Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday, Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned the crowd that “the numbers indicate cooling, but all our numbers are (like) a rearview mirror. Judging by the way businesses currently feel and the indicators, we are already, it seems to me, on the brink of going into a recession,” the Associated Press reports.

Sounds like Reshetnikov is about to be on the brink of a windowsill of a Moscow high-rise! Ba-dum tiss! Seriously folks, it was probably good news because a recession might just be a big upgrade from whatever you call Russia’s economy now! Ba-dum tiss! It’s alright there. Was just talking to a Russian friend on Facetime and I says “Ivan, congrats on the new Yugo you bought for the missus but it looks like the dealer charged you an arm and a leg for that thing!” and he goes “Nyet nyet. Arm amputated because infection of dirty krokodil needle and leg exploded from Ukrainian landmine. Car very sensible purchase.” Ba-dum tiss! Any Russians in the audience here…? Russians are great…

Fears of a legal backlash possibly including bribery charges, Paramount is moving back from the brink of settling convicted felon President Trump’s batshit stupid lawsuit over standard edits applied to the 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, the New York Post reports.

The Post article specifically mentions a “state attorney general” which would probably be either New York’s Letitia James or California’s Rob Bonta. Or both. Probably shouldn’t mess with them.

AEW star Brody King wears 'abolish ICE' shirt before match in Mexico https://t.co/5IT2Rp9dyQ

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 19, 2025

Bullet-point article factory Axios’s reporters say they’re increasingly hearing from ICE agents that morale at the tip of Stephen Miller’s spear of compensation is pretty low as the pressure to increase arrests mounts and that they haven’t once met their collective quota of 3,000 a day.

There aren’t any direct quotes to this effect but it tracks with other reporting of a sagging esprit d’corps. “Some agents are stressed by the tactics some of their colleagues are using in making arrests. Others are disheartened by the response that masked, heavily armed agents have received in several communities,” Axios writes in one of their bullet points, ending it there without an “Oh wow, you mean people have been upset by seeing their neighbors get ripped out of their homes by fucking masked stormtroopers? Wonder where you got the hint about that.”

Anyway, good. Fuck them. For four years all we heard from the MAGA kids was that the FBI should be disbanded and replaced and blah blah blah. How successful Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are going to be at making that remains to be seen but the fact that they both came out and said Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself probably speaks to the FBI running them than them running the FBI. The point of that tangent being that the next Dem administration should actually disband ICE or barring that just completely cripple it beyond repair. The culture cannot be changed. ICE needs to melt.

Noted hospital bomber Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu visited a Tel-Aviv hospital that took damage from an Iranian rocket strike on Thursday, telling media “all Israelis are paying the price” of the Iranian counterattacks, and Haaretz actually wrote this part: “adding that while some people were killed, his family was also affected by the war when his son Avner had to cancel his wedding.”

“There are people who were killed, families who grieved loved ones, I really appreciate that,” said Netanyahu, adding “for the second time, my son Avner had to cancel his wedding due to the threat of missile launches, certainly a heavy personal price paid by him, his fiancee and our family.”

Not sure what to add to that. Like a joke about Avner’s wedding getting postponed because he’s having second thoughts about living a lie while he’s in the closet and the war’s just a convenient cover story might’ve worked if not for the “See? We’re suffering too” to the families of dead Israelis.

“The Crooked FoxNews Polls got the Election WRONG, I won by much more than they said I would, and have been biased against me for years. They are always wrong and negative. It’s why MAGA HATES FoxNews, even though their anchors are GREAT. This has gone on for years, but they never change the incompetent polling company that does their work. Now a new FoxNews poll comes out this morning giving me a little more than 50 percent at the Border, and yet the Border is miraculously perfect, NOBODY WAS ABLE TO COME IN LAST MONTH. 60,000 people came in with Sleepy Joe in the same month last year. I hate FAKE pollsters, one of the Worst, but Fox will never change their discredited pollster!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Thursday morning.

