Category: Uncategorized

It’s like law enforcement leaders don’t understand when you train cops to be ride-or-die vigilantes with an us-against-them attitude and you unless them in a neighborhood with the mandate to control “criminals” who are actually just residents going about their business and don’t hold anybody accountable for their abuses, somebody gonna die eventually.

Adding to the legacy of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, Los Angeles CRASH unit and the entire NYPD, the Memphis Police Department has disbanded the Scorpion Unit that was tasked to control crime in city neighborhoods but turned into a bunch of murderers, NBC News reports.

Five members of Memphis’s Scorpion Unit were fired and indicted after they beat unarmed motorist Tyre Nichols so severely he died three days later.  The city released graphic bodycam and surveillance camera footage yesterday showing how officers tased, peppersprayed and beat Nichols, and then failed to provide him with medical care.  The video release prompted peaceful protests in the city.

Republicans in two key battleground states appear to be over Trump but still embracing Trumpism’s newest manifestation, which is perhaps why Trump is coincidentally visiting both states Saturday, so early in the election cycle.

According to Newsweek, two polls released this week show former president and ongoing lunatic Donald Trump substantially trailing up-and-coming fascistic Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by double-digits in New Hampshire (12 points) and South Carolina (19 points).

Trump attended a GOP meeting in New Hampshire Saturday afternoon before flying to South Carolina to hold an ego-pumping rally with his personal lapdog and ball washer–on the golf course, people!  Get your mind out of the gutter–South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

https://youtu.be/RrmLDDw6YBk

After shadow Arizona governor Kari Lake (Q) strokes the ripped foam salesman’s ego, amateur election sleuth Mike Lindell drops a bombshell, saying that fellow failed RNC chair candidate Harmeet Dhillon abandoned Lake’s effort to undermine the legitimate results of the Arizona election she lost.

After Lake makes a public appeal for Ronna not-Romney McDaniel to listen to her batshit claims about voter fraud and widespread election conspiracy, Lindell interjects, “Well, I wanna, I want us to correct somethin’ here, Kari, ’cause I have been wont to tell you Harmeet is part of that, too.  She’s a lawyer that’s in there and I talked to her and she has not [indecipherable] over there.  We have to pull her in, too.  This is election crime and you have to have the courage to take it on election crime because she did abandon you in Arizona.”

Apparently, Pillow Guy believes there’s a cabal within the RNC who actively worked against or passively hoped for Lake to lose the 2022 Arizona governor’s race because the conspiracy is bigger than even we thought.

Continuing a revocation of women’s rights Republicans aspire to, the Afghanistan government run by the Taliban banned women from taking entrance exams at private colleges and universities as it expands its elimination of women’s education in the country, Reuters reports.  The new regulation bars private universities from allowing women to apply for admission and told schools to ban female students from attending classes “until further notice.”

Unlike in the US where students sit for standardized exams and apply to colleges based on those scores, most private universities in Afghanistan have individual open testing sessions for admission to individual schools.  Admission may be based solely on scores on that test, regardless of previous scholastic credentials like a high school diploma, because many schools in Afghanistan are unregulated.

Since assuming control of the government and despite giving assurances to the international community, the Taliban has instituted a series of restrictions of women’s rights, including closing schools for girls and barring girls from seeking anything other than an elementary education.  It’s also barred most women from the workforce and banned female workers from foreign non-governmental organizations.

Fat former President Trump is hitting the campaign trail for his third bid to lose the popular vote in New Hampshire on Saturday, complaining to a live audience about how horrible he’s been treated by the Democrats and media for his corruption, incompetence, and racism, starting at Noon EST.

At least three people are dead and four have been critically wounded in an early Saturday shooting in the Beverly Crest neighborhood of Los Angeles, just outside Beverly Hills, the AP reports. The victims were all found on a street in and around a vehicle at around 2:30 AM, according to police. No other details were available and it is believed that the suspect or suspects are still at large.

MAGA-QAnon freak David DePape called into a San Francisco TV station on Friday following the release of video of his October attack on Paul Pelosi, apologizing to fellow “patriots” he didn’t get the job done. “[Liberals] killing it have names and addresses, so I got their names and addresses so I could pay them a little visit… have a heart to heart chat about their bad behavior. I want to apologize to everyone. I messed up. What I did was really bad. I’m so sorry I didn’t get more of them. It’s my own fault. No one else is to blame. I should have come better prepared,” said DePape.

