Category: Uncategorized

A suicide bomber, martyring himself in the name of Allah, ran into a house of Allah, detonating an explosive vest killing himself and at least 30 of his fellow Allah-worshippers in Peshawar, Pakistan on Monday, CNN reports. The mosque hit lies inside a police compound.

“The brutal killing of Muslims prostrating before Allah is against the teachings of the Quran,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement, adding that “targeting the House of Allah is proof that the attackers have nothing to do with Islam. Terrorists want to create fear by targeting those who perform the duty of defending Pakistan.”

In a call during his last months as UK’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson says he had a phone call in which he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about the likely unfavorable outcome a Russian incursion into Ukraine would have, to which Putin replied that he could strike London with a missile quickly, the BBC reports.

In February 2022, Johnson said he had a “very long” call with Putin and told him a Russian invasion of Ukraine would end in “utter catastrophe.”  Johnson outlined what he considered to be the likely path of sanctions and countermeasures world leaders would take that would impact Russian and Putin.

After the Kansas City [deroggatory name for Native American tribal leader] won the AFC Championship on a last-minute field goal made possible after an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on a Cincinnati Bengals defender, the slate for Super Bowl LVII has been set for the contest on February 12th in Arizona.

Kansas City will take on the patriotically-named Philadelphia Eagles, from the birthplace of our nation and the NFC Championship game winner, in a 31-7 defeat of the San Francisco Librul 49ers from Nancy Pelosi-ville.

“First a very quick question:  Who has more power:  Joe Biden or George Santos?” nasally carnival barker Marc Levin queries House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy in his coy, flirty way, prompting Kev to giggle playfully.  “Well, right now I think it is the president, Joe Biden, unfortunately.”  Because our nation would be better off with a fraud in charge, right?  Oh, wait… we already know how that worked out.

Donald Trump appears to be sharpening his long knives this night, taking aim at his rivals and perceived enemies, one day after being energized by groups of cultists in New Hampshire and South Carolina.  As the earlier post (above right) on his failing social media app shows, Trump sees Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as his chief early rival, and he plans to knock the already undersized DeSantis down a few notches.

Going after Karl Rove, seen as a supporter for DeSantis for recognizing his surprisingly strong reelection performance, Trump hopes to show that he’s now the new Republican establishment, touting an outlandish victory percentage without mentioning (1) he’s lying; (2) his endorsed candidates who weren’t incumbents or Red State successors lost every statewide race except the JD Vance race; and (3) the GOP he claims to lead had a historically bad performance in the midterms.

Note, however, the framing of Trump’s screed against DeSantis merits examination–and before anyone even suggests it, this is not a defense of the Florida fool; it’s an exam of Trump’s techniques.  The “revelations about Ron DeSanctimonious” Trump mentions are his own creation:  we covered the video of his comments on his plane here.  Trump’s talking about what he talked about like someone else said it.  Psychiatrically, that’s a problem, but it’s also his version of Fox’s “some people say.”  His notes about “shutting down Florida and its beaches”–one of the few coronavirus protections DeSantis did enforce before flipping to complete anti-science positions–will be the point Trump hammers him on throughout the campaign.  Florida lives and dies by tourism; Trump will hammer home the pain.

Announcers for this Eagles-49ers game just spotted the First Lady in a box and of course call her “Dr. Jill Biden.” Wonder if she realizes what a wannabe she looks like insisting on this fake title. Get a real MD or just work on your self-esteem.

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) January 29, 2023

From deep within the desolate and isolated Caves of Earned Irrelevance, a faint voice is heard whining….  Remember Megyn Kelly, the one-time prime-time glamster of the glass table at Fox studios who decided to bravely share her account of systemic sexual harassment at the Roger Ailes-run network…. after about a dozen other women came forward.  Now that’s a courageous journalist!

Yeah, it’s petty and catty of me to call out the cowardice of a well-compensated victim of sexual harassment because she likely waited to see how the fallout that impacted the groundbreakers who broke the story could adversely impact her career.  I mean, I don’t know the trauma she went through, and fear for her career is a legit thing, but I can also recognize that the victim of sexual assault is also someone who empowered her abuser to fuck over the rest of us.

Now living in the dark corners of Podcastia after failing as a normal television host, not a pretty propagandist, Kelly propagates a truly boneheaded complaint about First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, who holds a Ed.D. in Education enabling her to justifiably use the title “doctor.”  Apparently, Kelly can’t get her one fully-functioning brain cell around the fact that the title “doctor” has different connotations to it.  Maybe her lapse is due to all those years of peroxide abuse.

An Oregon fugitive wanted for kidnapping, imprisoning and torturing a local woman–after a history of domestic abuse and weapons violations–reportedly uses dating apps as he evades authorities in southwest Oregon, NBC News reports.

