On Sunday the Ukrainian Air Force command confirmed what many had suspected about the “Ghost of Kyiv”, an unnamed fighter pilot credited with dozens of kills against Russian aircraft since February, posting on Facebook that the ace was a propaganda invention, the BBC reports. “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians! We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” said the post.

The fictional ace was reminiscent of the Canadian World War II-era fighter pilot George Beurling, aka the “Knight of Malta”, who canceled at least 27 German and Italian birds over 14 days during the Nazi siege of the Mediterranean island in 1942, which was then a British colonial outpost. Beurling’s exploits were made very much public by the UK, parading him around on war bond drives, during which he was quite open and honest about how much he enjoyed killing people.

Democrats and Republicans are statistically tied at 46 to 45 on the generic congressional ballot question of the latest Washington Post/ABC News survey, a sharp decline in support for the MAGA party relative to Dems since the same pollster found the GOP leading 49 to 42 in February and 50 to 40 in November 2021. But yeah, let’s just feel like it’s going to be a “Red Wave” instead of, you know, actually incorporating these kind of numbers into our doomer commiserations.

That way we don’t have to worry about mismanaged expectations or anything like that. The loser mentality is especially useful for completely ignoring the possibility that pollsters may be overcorrecting after having pegged sometimes even double-digit national leads in 2020 only for him to win by a relatively tepid 4.4% in the popular vote. But that’s crazy talk. Someone spiked our Cheerios with Zoloft. Don’t listen to us. Chuck Todd’s almost on, he’ll help you feel hopeless again.

South African native Trevor Noah hosted the first White House Correspondents’ Dinner in three years, mixing in a fair among of jokes about President Joe Biden, who took them all in good humor.

Noah finished the night with a lesson to the assembled members of the media, asking them to remember their freedoms, privileges and responsibilities they have in the United States.  Noah pointed out that he was making fun of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, and he was not at risk of any punishment.

The audience’s colleagues in Russia, for example, do not have those freedoms, and the US was the only country where something like this could happen.  (Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the message is understood.)

“I’m really excited to be here tonight with a group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner joked in good humor, which was a pleasure to hear after four years of a guy who couldn’t take a joke or be self depricating.

Later, Biden added:  “I’m not here to roast the GOP.  Besides, there’s nothin’ I can say up here that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape. … The Republicans seem to be supporting one guy, named Brandon.  He’s havin’ a really good year, and I’m happy for him.”

Noting the gravity of the current political situation in the United States and the tenuousness of American democracy, Biden went on to commend the press and encourage them to defend democracy:  “A poison is running through our democracy,” Biden said talking about the stream of misinformation inundating Americans, adding, “What’s clear–and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that you, the Free Press, matter more than you ever did in the last century.”

I’m against transhumanism as it’s a possible gateway to the sprit world. We humans are less than insects there. Plugging into that world without the control to leave would be folly beyond imagination. You’d become a plaything of entities beyond comprehension or control.

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 30, 2022

With meticulous care, Russian military went into a museum in Melitopol, a city of 150,000 in southeast Ukraine, leading a man in wearing a white lab coat and gloves to the collection of 2,400 year old gold relics, where city officials say, the man selected items to be shipped to Russia, the New York Times reports.

“The orcs have taken hold of our Scythian gold,” declared Melitopol’s mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, using a derogatory term many Ukrainians reserve for Russian soldiers. “This is one of the largest and most expensive collections in Ukraine, and today we don’t know where they took it.”

Ukrainian officials say the looting is going on around the nation, but it is not uncontrolled looting by Russian soldiers.  Instead, it is the selected theft of historical items, apparently targeted for their provenance as well as their value.

“I’ll say, yeah, some Trump voters voted for Trump for racist reasons, but most Trump voters are good people, right?  That’s my family,” family fauxstorian and political dilettante JD Vance claims, trying to explain insults he hurled at Donald Trump and his supporters during Trump 2016 presidential campaign.  “That’s my dad, ah, anybo-, anybody in my family, uh, doesn’t have a racist bone in their body, ah, so I understand why a lot of people take that stuff out of context, but end of the day, like, I did not think then, and I certainly do not think now that the majority of, of, uh, Trump supporters are bad people.  In fact, one of the reasons I’m running for Senate is ’cause I think we, we, we actually deserve some representation and those of us who live in the heartland who come from the neck of the woods that I, I come from, so, I appreciate that those comments have been, y’know, used by my enemies and taken out of context.”

