Category: Uncategorized

Spandex-wearing grapple freak Jim Jordan wrestled to answer a question from Semafor on why his fake whistleblowers are getting paid by a group run by MAGA scumbag Kash Patel.

“You lose your job for coming forward and telling the truth as a brave whistleblower, you’re going to get help from where you get help,” Jordan said about the Kash-cash. “These guys got families to take care of, for goodness sake,” he added, as if he would be similarly magnanimous if, say, Cassidy Hutchinson had been paid by Soros prior to her Capitol riot committee testimony.

Republican Tennessee state Representative Paul Sherrell on Monday withdrew his bill to rename a stretch of Nashville’s 5th Avenue that in 2021 was named John Lewis Way in honor of the late great civil rights leader and congressman to “President Donald Trump Blvd” in honor of the still-living racist and twice-impeached failure who lost the 2020 election, the Tennessean reports.

“While work is underway to understand every issue, NASA is making progress assembling, testing, and processing the elements for Artemis II ahead of the late 2024 mission. The heat shield will be attached to the crew module in May, and the crew module and service module will then be connected ahead of integrated testing. The SLS solid rocket booster motor segments and core stage will be shipped to Kennedy later this year, after the engine section and RS-25 engines are connected to the rest of the already-complete stage. Teams expect to transport the mobile launcher to launch pad 39B this summer for testing, including evaluation of the emergency egress capability needed for Artemis II. The recovery team, along with personnel from the Department of Defense, recently completed rigorous testing of a new crew module test article in support of Artemis II efforts and will conduct open water recovery testing in the coming months to ensure the crew on board are quickly and safely removed from the spacecraft,” says a NASA press release.

By a 3-to-2 margin, with voter turnout about half that of the November midterm elections, Oklahomans rejected a ballot proposal to legalize cannabis, KOCO ABC-5 in Oklahoma City reports.  Despite a snarky projection by this outlet that Oklahoma was going to draw cannabis tourists from neighboring Texas, the state will remain in a dust bowl, not a kush bowl.

There’s a lot going on at Fox nowadays, and none of it’s good.  Like a rabid dog, Fox digs in on its lies that have been decried by leaders of both sides of the political aisle.  Despite the release of damning communications and testimony showing Fox executives and on-air personalities spent months knowingly lying to their viewers about the integrity of the 2020 election, Fox hostess and woman repeatedly admitted “I have no reason to believe that” when asked under oath about allegations of election fraud Laura Ingraham interviews a lawyer for detained accused domestic terrorists who, he claims, were being given tours of the Capitol by police officers.

Probably better for Donald to just pretend it wasn’t reported on Tuesday that Tucker Carlson said he hates Trump “passionately” on January 4th, 2021, according to another Dominion filing.

Never again let Fox claim they have non-partisan anchors:  In the latest trove of documents released in Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned propaganda network, an email from one of Fox’s claimed “straight news” anchors–or is it “straight” news anchor?  I never can tell when it comes to Baiers–Bret Baier tried to get Fox to overturn its correct early call of Arizona to Democrat Joe Biden, as reported here earlier:

“I know You guys are feeling the pressure. But this situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable,” Baier wrote on November. 5th, 2020, to three Fox executives. “I keep on having to defend this on air. And ask questions about it. And it seems we are holding on for pride (I know the confidence you say you had and the numbers — but it’s at least within the realm of possible that he closes the gap now). And It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg. And we put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”

Continuing with the Saudi tradition of sawing up living things as part of doing business, a crew of landscapers preparing the Gallery Club in Marana, Arizona ahead of a March 17-19 LIV Golf event butchered at least two protected Saguaro cactuses last month, the Arizona Republic reports.

The Arizona Department of Agriculture this week opened an investigation into the LIV-contracted landscaping company and the golf course for removing the cactuses without permission. The parties face up to $5,000 in fines for the murder, reportedly done to make way for hospitality tents.

Course General Manager and man whose last name will make everyone sing a few bars of the same horse race song (and we all hate ourselves for it) Jeremy Duda said the club believed the crew were moving the plants, not cutting them down. “That’s what we were told, and they ended up chopping them down without our permission,” Duda said in a sincere belief people would believe him.