A New Jersey school bus driver is facing a single count of driving while intoxicated and 15 counts of endangering the welfare of a child after a Friday morning crash in which he lost control on a sharp turn and plowed the yellow behemoth into a West Caldwell home, News 12 New Jersey reports.

The bus was empty of students as driver Anthony Stuckey, 37, had already dropped them off at West Caldwell Technical High School prior to the 8:30 AM crash, but was still hit with the 15 child endangerment felonies for each one that had been on the bus while he was loaded. No one besides Stuckey was injured as the homeowner, himself a teacher at a local college, had left for work hours earlier. Stuckey was cited for driving without a commercial license on top of the DWI and 15 felonies.

Napoleonic Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s minions recently began eyeing key New Hampshire and Iowa political hires in the latest sign the mean little bastard is challenging the almighty Orange God Emperor for the throne of the Republican cult, the Washington Post reports.

• Would Tucker Carlson feel better if Mars introduced an overtly-conservative M&M?  They could do that, I’m sure, but the thing is, a conservative M&M would be bitter.  Very, very bitter.
• Defying conservative panic-mongering, the US economy grew by 2.1% in 2022.  The key to it was a very strong fourth quarter, coming in a hair under 3% growth and wiping out losses in the first two quarters of the year.  But Republicans will continue to lie and harp on the fictitious “weak economy” in interviews because facts don’t matter on Fox and they will continue to portray the US economy as failing.
• Has anyone seen George Santos and George Papadopoulos in the same room?  Is he going to peel back the mask and expose that he’s actually Marco Rubio?
• Kai Ryssdal deserves a larger platform, but unfortunately, economics reporting doesn’t attract a larger audience.  NPR’s Marketplace is phenomenal programming.

And now, an amuse-buffoon to clear your intellectual palate and prepare you for RtF later tonight.  Donald Trump–sexual assaulter, middling real estate developer,  John (in the prostitution sense, not his middle name), failed coup leader, and really bad filer–is running for President as a ploy to stave off indictment and to give him more grounds to file more lawsuits to try to get more delays, and he has to do at least something that looks like a campaign even though he’s only left Mar-a-Lago to attend a funeral during which he complained about how long people were mourning the deceased.

So he’s released this education policy, which has really very little to do with education and everything to do with hitting talking points and enraging his cult.  In order of ridiculousness as judged by a member of the National Zero editorial staff, because we listen so you don’t have to:

• Top line item:  Trump wants to certify teachers who will indoctrinate children into his cult.  Not kidding:  “We will create a new credentialing body that will be the gold standard–anywhere in the world–to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children.”  Wait… wha–?  That last part doesn’t match the first.
  Read More ▶ “Trump outlines highly unconstitutional 2024 education program”

Thousands of people gathered downtown as the Memphis Police Department released the graphic video of five officers beating a 29-year-old unarmed Tyre Nichols so badly he died three days later, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports.

The four videos show the officers–who have all been fired and indicted, and all of whom are Black, as was the victim–using tasers and pepper spray on Nichols.  The four videos came from officers’ bodycams and SkyCop surveillance units.

The Justice Department requested the Federal Election Commission hold off on further investigating freshman Republican New York Congressman and man with a highly improbable life story George Santos so it can pursue its own criminal investigation, the Washington Post reports.

The FEC is investigating a change in reporting from Santos on his source of election funds, specifically a $500,000 injection into the campaign that he first filed as a loan to his campaign account, but then not checking that in his latest filing, meaning the money was either an illegal donation or loan if Santos cannot prove he gave the money to his campaign himself.

The request came from the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which although it sounds like a boring part of the Law & Order franchise is actually a specialist unit that looks into allegedly corrupt public officials and operations.

What do you think will happen tonight across the nation following the release of the body cam footage of Memphis police officers?

A. Peaceful protests.
B. Nothing, people are controlled.
C. Reckless protesting and looting.

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) January 27, 2023

The MAGA kids can barely contain their excitement over the prospect of being able to say “See libs?!? We told you there was going to be burning and looting!” when violence breaks out after the video of Tyre Nichols’ brutal murder at the hands of five Memphis cops is released Friday.