During an agreed-upon cease-fire, a group of around 24 civilians, mainly women and children, boarded a transport at a location inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and were driving out of the besieged site to safety, CNN reports.

The evacuation happened about 12 hours after the cease-fire was originally scheduled to begin at 6:30 a.m. local time because of a problem bringing the transportation convoy to the site.  The civilians were people who had taken refuge at the site during fighting.

“We have brought 20 civilians to the agreed meeting point, whom we’ve managed to rescue from under the rubble. These are women and children. We hope these people will go the agreed destination, which is Zaporizhzhia, the territory controlled by Ukraine,” Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said.  “As of now, the rescue operation is ongoing, conducted by the servicemen of Azov – we rescue the civilians from under the rubble.”

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff whined to a court that he’s being unfairly targeted by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack because it persists in trying to get material from him that he’s hiding, the Associated Press reports.

Lawyers for Meadows have filed numerous motions to void subpoenas the committee has issued for correspondence and communications he sent and received relating to Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the Constitution to subvert the results of the November 2020 election and pull off a coup to stay in power.

“The Congressional Defendants, under the auspices of a legitimate subpoena, induced Mr. Meadows to produce thousands of his private communications only to use them in a concerted and ongoing effort to vilify him publicly through the media,” Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, wrote in the motion.

“Attorney-client privilege only attaches to legal advice and work, not opposition research. Just because the person you hire is a lawyer does not create privilege as to any activity that person performs. So performing tasks as a political hack is not covered by the privilege.”

– The current top comment on the Fox News article “Clinton campaign seeks to block Durham access to Perkins Coie documents” posted on Friday, written as if Trump lawyers Don McGahn, Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kraken, Jenna Ellis, so on and so forth didn’t hide behind often fraudulent attorney-client privilege claims at any and every fucking remote possibly of facing accountability for the corruption they were involved with in working for the Trump regime.

The man in charge of the Bullitt County (Kentucky) jail is facing a lawsuit after he forced a Black employee of the jail to attend a GOP fundraiser against his wishes so he could claim to have a Black friend, WDRB Fox 41 in Louisville reports.

Jailer Paul Watkins allegedly forced former jail employee Anthony Maddox to attend an event the Lincoln Reagan Dinner 2022 at the Paroquet Spring Conference Center in Shepherdsville April 9 where Rand Paul was the guest speaker.

Watkins reported responded to Maddox claiming he didn’t want to attend the event by telling Maddox that “other jail employees want your neck” but that Watkins would protect his job, so he should attend the event as thanks.  After Maddox reiterated that he was uncomfortable attending, Watkins asked if Maddox wanted a raise and a promotion to sergeant.  When Maddox said he would like that, Watkins told him to “dress nice” and show up at the event.

List as a career with a short life span:  Russian general.  Andrey Dmitrievich Simonov, a Major General in the Russian military fighting in Ukraine was killed Saturday, according to Ukrainian news sources.

Simonov was killed in Ukrainian strike on a command post in Izyum, a Russian-held city in eastern Ukraine.

Conservative British MP Neil Parish resigned his seat Saturday after twice being caught watching porn on his phone while sitting in a session of Parliament, Reuters reports. The exact genre of the porn was not specified, whether it was some vanilla stuff like reality POV, lesbian casting couch, etc or if Parish is some sick freak into shit like BDSM with candle wax or Japanese tentacle hentai stuff.

None of which we have ever seen, but had described to us by friends. These friends are very knowledgeable about such things, in contrast us who only consulted with these friends simply for the purpose of listing the above examples of pornography, which we have never seen.

The Villages, Florida resident Wayne Bentley is deeply concerned that the corporate interests who manage the vast retirement community are selling out to corporate interests, Bentley writes in a letter to the editor of Villages-News.com titled “The Villages management has lost its way.”

