The liberal opposition Freedom Movement Party of Slovenia took a controlling lead in the country’s national elections Sunday, forecasting a victory over the ruling conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, the Associated Press reports.

The loss is the second on Sunday for conservative movements in Europe, although the SDP and its leader, Prime Minister Janez Jansa, are not as radically pro-Russia as France’s Marine Le Pen is.  Jansa supported the EU efforts to sanction Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

Freedom Movement won 35.8% of the vote versus Slovenian Democratic Party’s 22.5%, setting up the Freedom Movement to form a coalition among a dozen minor parties that did not get more than 7% of the vote.

French President Emmanuel Macron has won a second term, defeating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen by a 58.2 percent to 41.8 percent margin, the New York Times reports.

Macron’s victory is a show of support for center/center-left politics in Europe, which was once in the throes of far-right chaos brought on by pro-Brexit forces in the United Kingdom, largely supported by efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to undermine the European Union.

Polls in France close at 2pm EDT Sunday, and because they don’t have to deal with a bullshit electoral college there, the question of whether French President Emmanuel Macron grabs another five year term or if tonight they’re gonna party like its 1939 and Putin-backed right wing shitbag Marine Le Pen takes over should be resolved quickly. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.

To be clear, we’re not insinuating or implying that Blake Masters is accused of or guilty of rape, we just think he looks rapey given his hollow, slightly crooked glare and pursed reptilian lips.

COVID piss drinking “cure” expert Christopher Key was arrested Saturday after the organizers of an event headlined by the marginally more respectable anti-vax shitweasels Robert Malone and Peter McCullough called the cops on him for trespassing into the conference, the Daily Beast reports. Key showed up with his “Vaccine Police” car to annoy the “Take Action for Freedom Tour” for unclear differences in anti-vax dogma within the MAGA Cinematic Universe, ignoring repeated warnings from police officers to leave. “This is a bunch of MDs that are pissed off because a chiropractic and a bounty hunter released… information before they ever could,” said Key to his Telegram followers from a payphone in jail late Saturday night, adding “Yes, there is venom in the shots… It is very upsetting to me that some of my freedom fighters’ family is the one that incarcerated me.”

A group of Belarusian railroad workers, hackers and dissident security forces worked to disrupt the flow of Russian supplies, arms and troops being shipped into Ukraine on the railroads of Belarus, a Washington Post report details.

The group worked together and independently to disrupt railroad schedules around the country, primarily by manually or electronically damaging the workings of the junction boxes that control the flow of train traffic on the tracks.

In the early part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when troops were being brought in through Belarus, the network prevented supplies, ammunition and fuel from reaching troops in the field by rerouting trains and randomly stopping traffic.  The chaos that ensued caused the Belarusian government to shut down its rail lines for about four days to clear up the issues.

Florida Governor signs the ‘Stop WOKE’ act into law

Read more: https://t.co/L4JVZLnb4c pic.twitter.com/5mIx5eTYjE

— RT (@RT_com) April 24, 2022

California law enforcement officials seized nearly 100 pounds of fentanyl that was bound for the Bay Area, not from an illegal border crosser or a massive catapult, but from a good ol’ American entrepreneur running an illicit lab in Alameda County.

The Associated Press reports Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and county Narcotics Task Force located the lab after executing two search warrants in Oakland and Haywood.  One person was arrested at the lab, and police were searching for another suspect.

The 42 kilograms (roughly 93 pounds) of fentanyl was package in kilos for sale.

Former US Senator Orrin Hatch, the longest serving Senator from Utah, died Saturday in Salt Lake City at the age of 88, the Deseret News reports.  Hatch was first elected to the Senate in 1976 and finished his last term, his seventh, in 2019.

“Every film works in a certain anti-family theme or message,” a Newsmax host trying to do his best impression of a 1930s newsman Walter Winchell said.  “But I would be remiss, Bianca, if I said it was only because of wokeness and the Obamas’ influence that the Netflix stock has crashed.”

The faux Winchell failed to note that Netflix stock dropped one-third because it reported its first subscriber loss in its history last quarter–largely due to increased competition and lifting of pandemic restrictions.  Like this clown, conservative pundits are also crowing about the Obamas leaving Spotify, saying they got “canceled.”  In fact, the Obamas chose not to renew with Spotify because the streaming service requires an exclusive agreement, something the Obamas didn’t want.  (And it probably doesn’t help that Spotify pays Joe Rogan a lot of money to be a disinformation fountain.)

