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The US Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit seeking $3 million from former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for failing to report his financial interests in foreign accounts, Reuters reports.

Manafort was convicted on multiple tax evasion and financial fraud charges in 2018, but he received a full pardon from Trump just prior to leaving office in January 2020.  Manafort was cited in a Senate Intelligence Committee report, led by Republicans, about Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying Manafort was used by Russians to assist Trump.

“The United States of America brings this action to collect outstanding civil penalties assessed against Defendant Paul J. Manafort for his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts,” the Justice Department said in a filing.

Readers, the apocalypse has come and gone. All that are left are the infected, drooling incel zombies, scattered by the loss of their Satanic wasteland, wandering afar to seek new souls to feast upon. They have sensed fresh meat in our once hallowed digital sanctuary and invaded to spread their disease of malevolence and sexual frustration expressed as racist, homophobic, and fascist MAGA shitposting. Their only goal is to infect humans with their pathology.

Not naming names here but some fucking idiot who runs this site *cough Spartan!* thought it would be a good idea to give them free rein, which is fine in theory but it practice pisses off a lot of our readers, particularly those whom we understand to be the older, more respectable folk whose wisdom and small-c conservatism is apparent in their contributions to the conversations here. At the same time, some of us millennial folk with salt in our blood see these zombies not as wolves but as lambs being led to a slaughter of our making, an abattoir built of righteous cruelty.

I’m not 100% convinced of the authenticity of the video (available after the fold) showing Republican North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s scheduler, Stephen Smith, grabbing his crotch as Cawthorn drives down the road.  The cutaway–when the camera goes to the aide–goes back to the crotch grab, but doesn’t show Cawthorn’s face, which leaves the possibility that it wasn’t Cawthorn’s crotch and that the confusion of the shot camoflauges a switch of the subject.   (It’s a technique used in filmmaking to make the viewer assume it’s a continuous shot when in actuality, something got switch out–usually before something explodes or gets shot.)

But the tweet, from MeidasTouch, is getting views and attention, and there’s no definitive sign that it’s not authentic.  And only because of the attention it’s getting from social media, I’m covering it here.

Your dog’s personality has little to do with its specific breed and more to do with the circumstances is was raised in, according to a new study using the largest dataset on canine behavior assembled, the Associated Press reports.

According to the study, which was published in the journal Science, your dog’s personality has more to do with the specific parentage rather than the genetic make-up of the animal.  While certain traits are specific to the breed–from physical characteristics to things like herding instincts–your dog’s more mundane attributes are created by watching the other dogs, and humans, around it.

For example, while most hounds are known for their baying howls, the time and circumstance of when the dog barks are learned by the animal by watching other dogs and humans.  If the dog learns that its bark–for say, the doorbell or the mailman–creates a response in the human or another dog, it will continue to do so to elicit that response. 

Well actually it was just okay… What would’ve worked better is if Ron Watkins had said “Hello Arizona, my name is Ron Watkins and I’m running to represent you in Congress. It’s truly an honor to be here before you today to tell you my story. There’s not much to it really, I’m an Army brat who moved around a lot as a kid, my parents divorced when I was a teenager, and my dad’s a businessman who started a porn site designed specifically to help Japanese users circumvent that country’s censorship laws which prohibit the display of vaginas. I moved to the Philippines to work for my old man and learn the ropes of cutting-edge vagina-display internet technologies. From there he and I expanded this business into hosting for other porn sites, anime sites, and anime porn sites. Through that we came across a misguided but ultimately good natured teenager with a severe disability and conned him into giving us control of 8chan, the forum site he founded.”

“When some South African asshole on 8chan decided to start acting like he was a secret government agent with inside knowledge of a hidden war President Donald Trump was waging against a cabal of satanic pedophiles and was gaining a lot of followers with it, I stole that guy’s account from him and took over pretending to be what you now know as ‘QAnon’. From there my shitposting inspired millions to join an apocalyptic cult for which many violent acts, including a toddler and an infant killed by their own father with a spearfishing gun, have been at least partially attributed to. Two members of Congress from Georgia and Arizona openly subscribe to the belief system for which I am the genesis, with dozens more also giving it credence with varying degrees of subtlety, all of them sent to DC by MAGA voters just like you. So why the fuck wouldn’t you want the genuine article, people?!? I’M RIGHT FUCKING HERE, Q IN THE FLESH BROS! VOTE WATKINS!”

