Russian lawmakers in the lower house of the irradiated shithole country’s parliament on Thursday advanced a bill imposing criminal penalties on anyone who spreads information that advocates voluntary childlessness, making it punishable by fines of up to 5 million rubles, the AP reports.

Asked by reporters in Michigan on Friday why he wouldn’t release his health records, convicted felon former President Trump said, and this is fucking ridiculous, lol: “Yeah. My health records – I’ve done five exams over the last four years. You’ve got them all. Obviously I’m in the middle of a very big and very contentious fight. We’re leading. I’ve given my health exams, I’ve also done cognitive tests twice and I’ve aced them,” per CNN. Well that’s one way to make sure they keep asking.

Vice President Kamala Harris is on the second of her three rallies scheduled Friday in Michigan.

NASA on Friday announced, in very gentle and politic terms, that Boeing is on their shitlist after the Starliner clusterfuck. “The timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established. This determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products, and operational readiness. Meanwhile, NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025. NASA will provide more information when available,” the agency wrote.

Campaigning in Michigan on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris stuck it right to her senescent opponent, saying Donald “is ducking debates and canceling interviews. Come on. And check this out: his own campaign team recently said it is because of exhaustion. Well, if you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world,” Bloomberg’s Jen Epstein reports on Harris turning Trump into Joe Biden.

Pennsylvania MAGA Congressman Dan Meuser had a rough go of it on CNN Friday, trying to explain to anchor Briana Keilar why he’s leading a crusade against some stupid minor change to requirements for overseas ballots – including those of active duty military members – to count as valid. Keilar continually and repeatedly called him out for his bullshit and Meuser essentially just froze. Especially great was when Keilar called out how Meuser only joined this stupid lawsuit when convicted felon former President Trump angrily shitposted about it a few weeks ago.

Fearing that downed lines could spark yet another destructive inferno, California power utility Pacific Gas and Electric, whose fuckups have killed hundreds of people and cost untold billions over the decades, announced Friday they’re going to be shutting down power to as many as 20,000 Golden Staters as the “Diablo Winds” pick up over the next few days, the AP reports.

Now maybe this sounds stupid and impractical but maybe the utility should think about replacing high voltage transmission lines with buried cables or something so they don’t need to shut off the goddamned electricity to tens of thousands of people every time it gets windy.

“President Joseph R Biden, Jr met today with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the Chancellery to discuss the longstanding US-German relationship, grounded in our shared democratic values.”

“The two leaders coordinated on support for Ukraine in its self-defense against Russian aggression; efforts to counter antisemitism and other forms of hate at home and abroad; the Middle East; amongst other global issues. President Biden expressed his appreciation for Chancellor Scholz’s leadership in increasing Germany’s investment in NATO’s collective defense and in securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans, along with other human rights activists and political dissidents from Russian prison, earlier this year. He also underscored the US commitment to continue working together to address the challenges of today and tomorrow and deliver results for both our peoples,” says a White House press release on Biden’s last European tour.

The new line from @IanSams (the noted genius behind Kamala’s video attacking Catholics) is that President Trump’s events aren’t long enough. Kamala in her life has never once done a speech over 45 minutes, let alone unscripted. Kamala’s 5th rebrand is the dumbest yet. https://t.co/JJTfdHovdw

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) October 18, 2024

The top story on Axios is, almost unbelievably, “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” Almost like they’re starting to realize they should start treating him like they did Joe Biden.

Eagle-eyed viewers watching Trump field pre-screened questions in the friendly confines of the Fox “News” morning show likely noted a new edition to the Fox & Friends’ signature “curvy couch” as they interviewed the 78-year-old Republican rapist running as the Party’s Presidential nominee.  Positioned under the diminutive Trump’s expansive rear end on the show’s white couch was a black towel, likely placed to protect the light fabric from any stains the politician might leave from an “accident” while he didn’t answer questions submitted by fans.

DC Circuit Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday unsealed a redacted version of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s evidence exhibits filing in convicted felon former President Trump’s DC coup attempt conspiracy case. Rather than try to bang out one summary from a lengthy PDF, we’re instead going to live blog it on a rolling basis with excerpts from the documents.

The MAGA propagandist who went by “Black Insurrectionist” and had pushed both that ridiculous fake “ABC News whistleblower affidavit” alleging that the network had colluded with Vice President Kamala Harris prior to last month’s debate in which she destroyed convicted felon former President Trump and more recently some even more blatantly fabricated evidence of pederasty by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has deactivated their Twitter account out of what we can only guess is fear of further failure and exposure for their dumbassery, the BBC’S Shayan Sardarizadeh reports.