Today Utah Democrats voted to join Evan McMullin’s independent coalition and NOT nominate a candidate for U.S. Senate. I’m proud to be part of this coalition. Together we can win this race and defeat Mike Lee. #utpol pic.twitter.com/NuI84mRqSa

— Ben McAdams (@BenMcAdams) April 23, 2022

In a shocking new revelation, the New York Times reports that the House Select Committee investigating January 6th has testimony from at least one witness saying White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and members of the House Freedom Caucus were all on a phone call discussing how to get the people from the Ellipse, where Trump spoke, to the Capitol.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows, testified to the committee about the phone call; her testimony was disclosed in a 246-page court filing made Friday.  The fact that GOP leaders from the White House and Congress were both involved in urging the angered mob to the Capitol calls into doubt the claims by Republican leaders that they were shocked when the mob of incited domestic terrorists turned to violence.

It also calls into question whether Donald Trump’s claim that he was going to lead the crowd on a march to the Capitol was a line inserted into his speech to support this goal, which would demonstrate a conspiracy to incite the mob to attack the Capitol.

https://youtu.be/zC9LSf47Fv4

In the longest documented infection, a British man tested positive for the coronavirus for 505 consecutive days, setting scientists on a new path for Long-Covid patients, Time Magazine reports.

Researchers were looking for mutation patterns for coronavirus, and studied nine patients who had positive coronavirus tests for more than eight weeks.  He contracted the virus in 2020 and was treated with remdesivir, but died in 2021 of unspecified causes.

The average length of the infection in the patients was 78 days, but one patient continued to test positive for nearly 17 months.  All the patients studied were immunocompromised:  organ transplant patients or people with HIV or MS, for example. 

Surrey County, North Carolina Republican Pary Chairman William Senter threatened to get county elections director Michella Huff fired or have her pay cut if she didn’t give Senter and his fellow Trump fanboys access to the vote tabulation machines, Reuters reports. Never mind that Trump won the state by 1.35%, the county by fucking 52%, and that these assholes wouldn’t even know what they were looking at, Senter wanted to see the machines and was “aggressive, threatening, and hostile,” in two meetings with Huff last month. “It’s a shame, that it is being normalized. I didn’t expect to get it here in our county. We are just trying to do our job by the law,” said Huff.

Senter brought along American flag bow tie-wearing penis “Doctor” Doug Frank with him in the second meeting. Frank, MAGA famous for his batshit “sixth order polynomial” election stealing deus ex machina conspiracy theories distilled into mind-bogglingly stupid Powerpoint presentations, did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Huff, who recently left the Republican Party, reports to the state elections board and not the county’s MAGA board of commissioners, so it’s unclear how Senter would have been able to punish her even if he had their backing.

Surrey County’s Republican commissioners made the news last year when they backed off their plan to remove Coke machines from public property in retaliation for the soda giant’s opposition to the Georgia voter suppression law. West Caudle, a local lib activist, prompted the walk back when called the commissioners “morons” in a public meeting while explaining the machines aren’t actually owned by Coca-Cola Inc, but a subsidiary distributor based in North Carolina.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a Saturday press conference he will host US Secretaries of State and Defense Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday, per Axios.

Explosive testimony from Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump White House aides, Republican operatives, texts to and from Mark Meadows, emails and memos obtained by the House January 6th Select Committee that were unsuccessfully withheld from their scrutiny, and a book written by Peter Navarro plus a whole bunch of other shit indicate that Trump minions tried to overturn the 2020 election while they were contemporaneously saying publicly on Twitter, Newsmax, Fox News, in speeches, statements, on OANN, and via other right wing propaganda channels that they were trying to overturn the 2020 election, and then many of them subsequently refused to testify or provide documentation that would not reveal anything remotely resembling an incongruity between their private communications and public statements about wanting to overturn the 2020 election.

Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President @realDonaldTrump, preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.

Stay tuned.

— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) December 21, 2020

On Friday court filings revealed that far right members of Congress secretly met with former Trump White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows to figure out how to get Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the 2020 election during the joint session of Congress on January 6th, 2021. Around the same time, these far right members of Congress publicly signaled their intent to block the certification of the 2020 election during the joint session of Congress. Then on January 6th, 2021 these far right members of Congress voted to to block the certification of the 2020 election during the joint session of Congress. Later in 2021, several of these far right members of Congress refused to tell the House January 6th Committee about their efforts to block the certification of the 2020 election during the joint session of Congress on January 6th, 2021, because the investigation was unconstitutional, illegitimate, and not bipartisan. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger don’t count as Republicans because they hate Trump.

“On April 22, 2022 the Armed Forces of Ukraine carried out a destructive blow to the front point of control of the 49th General Army of the Russian Occupation Forces, which, in contrast to the combat instructions and common sense, was placed at a small distance from the line A combat clash in the Kherson region. The result of the impact – PPU 49A destroyed, two generals of the occupiers eliminated (!), one is seriously injured, in critical condition evacuated. Personal data is being specified. Military intelligence continues the search for important goals for the task of maximum harm to the occupiers on our Ukrainian land!” reports the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.