Looking forward to campaigning with President Trump’s preferred candidate in Ohio, the Great @JDVance1 pic.twitter.com/HBYAYdWKRr

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) April 28, 2022

House January 6th Select Committee Chair Congressman Bennie Thompson told reporters Thursday the panel plans to hold at least eight televised hearings in June, with some of them scheduled for prime time, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

Nearly 5.4 million new small businesses were created in the United States in 2021, the most productive year for corporate registrations, according to new data from the Small Business Administration, CNN reports.

The top employer business demographic, small businesses hired 1.9 million new workers in the first three quarters of 2021, recovering much of the losses the sector experienced during the coronavirus pandemic.  In most cases, a small business owner is not considered an employee for statistical purposes.

President Joe Biden will host a roundtable with small business owners Thursday, highlighting a new SBA initiative to provide $100 million to the Community Navigator Program, a federal program targeting small businesses in underserved communities.  Biden will also announce that he’s doubling funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.

Trump cultists in eight different locales across the United States have been caught breaching or attempting to breach voting systems and stolen sensitive security information in their desperate search for something, anything, that will somehow help prove the 2020 election was “stolen” and then something something return their Orange God Emperor to the White House, Reuters reports.

Among the attacks include last week’s report by Reuters of threats from a North Carolina county GOP chairman to the local Elections Commissioner, some asshole QAnon fan clerk in Michigan refusing to perform basic maintenance on tabulators because the dipshit believed doing so would erase evidence of fraud or hacking or Jewish ritual sorcery performed on the machines, the sad and hilarious ballad of Mesa County Colorado Clerk Tina Peters, and the newly reported and extremely similar ballad of Elbert County, Colorado Clerk Dallas Schroeder, who was on literally on the phone with MAGA 2020 election conspiracy megastar Phil Waldron when he was caught on security cameras messing with computers as Waldron walked him thought how to steal the data.

Republicans have filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against Google over the tech giant’s tendency to correctly mark all of their fundraising emails as spam, Fox News reports on a story that may as well be about arsonists complaining their house is burning down and no one is coming to help because they broke all the firefighters’ kneecaps and torched the station last year.

The FEC is neutered by design right now because Trump simply refused to appoint enough commissioners to meet a quorum for most of the period between August 2019 and December 2020, causing a backlog of over 400 items to consider. Then when they finally had a quorum of three Republicans, two Dems, and one independent commissioner, they simply started deadlocking constantly, with the MAGA fuckers declining to penalize some of the most blatant matters of wrongdoing in an age of rampant political corruption and malaise. It’s already a stretch to act like Google is making some sort of “in kind contribution” to Dems by filtering out bullshit and blatant lies as if they were “CHE4P V1AGRA” or “Prince Jonathan of Nigeria” scams because Trump fundraising emails may as well be that stuff. It’s another thing entirely to publicly expect the FEC is actually going to do something after the GOP purposely put sand in the gas tank so they could get away with writing spam emails that say “700% MATCH ACTIVATED – 1 HOUR ONLY” in the first place.

President Biden will up his ask for aid from Congress to aid Ukraine from $13 billion to $33 billion as the Russian onslaught on its smaller neighbor enters its third month, the AP reports. The President will also ask that assets seized from Putin cronies “be used to rebuild Ukraine after the war as well as to pay for the losses caused to other nations,” per remarks last week. Biden also wants Congress to make it a federal crime to “knowingly or intentionally possess proceeds directly obtained from corrupt dealings with the Russian government,” and double the statute of limitations on money laundering from five to ten years. That last one could be kind of a sore spot for you-know-who.

“Urination Near Capitol: We are not sure where the Government is going with this reference. To the extent that it may be implied that Mr. Peart urinated on the wall of a building as a form of protest, that is simply not true. There were thousands of people in the area. There were a limited number of porta-potties. At some point, Mr. Peart felt an urgent need to urinate, and seeing no facility in proximity, he located some bushes next to a building, concealed himself as best he could and let nature take its course. Other than clarifying that this was not part of a protest, we have no further comment” writes the attorney for Utah Capitol rioter Willard Peart, facing sentencing after pleading guilty in January to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol.