Trump team working overtime to ensure swing-state voters can cast ballots after Hurricane Helene’s destruction | New York Post https://t.co/jFBamEHpHv

— RNC Election Integrity (@RNCVoteProtect) October 18, 2024

The window for convicted felon former President Trump to accept CNN’s invite for the town hall next Wednesday has closed without an answer from the fat fuck’s handlers, thus the network’s media guy Brian Stelter reports that Trump has ceded the night to Vice President Kamala Harris.

“His campaign has not committed to participate, so we are moving forward with a Town Hall event with VP Harris taking questions from a live audience of Pennsylvania voters who say they intend to vote in November,” said CNN in a statement this morning. Guess that makes five non-MAGA media appearances that the Orange God Emperor has pussied out of during the final month of the race.

The eggheads at the Cook Political Report on Friday changed their rating in credibly suspected traitor Pennsylvania MAGA Congressman Scott Perry’s 10th district seat from Lean R to tossup, signaling that voters might just be getting ready to toss the son of a bitch.

We’re joining a little late, but the fat bastard is on the couch this morning, looking exhausted and haggard while in his safe bubble on the propaganda network.

Just four accounts dumping $30 million in crypto into offshore betting site Polymarket – backed by fascist freak Peter Thiel – have boosted convicted felon former President Trump’s chance of winning from about 47 percent late last month up to 63 percent, the Wall Street Journal reports on an “investment” made purely to create an illusion of inevitability around the fat fuck.

Whether cult favorite and kind of cultish convenience store chain Buc-ee’s opens its first location in Wisconsin hangs in the balance on Election Day, as the construction of the proposed 74,000-square-foot store in the northern Dane County village of DeForest, outside the capital of Madison, hinges entirely on whether there will be enough support in the state legislature to spend $15 million to upgrade a nearby highway interchange to handle the expected increase in traffic of as many as 8,000 devoted Buc-itarians coming to the site daily, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

DeForest Village Administrator Bill Chang says he’s hoping the hearts of the candidates for Dane County executive, State Assembly District 42, and State Senate District 14 will open to the light that Buc-ee shines upon the world and all whom gather at his sacred temples of convenience. His earthly emissaries have promised to foot 47 percent of the cost of the upgrade, with the promise of taxpayers’ tithe made whole by an expected $1 million annual revenue from sales tax alone on top of the 200 to 225 jobs at the location. Chang is correct: Resistance to Buc-ee is futile.

“Lava continues to erupt slowly at Great Sitkin Volcano. Ongoing activity is adding to a thick lava flow that fills most of the summit crater with minor advancement of the northern part of the eastern lobe. Small earthquakes associated with the ongoing lava eruption continue. Nothing unusual was observed in cloudy satellite and web camera imagery. A single explosive event occurred in May 2021 and was followed by the ongoing eruption of lava that began in July 2021. No explosive events have occurred since May 2021. Local seismic and infrasound sensors and web cameras are used to monitor Great Sitkin along with regional infrasound and lightning networks and satellite data,” says a US Geological Survey update on the Great Sitkin Volcano on the Aleutian Island of the same name.

Seems very low-T and unmotivated, like it doesn’t have the confidence to fully erupt and make the news but also doesn’t know how to stop and be comfortable with quietude and dormancy. Of course anthropomorphizing a volcano is silly and hubristic, but think of that as a way to actually tempt fate and encourage to explode cataclysmically and give us something to cover outside of politics.

An “exhausted” and decompensating convicted felon former President Trump has backed out of yet another non-MAGA media appearance – the third this week and the fourth this month – this time with the Shade Room, a site/podcast that Politico Playbook describes as drawing “an audience that is largely young and Black” and which Vice President Kamala Harris had appeared on last week.

Per Playbook, the teams had been in talks, “but as no interview materialized, Shade Room staff began feeling that feet were being dragged inside Trump’s campaign. No date was ever set, we’re told, but the intention was to try and work toward a sit-down. In a conversation earlier this week, when describing why an interview hadn’t come together just yet, a Trump adviser told The Shade Room producers that Trump was ‘exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change’ at any time, according to two people familiar with the conversations.” Copied that verbatim given the trickiness of the text, but the message seems abundantly clear – that Trump’s handlers are doing their best to shield him from scrutiny in the home stretch of this existential campaign.

Trump spokesfreak Karoline “Blondi” Leavitt told Playbook that any notion of her Orange Fuhrer is hiding is “BS. President Trump has never backed down from any interview. This is a man who held a CNN town hall in the middle of the Republican primary, for goodness’ sake.”