Benjamin Obadiah Foster, 36, is accused of imprisoning and torturing a woman in Grants Pass, Oregon, keeping her “in a place where she was not likely to be found” and “intentionally torturing” her, authorities say.  On Tuesday, police found a woman, bound and badly injured; they have not released details of how she was found nor have they identified her.

Foster’s been on the run since Thursday when police raided his property, and police say he’s using dating apps to arrange for assistance from unsuspecting women he’s in contact with.  Police tracked Foster to a property in Wolf Creek, 20 miles north of Grants Pass, where they arrested 68-year-old Tina Marie Jones for hindering arrest.  Police say Jones helped Foster dispose of his car by pushing into a ravine, and then returned him to a property on which he had been hiding.

Prepare for some community-theatre-level of performance art from Republican House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy as he tries (and likely fails) to elevate himself to the iconic status his predecessor Nancy Pelosi reached when she boldly confronted petulant president Donald Trump, as McCarthy sat nearby impotently watching.  The Associated Press reports President Joe Biden will meet with McCarthy Wednesday to discuss various topics including resolving the debt limit crisis without jeopardizing the full faith and credit of the US economy, as a faction of the Republican House caucus wishes.

“I know the president said he didn’t want to have any discussion [on cuts], but I think it’s very important that our whole government is designed to find compromise,” McCarthy Sunday fully aware that the White House meeting had previously been set to discuss the debt ceiling while his caucus held up his temporary appointment as Speaker because they want their demands and won’t compromise. “I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path to balance and at the same time not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time.”

The South Dakota state Senate on Thursday voted to suspend Republican Senator Julie Frye-Mueller without explaining to the public why they did so, waiting until Friday to announce they formed a panel to consider expelling her and that it was over an accusation of “inappropriate behavior and harassment related to private maternal matters, including childhood vaccines and breastfeeding,” toward a legislative aide to the chamber, the Argus Falls-Leader reports.

Must’ve been bad. If the leadership of the Republican-majority chamber are only giving those surface-level details, which are bad enough, without getting more specific about what this psychopath said to an employee, whom we would imagine to be a young mom, then it had to be pretty bad. Like screaming at her for breastfeeding an infant after being vaccinated for COVID bad.

But we need not fill in those fairly narrow blanks here to see a far more interesting revelation: That the kind of shit Republican lawmakers screech on the campaign trail, in televised hearings, and post on Facebook about vaccines and what not – the garbage that gets the yokels to vote for them – is unacceptable during day-to-day business hours. It’s actually workplace harassment and you can get fired for privately talking that kind of shit to an employee. This episode alone might offer more insight into the nature of MAGA rhetoric than we could ever hope to write ourselves.

Why is it considered harassment to talk about sex in the workplace but not to children at school?

— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) January 29, 2023

Yes, Kevin Sorbo isn’t a political figure.  And yes, we here at National Zero rarely cover celebrities unless they do something radically insane or criminal or slap happy.  But Kevin Sorbo, he of basic cable franchise series “fame” and little else, has the special ability of bringing his special brand of stupidity to political discussions, such as here, where he confused education about sex with the pursuit of sexual gratification, not an easy thing to confuse unless you’re a conservative looking to groom children to accept the unwanted sexual advances later, whether you’re an actress on a fourth-rate Sorbo production or a wrestler at Ohio State.

Spandex wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan on Sunday struggled to pin down Chuck Todd during a contentious appearance on Meet the Press. Jordan first dismissed any movement in the House toward national policing reform after the murder of Tyre Nichols, and then got pummeled on MAGA bullshit to the point of Todd declaring “The issue is you do not seem to ever see the same conspiratorial problems when it’s a Republican.” This was devastating news for Joe Biden.

On a new CBS News/YouGov survey’s question of “Do you think the Department of Justice should be investigating the situation involving Donald Trump having classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, or should they leave the matter alone?” 42 percent of Republican respondents answered “Should be investigated,” while 58 percent said “Leave the matter alone,”

When asked the same question for former Vice President Mike Pence, 81 percent of Republican respondents said “Should be investigated,” and only 19 percent said “Leave the matter alone.” Joe Biden naturally scored worse with Republicans on the investigating classified docs issue, with 95 percent saying “Should be investigated,” but among respondents overall Pence and Biden tied for 80 percent for pro-DOJ investigation. Trump got 74 percent overall, dragged down by the responses from the Republican voters who evidently just really still fucking hate Mike Pence.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Sunday fired UK Conservative Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi over revelations Zahawi had lied repeatedly about an investigation into his finances and paid a £4.8 million settlement over the tax fuckery with the British IRS last year, Sky News reports.