We say when, not if, because we’re not stupid. We know the Boogaloos and all sorts other MAGA “accelerationists” already have their molotovs filled up and crowbars polished, ready to fuck shit up and let it get blamed on the real activists with their banners and megaphones.

The New Jersey man who sprayed bear spray into the face of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, likely a factor in the series of strokes that took the officer’s life the next day, received an 80-month prison sentence, WUSA-9 in Washington reports.

Thirty-three-year-old Julian Khater pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon as part of a plea deal.  “This defendant committed cowardly and premeditated assault on at least three uniformed officers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilead Light told U.S. District in Washington, DC Senior Judge Thomas Hogan, adding, “The line fell five minutes after Julian Khater’s pepper spray.  The line fell and we know what happened next.”

Hogan called out Khater for a weak pseudo-apology:  “Your thoughtful statement right now did not really include any apology to the officers you sprayed.  I didn’t hear any expression or sorry about the employees of the Capitol, many who hid for their lives and resigned and never came back to work.”

Speaking to Semafor reporter Dave Wiegel following his crushing third place defeat in the Republican National Convention chair election on Friday, deranged MyPillow founder Mike Lindell said he was fine with losing because there were no machines used to count the votes.

“The first thing you’ll ask me is, was this a fair election?” Yes. There were no machines,” said Lindell to Wiegel. “I pray for you guys every day, that you’ll say we need to get rid of these voting machines,” Lindell added, urging the news media to adopt an anti-voting machine stance.

The Security and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the role Elon Musk, the world record holder for fastest loss of wealth in history, played in the way Tesla presented the development and functionality of the vehicle’s self-driving feature, Bloomberg reports.

The federal agency seeks to check the veracity of Tesla’s statements and Musk’s independent statements as Tesla CEO about the Autopilot driver assist system, which has come under increased scrutiny lately after drivers report involvement in accidents using the system.  At least one pedestrian has been struck and killed by a Tesla operating Autopilot.  The probe is looking into questions that Musk overstated the development schedule, efficiency and safety of the system.

A Thai court on Thursday sentenced 27 year-old Thailand First patriot Mongkhon Thirakot to 28 years in prison for criticizing the woke, DirecTV and Biden-like regime of leftist, globalist King Maha Vajiralongkorn in a series of online posts, NBC News reports on a cancelation almost as bad as when Disney fired that actress from the Star Wars show for her tweets saying Trump fans are treated as poorly as Jews were in The Holocaust. Or when that socialist publisher canceled Josh Hawley’s book contract. Or that brewery canceling that awesome Kyle Rittenhouse event.

Thirakot will be allowed to speak his mind on Truth Social or GETTR. They won’t silence him like the radical Vajiralongkorn cancel mob and he’ll be welcome on those pro-First Amendment platforms when he gets out of prison in 28 years. They’ll be even bigger and better then. Just wait libs.

National Zero will resume our regular coverage now that we’ve unsubtly derided the first world problems suffered by our right wing readers. We hope they enjoyed this “pro-free speech” article.

Ronna not-Romney McDaniel apparently commands more loyalty from Republicans than Kevin McCarthy, winning reelection on the first ballot to her fourth term as chair of the Republican National Committee, the Washington Post reports.

Even though she’s led the Party through disastrous showings in the last three election cycles, with Republicans poised for big gains but falling far short of expectations and not winning the popular vote in either Presidential election, McDaniel held off a challenge from California Donald Trump and Kari Lake lawyer Harmeet Dhillon with a 111-51 vote.  Foam stuffer Mike Lindell did not garner a single vote earned five votes after announcing a late bid, with Lee Zeldin getting one (his?).  (Updated 3:41 p.m. ET)

The victory earned congratulations from titular Party leader Donald Trump, who did not endorse McDaniel, the niece of Trump rival Mitt Romney, a Republican Senator from Utah.  Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed the losing Dhillon.

NEW VIDEO: President Trump Will Build a New Missile Defense Shield pic.twitter.com/9eUSB8U3jj

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 27, 2023

Huh. This whole campaign promise to “build a defensive cordon to protect the United States from external threats” thing sure sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? Could swear he said something kind of similar to this like seven years ago. Maybe the details were different but the basic outline was the same. There was a big thing about it. Wall-to-wall coverage in the news. Think he talked a lot about forcing another country to pay for it too. How’d that work out anyway? Did end up getting built?