His screams about Fox News’s polling out of the way, Trump then turned to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, posting simply they have “No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!” likely referring to the Tuesday night story where they broke that he approved an attack plan but did not execute it.

Libs watching the mini-MAGA civil war over whether convicted felon President Trump should bomb Iran have almost universally ended up siding with Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and so on, nauseating as it is to be “rooting” for those racist freaks to prevail over Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Laura Loomer, etc, hoping for Tucker and Bannon to talk the fat fuck out of it.

However nauseating it is to be giving the likes of the QAdulteress credit for actually being principled, the emergence of a third faction is actually making fucking Ted Cruz look good by comparison: This dipshit Joni Ernst and her fellow Republican Senators Bernie Moreno and Katie Britt, just saying they’re for whatever Trump is for, surrendering all their agency to the unpredictable whims of the fat fuck. As shitty and stupid and reckless Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are on this matter at least they’re FOR something they appear to actually sincerely believe is the correct course of action.

But what makes this fucking gummy worm Ernst and the other two’s cowardice even more glaring is that they aren’t really required to take a side. Just saying “It’s an extremely thorny question with a lot of risks but just as many potential rewards. I’m going to be having a lot of discussions over the next few days and will pray that no matter what happens our brave service men and women will remain as safe as possible” would be enough to make it through these stupid TV interviews.

Texas state Senate Bill 1362, titled the “Anti-Red Flag Act,” outlaws any Texas entity from recognizing, serving, or enforcing “extreme risk protective orders” that are not issued under Texas law. These orders are defined as those with the “primary purpose of reducing the risk of death or injury related to a firearm” by “prohibiting a person from owning, possessing, or receiving a firearm” or “requiring a person to surrender” one, “not issued on the basis of conduct that resulted in a criminal charge,” and declares that any federal rule or law that infringes on a person’s “right of due process, keeping and bearing arms, or free speech” through a red flag order “shall have no effect.”

It also creates a new crime: anyone who “serves or enforces or attempts to serve or enforce” such an order commits a state jail felony. The bill explicitly proscribes state entities from accepting any sort of “federal grant funds” related to red flag enforcement… And yeah, the bill’s ready for Republican Governor “Low Energy Greg” Abbott’s signature, per the Texas Tribune. So is another one legalizing sawed-off shotguns and one outlawing local gun buyback programs. Yeehaw libtards!

Besides being sick fucking freaks what do Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Dennis “BTK” Rader, and Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez have in common? They grew up in areas polluted by lead and arsenic from industrial smelting facilities – many concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, where the first two – and plenty of other psychopaths – got their starts, author Caroline Fraser argues in her new book titled “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers,” previewed by Grist.

“Recipes for making a serial killer may vary, including such ingredients as poverty, crude forceps deliveries, poor diet, physical and sexual abuse, brain damage, and neglect,” Fraser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes in the book. “Many horrors play a role in warping these tortured souls, but what happens if we add a light dusting from the periodic table on top of all that trauma?”

Damn that’s snappy. Could be an indicator that the book contains more valuable insights than the vast majority of the “content” produced by the true crime TikTokers and podcasters out there.

pic.twitter.com/QyKLzXez3L

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2025

Poor wealthiest man in human history whose rocket that’s supposed to go to Mars exploded again just like his bladder from all the drug abuse, not to mention his brain that’s so addled he’s posting an MS Paint of Pepe smoking a cigarette when he’s got an extremely powerful AI at his command.

In a statement issued Wednesday but posted as if it were a news article, WDIV Detroit VP and General Manager Bob Ellis writes that “We here at Local 4 have been made aware of an external investigation regarding Hank Winchester. As of this time, he has been placed on administrative leave. While the investigation is ongoing – we won’t make any further comments.”