It’s almost like there’s some sort of contrast that can be drawn here between the willingness of the top Conservative leader in the British government to fire one of his top guys for dishonesty and corruption while the top conservative leader in the American government, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, does the exact opposite – and with not one of his top guys, but a backbencher former drag queen who lied about his mom dying in 9/11 and stole $3,000 meant to pay for veterinary surgery for a dog dying of cancer. A dog owned by a homeless, disabled veteran.

You could say that McCarthy acted exactly the opposite as Sunak, arguably promoting the backbencher by giving him committee assignments despite being under federal criminal investigation. It might even be said that, despite the differences being two completely different political systems and that the British Conservative Party is a shitshow that won’t ever be fixed simply by firing one guy, when the time came to act that Rishi Sunak did the right thing and showed at least some measure of integrity, and Kevin McCarthy did not when his time came.

Explosive drones launched by parties unknown struck a weapons factory in the central Iranian city of Isfashan on Saturday night, the AP reports, citing an Iranian Defense Ministry statement. The defense ministry claimed the damage was minimal and there were no casualties, which could be true or could also mean the place was blown sky high and hundreds are dead as authoritarian regimes like Iran’s aren’t known to be especially forthcoming when it comes to acknowledging setbacks.

The strike comes amid increasing tensions with both Israel and neighboring Azerbaijan, whose military have been supplied with drones by Israel. On Friday a gunman opened fire inside the Azeri Embassy in Tehran, shooting the embassy’s security chief dead and wounding two others before apparently escaping, possibly with the help of Iranian police.

Cody Rhodes wins Royal Rumble men's match, eliminates GUNTHER for victory https://t.co/CnMvKYMxnz

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 29, 2023

Former Arizona Treasurer Jeff DeWit on Saturday won the contest to replace “Chemtrails” Kelli Ward as state GOP chair, the Washington Post reports. “We will take our elections back, we will bring election integrity back to Arizona with me as the chairman,” said DeWit as he took the stage prior to the vote, while imploring the audience to remember that “the real enemy are the Democrats.”

Now that the proverbial lid is off of the cookie jar with the US vowing to send M1A1 Abrams to Ukraine’s defenders, some American military leaders in the Pentagon are now pushing to equip Ukrainian forces with F-16 fighter jets, Politico reports.

While no official word has come done, a senior defense official told Politico, “I don’t think we are opposed.”  One question within the military leadership, however, is whether it’s feasible to train pilots quickly:  experts say Ukraine has already identified 50 English-speaking pilots, with thousands of combat sorties under their belt, who could be trained and ready to fly in three months, in time for an expected Ukrainian offensive to reclaim captured territory.

Another concern within the Pentagon is the priority of needs for the Ukrainian government, which is still concerned with protecting the civilian population in the cities as well as proceeding with its planned offensive, meaning American resources for missile defenses while the pilots get trained and ready.

Officials in Teheran claim explosions seen at an ammunition factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan was the result of the successful deployment of an air defense system against a drone attack, Reuters reports.

“One of (the drones) was hit by the … air defence and the other two were caught in defence traps and blew up. Fortunately, this unsuccessful attack did not cause any loss of life and caused minor damage to the workshop’s roof,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency IRNA.  This comes months after Iranian official claim to have thwarted a planned attack against an Iranian defense facility by Kurdish militia.

And in case you are wondering, yes, there are rumors that Israeli has a drone that can fly into Iranian airspace, but as this October 2022 report from the Arab Center in Washington, DC notes, there’s a smoldering war going on between proxies of Israel and Iran using the drone technology from those countries.  So it could be a regional group using foreign technology as well, or maybe it was just those meddling kids with too much time on their hands.

Acting as the petulant little dictator he aspires to be, guy who literally thinks he can decide what constitutes a religion Donald Trump starts calling out those he considers traitors to him so him pack of rabid cultists will attack–hopefully just metaphorically this time:  “So Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me. … So then when I hear he might run… I consider that very disloyal,” Trump says while aboard a jet in exclusive CNN video.  “I talked to [Nikki Haley] for a little while, but I said look, go by your heart if you want to run.  She’s publicly said, ‘I would never run against my President.  He was a great President.'”

Overcoming initial hesitancy to supply them with heavy armor, the Ukrainian government confirms that around a dozen Western nations have pledged to send 321 modern battle tanks made in Germany, Britain and the United States, CNN reports.

Germany’s Leopard II, Britain’s Challenger II and the American M1A1 Abrams tanks will come from the supplies of those nations as well as through client nations who have previously obtained the weapons systems.

The fact that Ukraine is getting the Western armor seems to really piss off North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, for some unknown reason.  The petulant stepchild of world leaders, heartbroken that his bestie is losing influence in the West, had his sister read a statement saying the US has a “sinister intention to realize its hegemonic aim by further expanding the proxy war for destroying Russia.”  Maybe he’s just hungry.