This is the start of the downfall of Tucker Carlson:  as Republicans lambast his revisionist history of the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, Tucker Carlson starts telling his infantile audience that they shouldn’t listen to anyone else but him; that politicians like Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis, and Mitt Romney–or “Mitt Romney!” as Tucker intones–are the unreasonable ones, the ones saying the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol weren’t “sightseers,” as Carlson said.

Reservists in Israel’s military are staging what’s effectively a work slowdown in protest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative policies that critics decry as an attempt to undermine the nation’s democracy, as well as in protest of rampage Jewish settlers conducted through a Palestinian town last week, the Times of Israel reports.

In the latest, highest-profile action, ninety percent of a F-16 fighter squadron, the IAF’s 69th Squadron, said they would not train during a recent scheduled call-up.  They join other reservists who show up to their assigned stations for their service time but refuse to actively participate in training exercises or classes.  Other military units have also reported smaller-scale actions by reservists, most of who state opposition to Netanyahu’s plan to remove a significant amount of power for the nation’s judiciary, a move many see as retaliation:  Netanyahu pleaded guilty to two corruption charges in January 2022.

Five women and two doctors filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas saying the state’s new snitching law that encourages people to bring frivolous lawsuits against women seeking an abortion and the medical providers who perform them endangers patients’ lives, NPR reports.

“[The women] have been denied necessary and potentially life-saving obstetrical care because medical professionals throughout the state fear liability under Texas’s abortion bans,” the plaintiffs assert, outlining that doctors are being intimidated against providing a legal, life-saving medical procedure because they fear getting a slew of lawsuits from uninterested parties who are encouraged by potentially getting $10,000 each in a civil suit promoted by the law, which doesn’t punish anyone who files frivolous lawsuits under the law.

The lawsuit points out that the law, known as SB 8, does not clarify under what circumstances abortion is necessary and therefore, protected under the law.  But conservatives in Texas didn’t enter a provision of the law shielding abortion providers who perform life-saving abortions, allowing a provider to get sued out of business for saving a woman’s life because conservatives are shitty, spiteful politicians. 

“This is exactly why people believe in conspiracies.”  Amazingly, that’s a quote from the latest document dump of Fox communications in the Dominion $1.6 billion defamation suit alleging Fox executives and personalities knew they were broadcasting lies about the company.  The speaker of the quote?  None other than the host proclaims that his is “the program that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity smugness and group think,” Tucker Carlson.

“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Murdoch emailed a network executive.  Murdoch’s communications continued to demonstrate that he doubted the election fraud claims his hosts were making, asking if the network “unarguabl[y]” had to support the election fraud claim.

The Washington Post is sifting through the documents and posting some juicy bits, which National Zero will update here as they’re posted on various media.

Scandal-ridden Fox is at it again:  The Daily Beast caught Fox host and undeclared Trump advisor Sean Hannity editing an interview he had with former president and golf course salesman Donald Trump to remove a critical aspect of Trump’s declared solution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine:  he’d simply allow Russia to keep the land it occupies and call it a day.

After ranting Putin never took land while he was president, Trump said in a radio interview on Hannity’s afternoon radio program Monday, “That’s without even negotiating a deal. I could have negotiated. At worst, I could’ve made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.”

However, during his propaganda hour on Fox later that night, Hannity edited the audio he played to leave out about 30 seconds of audio in which Trump explained that he would let Putin keep the Ukrainian territory Russia illegally annexed.  Trump goes from saying, “I could have negotiated” to ranting about China. 

A Missouri law that would fine law enforcement officers up to $50,000 if they dare enforce federal weapons laws is unconstitutional because it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, a federal district judge ruled, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes said in his ruling, “At best, this statute causes confusion among state law enforcement officials who are deputized for federal task force operations, and at worst, is unconstitutional on its face.”  The law would have levied fines against officers who enforced federal laws that do not have state equivalents.