Which is a shame because they could’ve had the scoop that crosstown rivals Fox 2 Detroit got about the “Help Me Hank” watchdog beat reporter’s indiscretions: Last Friday cops executed a search warrant at Winchester’s home and seized his electronics after another man reported that Hank had helped himself to some “unwanted sexual advances” toward the man during a massage. Winchester is reportedly studying massage therapy on the side so the unwelcome Hanky Panky attempt presumably occurred during some sort of practice session but there’s no further detail on that.

Also unclear is why a sexual assault accusation led to a judge signing off on a search warrant, an indication that there’s more to this than just Hank getting a little too handsy.

An anonymous “House Republican aide” admits to Punchbowl that the GOP are having a hard time selling the Big Beautiful Bill to the public and the Democrats aren’t making it any easier, at all.

“A messaging void is political death,” Punchbowl quotes the aide a few lines down from godawful polling numbers for the bill, like the Quinnipiac survey last week finding it at just 67 percent support among Republican respondents, and 27 percent overall. Of course this being America dominated by the MAGA Republican Party, Punchbowl does not waste any space entertaining the idea that the unpopularity of it will end up sinking the bill because lol no fucking way is that happening.

Could some of the shittier provisions get watered down? Definitely. Some already have. But as far as adding trillions to the debt and fucking over poor people goes it’s just a question of how many trillions and how badly they’re going to get fucked. They don’t give a shit how unpopular that is.

“Senior” officials in the Trump Regime are prepping “for the possibility of a strike on Iran in coming days,” Bloomberg reports, writing verbatim that “Some of them pointed to potential plans for a weekend strike. Top leaders at a handful of federal agencies have begun getting ready for an attack.” The agencies were not named nor whether they’re strictly military in nature.

“Erick is about to make landfall along the southern coast of Mexico. Its rapid strengthening episode has ended, likely due to the interaction with land. The eye has become obscured on satellite imagery, and the intensity is adjusted to 120 kt in agreement with the latest objective estimates from UW/CIMSS. Erick remains an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane. However, rapid weakening will occur after the center moves inland and the system moves over the mountainous terrain of Mexico,” says a National Hurricane Center bulletin on the very freaking early season storm

“Smoothing out the trochoidal wobbles in the track, the motion estimate, 310/8 kt, remains about the same as before. This general motion, on the south side of a weak mid-level ridge, is likely to continue until the system dissipates within the next day or two. The official track forecast is just slightly west of the previous one and close to the latest corrected consensus, HCCA, guidance.”

The riveting saga of the disposition of former Zambian President Edgar Lungu’s dead body entered its 12th or maybe 13th day on Thursday as Lungu’s family delayed the repatriation of the remains for a second time out of fears that the successor Lungu so hated, Hakainde Hichilema, would show up to receive his remains at the airport, ZimNews reports. The newest twist in the sordid drama came when the Lungu family found “it very difficult to believe that the government will stick to their end of the agreement” to stay out of the funeral planning, even though the Lungus had agreed this week to allow Hichilema to preside over a state funeral next Sunday. So who knows what the hell’s going on.

Convicted felon President Trump has been asking top military officials whether the “bunker buster” bomb capable of destroying Iran’s main nuclear facility, found only in the US arsenal, will actually get the job done – a question that Axios sells as indicating that the fat bastard is leaning toward it.

“We’re going to be ready to strike Iran. We’re not convinced yet that we’re necessary. And we want to be unnecessary, but I think the president’s just not convinced we are needed yet,” a source said.

The Republican treasurer of Benton County, Missouri was arrested last week on charges of enticement of a child under 15 years old and sexual misconduct involving a child under 15 years old, after he allegedly tried to proposition underage users on Grindr, KOMU reports.

Richard Renno, 62 of Lincoln, allegedly admitted to investigators that he used Grindr to talk to boys under 18 years old “two or three times,” according to the probable cause statement.

Couchfucking Vice President JD Vance was banned from lib-centric Twitter alternative BlueSky in under 15 minutes on Wednesday, some right wing influencer chode on Twitter reports.