“Today, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue accused me of slandering Catholics and Catholicism in an interview I gave to Michael Voris at Church Militant. Nothing could be further from the truth, and he must apologize promptly and publicly for these words. Donohue should have called my office, or had a staffer check Google, before firing off a hysterical-sounding statement.”

“He doesn’t know this, but I am a cradle Catholic. I was born into the church, raised in it and I was married in the Church. With great sorrow, and unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, I stopped attending Catholic Mass when I became a mother, because I realized that I could not trust the Church leadership to protect my children from pedophiles, and that they harbored monsters even in their own ranks,” said QAdulteress Marjorie Taylor Greene in a statement on Wednesday.

Goddamn it, she’s kind of right AND it’s consistent with her belief in a global cabal of secret pedophiles being protected by powerful forces. If only a lot of Evangelical Protestants aren’t just as bad or sometimes even worse than Catholic priests (like in literally the prior article on this website) then she would be entirely correct here. This is far worse than the time she correctly called out a National College Republicans tweet wishing a happy Kwanzaa as “pandering”, only to go on a racist rant calling the holiday “fake”. This time her misshapen feet are standing nearly entirely on the high ground, almost entirely free of the rank hypocrisy and misinformation that colors her rhetoric.

Jacksonville, Florida MAGAchurch pastor Paul Dyal was denied bail on Wednesday following his March arrest on two counts of capital sexual battery on a child after witnesses testified they’d known of rumors of Dyal’s predatory groomer behavior going back decades, News4Jax reports.

Dyal, pastor at the the Jacksonville Assembly of the Body of Christ, pleaded not guilty earlier in April. A detective with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office testified deputies found two wooden paddles during the coordinated law enforcement raid on the church while Dyal’s friend told the court he’d been “aware of rumors about 25 years ago” of the registered Republican Dyal’s scumbaggery. Two accomplices of Dyal’s, Jerome Teschendorf and Vernon Williamson, were also arrested last month in Oklahoma and extradited back to Duval County, also facing two charges each of capital sexual battery. Eight women have stepped forward and spoke with News4Jax about the abuse they experienced as girls in Dyal’s congregation, though it is believed they are far from the only ones.

Nebraska sex machine Charles Herbster’s email address showed up among those stolen in the 2015 Ashley Madison member data hack, the Daily Mail reports. The Trump-endorsed Herbster has been publicly accused of groping a number of women, including a Republican state senator.

It was a fairly pro forma bill:  a two page piece of legislation directing the Secretary of State to investigate ways to counter Russian activities that Russia is using to gain influence in Africa.  H.R 7311–the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act–doesn’t allocate any money.  It doesn’t commit US military forces into action.  Hell, it doesn’t even rebuke anyone.

So why did nine Republicans–Biggs, Boebert, Cammack, Gohmert, Gosar, MT Greene, Lesko, Massey and Roy–vote against it?  Like scores of other bills that pass Congress, this one instructs a Cabinet office to provide a report on addressing a specific problem–Legislative trickery to get the Executive branch to address an issue it thinks is important.  Those nine have voted in favor of those bills in the past.  But what about Russia makes them balk now?

Be cautioned:  if you watch the video above, you’re going to be annoyed.  Yes, the audio isn’t synched with the video–which the producer hilariously interrupts the host to point out with about 15 seconds left in the video.  But you’re annoying because you’re listening to Roger Stone pitch a MyPillow for pets on Mike Lindell’s Network for Convicts (and Those Corruptly Pardoned).

With a flurry of economic reports due in the next ten days, including the initial estimate of the first quarter GDP due tomorrow and a measurement of inflation due Friday, pundits are predicting lowering top line numbers, but underlying data showing strong economic bones, Reuters reports.

The first quarter GDP is forecast to come in at around 1.1% growth year-over-year, coming off a fourth quarter that saw 6.9% growth, which was an unsustainable rate ignited by companies filling warehouses as consumers left coronavirus protocols.  Though businesses continue to fill inventories, the pace fell off from the previous quarter.

On Friday, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index will be released, which is expected to show a high overall inflation rate elevated by fuel price increases caused by the war in Ukraine.  However, core inflation indicators are expected to remain steady or go down, indicating stable market forces.  Core inflation was expected to slow just 0.1%, the first slowdown in PCE since October 2020.

Covid is over.

But it never should have happened.

I look forward to investigating and holding accountable every single person that created this awful man made virus and killed millions of innocent people.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) April 28, 2022