“The Villages site plan for reserved parking for those living in the new apartments on Spanish Springs Town Square, even more questions are raised than answered about the future of The Villages original town square. Besides the closure of Katie Belle’s for the planned apartments and supposed renovation of the Rialto Theater, what else lies ahead?” asks Bentley, adding “Villages management is forgetting about what drew so many to The Villages in the first place, that sense of community and the friendships and camaraderie created by that community. The Villages management has lost its way, lost sight of its beginnings, instead, it now focuses more on the almighty dollar. They need to look back and rekindle the vision of its founder.”

Note the use of “management” and not something like “our city council” because there is none in the Villages, which is not a Democracy at the local level but a semi-sovereign corporate fiefdom, governed by a covenant remarkably similar to that of nearby-ish Disney World which has come to the fore recently with Ron DeSantis’s crusade against the entertainment giant. So basically instead of a concerned voter taking issue with elected leaders, Wayne Bentley is more like a hipster complaining that his favorite brand sold out and is no longer as “authentic” as it once was to him. LOL.

Ted Cruz and Josh Mandel freaking suck.

“Pursuant to this Court’s order of April 19, 2022 (ECF 328), Plaintiff has assembled a consolidated privilege log which lists the unresolved privilege claims, the Select Committee’s objections, and plaintiff’s brief responses to the objections. The privilege log is ready to be filed with the Court under seal and shared with opposing counsel pursuant to this Court’s previously established procedures. In preparing the consolidated privilege log, plaintiff has identified documents for which the claim of privilege could be withdrawn in light of this Court’s March 28 ruling and other factors. Plaintiff will withdraw privilege claims with respect to approximately 800 documents totaling over 10,000 pages. The documents will be produced to the Select Committee and accordingly are not included on the consolidated privilege log” writes MAGA laywer John Eastman’s team in a late Friday filing. The weasel is still contesting another 37,000 pages of emails on his claims of a non-existent attorney-client relationship with the Donald between November 2020 and January 2021.

A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia will finally convene Monday to consider evidence against fat former President Donald Trump over his now infamous January 2, 2021 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, examining whether the Donald committed a crime when he tried to intimidate the state elections chief into overturning the election, CBS News reports.

Of course the Orange Degenerate committed a crime, all the statutes are very clear. However given his habit of getting away with shit normal people would get prosecuted and convicted for, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears to be playing this carefully. Hopefully not too carefully, as her counterpart in Manhattan Alvin Bragg did, allowing his case to fall apart for now this week as the grand jury expired there on Friday, leaving the criminal case against Trump there dead for now.

• The internecine fighting in the Republican Party needs to continue.  The remaining sane conservatives need to separate from the Greene-Gaetz-Gosar-Boebert caucus.  Both sides would be smart to ditch the Republican name.  
• Marge is adamant that the text she sent to Mark Meadows didn’t call for “Marshall law.”  She’s insistent on that.  She may have a point, because in that one, specific text, she says other members are talking about it (in the classic “Some people are saying…” way).  But she hasn’t answered if she sent text messages to or had conversations with other members calling for Marshall Law, which is why she’s still maintaining she “doesn’t remember” if she called for Marshall Law.  And why hasn’t anyone asked her which of her colleagues was talking about it.
• Republicans:  “Our children are falling behind foreign kids in education.”  Also Republicans:  “We don’t want our children to learn science or social studies or literature or math unless those lessons conform with our very narrow religious beliefs.”
• Conservatives are more concerned that a child will be convinced he/she wants to “try” being gay or trans because they learn about it in school than they are worried about that same child getting shot in that same school.  Better dead than trans-aware, in their world.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LXVII”

Perpetual grifter Donald Trump could not wiggle out of a fine of $10,000 per day a New York state judge imposed on him for his refusal to comply with a subpoena to turn over documents to state Attorney General Letitia James, NBC News reports.

Trump filed an affidavit with the court claiming he didn’t have the documents, and his statement was accompanied by sworn statements by his attorneys, Alina Habba and Michael Madaio, claiming they did not have access to the requested records.

“To the best of my knowledge, (i) I do not have any of the documents requested in the subpoena dated December 1, 2021 in my personal possession; and (ii) if there are any documents responsive to the subpoena I believe they would be in the possession or custody of the Trump Organization,” Trump, who is the President of the Trump Organization, said in his affidavit.