Gun fetishist Andrew Bailey, Missouri’s Republican Attorney General, said he would appeal the ruling, claiming that the GOP-led legislation was necessary to counter federal overreach to confiscate guns, even though there is no federal proposal to do such things for anyone other than those people, like the McCloskeys, who recklessly brandish guns.

Maybe Norfolk Southern should just keep its operations south of Norfolk…  An engineer for Norfolk Southern was struck by a dump truck as his train transited through a steel mill in Ohio, which has suddenly become the hot bed for rail tragedies that are obviously all Pete Buttigieg’s fault.

According to NBC News, 46-year-old Louis Schuster was outside the train Tuesday morning as it made its way through a Cleveland-Cliffs rolled steel factory when a dump truck filled with limestone struck the left side of the first car in the train.  It’s unclear exactly how Schuster was killed–if he was between the car and the dump truck, if the train car was pushed off the track onto/into him, or some other circumstance–but the impact resulted in Schuster’s death.

Norfolk Southern has been particularly hazardous in Republican-run Ohio during the last three weeks, including a massive chemical spill and burn-off in East Palestine and a derailment Saturday afternoon in Springfield.

Known to have no discernable spine, which even for a chelonian is unusual, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out with a definitive statement calling Tucker Carlson’s claims–framed about highly edited footage from 44,000 hours of security camera footage from the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol–complete and utter bullshit.

With regard to the, ah, presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the Chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th.

While we all know McConnell will wilt away from his dismissal of Carlson’s conspiracy theories and fabrications the moment he’s confronted by an angry Carlson fan, the declaration won’t make it to Fox’s airways because of the network’s new motto:  “We distort. You fall in line.”

Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-in-drag who originated the unhinged screaming from the gallery during a presidential address, Republican South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson takes to the House floor to drone on about a number of things, including how wonderful Tucker Carlson is for “exposing the truth” about January 6th, with a hardy endorsement from Glenn Beck.  The transcription below is verbatim; don’t blame the messenger for the Palinesque word salad. 

How long is it going to take for Ron DeSantis fanboys to face the music and admit their little Maoist authoritarian hero wears heels? Can they own up to the fact that a man unremittingly hostile to other biological males who wear heels either just to have fun, to perform for an audience, or as part of their identity, does so too? Will they stand tall amid this very real affront to masculinity?

Because there’s no way around this. DeSantis wears heels that boost his height by around 2 or 3 inches. You can see them clearly in multiple photos. It’s not like Trump who – in part due to his ubiquity – attacks on his unfailing daily application of orange makeup are pointless within the GOP primary universe. This is a serious liability for Ronnie Meatballs even before fat Donald starts tormenting him about it – which he will. How is a DeSantis fanboy supposed to boast about how domineering and masculine the Florida governor is when a lib troll can just remind them that the Florida governor wears heels just like a “groomer” drag queen? That’s humiliating to a right winger.

Gigi Sohn, nominated by President Joe Biden to be a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission, has withdrawn her nomination after 16 months of stonewalling by nihilist Republican Senators and “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks” by industry lobbyists who opposed her nomination.

“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators,” Sohn said in a statement shared exclusively with The Washington Post. “And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.”

Republican Bryan Slaton, he who boasted of being “America First” in his elections to the Texas Legislature, isn’t so much anymore.  He introduced a bill that will allow a referendum in the state to leave the United States–something that the Supreme Court ruled on in Texas v. White in 1869.  Spoiler alert:  it can’t.  (Have these people never read a history boo–…  Oh, right.  Nevermind.). The secessionist posted on Twitter:

Today, I filed HB 3596, which is commonly known as the “Texas Independence Referendum Act,” or TEXIT If passed, it will place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature. The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people. After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard. On this 187th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo I’m proud to file this bill to let the people of Texas vote on the future of our State. Texas was born out of a desire for liberty and self-governance, and that desire continues to burn in the hearts of all Texans.

Keen-eyed NatZero readers will recognize Slaton from his previous appearance in our realm:  when he suggested parents, coaches, players, fans and virtually anyone could challenge the gender of an opposing youth team’s player, who would then have to submit chromosome test results to “prove” their gender.  … ’cause the Alamo.