into the “Stop the Steal” mania that’s all the rage among state Republicans, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Knudson, who had been one of the panel’s chief architects while serving in the state Assembly prior to its establishment in 2016, will stay on until Assembly Speaker Robin Vos – another “RINO” who was loudly booed at the state GOP convention last weekend for saying the 2020 election could not be decertified in the state and then only somewhat narrowly survived a no-confidence vote from the party’s rank and file – chooses a successor. Another Republican commissioner, Bob Spindell – a total “Stop the Steal” asshole who signed on as a fake Trump 2020 elector – could end up becoming the lead commissioner, though some expect Vos to go with an outside pick.

Crypto billionaire could spend $1B for Democrats in 2024 election https://t.co/V4dufoPpC8

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 26, 2022

A review of the various accounts of the mass murder of nineteen elementary school students and their two teachers in a classroom in Uvalde, Texas shows significant breakdowns in the reaction to armed law enforcement officers, the Associated Press reports.

In one of the most astounding issues, it took police between 40 and 60 minutes for police to go into the classroom where the shooter had locked himself in with the people who would be his victims.  The shooter had locked the door behind him, and police had tried breaking into the room unsuccessfully.  Only after getting a key from a school employee did the police get in; why they didn’t request a key earlier is unknown.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw characterized the fact that the shooter locked himself in the classroom where he slaughter more than twenty people as a victory for law enforcement:  “The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (the shooter) in the classroom.”

Republican Ohio Congressman and man who would be compelled to hold Congressional hearings if 17 fetuses were killed in Benghazi Jim Jordan sent a six-page letter with 36 footnotes to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, telling the committee he will not testify.

Obviously trying to find something that makes sense, Jordan claimed everything from the committee being improperly seated, to the investigation being a partisan witch hunt, to the lie that he really doesn’t know any pertinent to the investigation.

Jordan is likely simultaneously hurt and scared.  Hurt, because he was blocked from sitting on the committee where he could have used his jacketless presence to throw the investigation into chaos and snitched on its working to Donald Trump.  And scared because he actually *does* have pertinent information for the committee, such as how much House Republicans coordinated with the White House on the insurrection and the attempt to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.

Oh, lordy, the NBA is lookin’ to piss off conservatives!  Prior to Wednesday’s playoff game between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat in Miami, the arena announcer called for a moment of silence in memory of the 21 victims of the Uvalde, Texas school massacre, the survivors, their families and the community.  At the end of the moment of silence, the announcer urged league fans to call their Senators to demand “their support for common sense gun laws,” and also to vote for change at the ballot box.

In a classic Streisand Effect reaction, Florida Republican Senator (and marionette who just wants to be a real boy) Marco Rubio felt compelled to tweet it out, saying, “The @NBA doesn’t like to talk about the billions they make from a China that enslaves Uyghur Muslims and harvests their organs.  But they have no problem politicizing a horrific tragedy in America.” … because the GOP will stoop to the lowest depth to avoid people voting or letting them know how they feel about the deaths of 19 children killed by an unhinged person with an assault rifle they think is for “personal protection.”

Russia has fired more missiles in the first three months of its invasion of Ukraine than any army since World War II, but the accuracy of those munitions are so poor, they’re hitting fewer than half of their targets an analysis of data by Newsweek shows.

According to Ukrainian defense officials, Russia has fired a little less than 2,300 “smart” cruise missiles in the last three months, equal to the amount the United States has launched since it introduced the cruise missile in 1990.  Each missile–either Russian or American version–costs about $1 million each.

However, the various sea-, air- or ground launch missiles fired by Russia have largely proved ineffective for various reasons:  many have failed to launch; others have gone off-course in flight.  When they have hit at or near their targets, they’ve inflicted lighter damage than expected.