Category: Uncategorized

With an electrical power grid slightly shakier than the one in Texas, Russians are facing a cold winter relying on infrastructure that has already repeatedly failed even without targeted attacks like those its military is subjecting Ukraine to, the Washington Post reports.

While power outages are not uncommon in far-flung areas of the country, some of the larger cities are experiencing unexpected power outages as needs push the electrical infrastructure to its limits.  Transformers and substations, many decades old and rarely upgraded, regularly fail and because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, replacement parts from European suppliers are subject to sanctions.

Sewage lines exploded in Volgograd, flooding two streets with waste and excrement, also causing a days-long interruption in water and electrical service to 200,000 people in the city.  In another, smaller town, after sewage lines burst in the streets, residents carried buckets of waste to a city council meeting that night.

At least 55 Americans and counting, including 25 in Erie County, New York, were killed in weather-related incidents over Christmas weekend, NBC News reports. The death toll is expected to climb as bodies turn up in cars and buried under drifts of snow – which is still falling in the Buffalo area and will do so until Tuesday afternoon. Other states to see deaths in the massive storm were Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

The Chinese government’s DeSantis-style approach to COVID-19 is going smoothly, as only 4,000 new cases have been officially recorded nationwide from the virus since the Xi regime did away with Faucist lockdowns to contain the virus, the New York Times reports. So what if officials in individual cities like Dongguan are logging between 250,000 and 300,000 new infections a day, or if a health minister in Zhejiang province estimates one million new cases daily. They’re not the real government and their asses are about to get fired for contradicting the official line from the Big Pooh Bear.

“Jab with or jab from. Anytime anyone under 70 dies now suddenly we should count as jab death like the covid death accounting” – The current top comment on the Breitbart story “UFC Hall of Famer Stephan Bonnar dead at age 45,” posted Monday. “Jab” of course meaning COVID vaccines.

“Wow! Didn’t think Ole Nate would have Stockholm syndrome. Oh well,at least he’s not at risk for clots, myocarditis, Gian berets, autoimmune disorders, and a whole lot more, according to the science.. the vitamins & NAC can also be taken orally. Ivmctn don’t get u buying more med” Bonnar tweeted in response to MMA fighter Nate Quarry criticizing Joe Rogan’s anti-vax bullshit on September 1st, 2021, which to us kind of strongly suggests Bonnar was not vaxxed. It took about three minutes of scrolling down his Twitter profile to find. RIP to Bonnar nonetheless.

South Korean officials on Monday ended an informal policy of seizing full body sex dolls at customs checkpoints and launched fighter jets in response to an incursion by North Korean drones, the Associated Press reports – both on the sex dolls thing and the drone incursion.

Now mind you the officials who made the sex dolls policy change and weren’t the same as the ones who ordered anti-air defenses to shoot down the North Korean drones. These decisions were reached in completely separate departments of the South Korean government. You could certainly say however that beyond the obvious and salient commonality of being actors of the same state, there’s also that both actions relate to permitting the presence within South Korean territory of foreign technology designed to automate certain tasks performed by human personnel. Those being copulation and aerial reconnaissance for the sex dolls and North Korean drones, respectively.

So we feel pretty comfortable putting these two separate AP-sourced upstream stories together in a single National Zero article. Yeah, the government did say “Sex dolls OK” and “North Korean drones NOT OK,” but come on. How much space is an American website supposed to devote to a country a majority of our readers have never visited? The Korean Peninsula gets plenty of coverage here, and if there’s a chance to streamline then why not take advantage of it? We’d be silly not to.

Three Russian air force personnel are dead after a Monday drone attack on the Engels Air Base in Southern Russia, 300 miles from the Ukrainian border, ABC News reports citing a Kremlin statement.

The drone was reportedly shot down by air defenses but still took out the three Russians as it crashed into the base, which has been used to launch missile attacks on Ukraine. “If the Russians thought the war would not touch them they were wrong,” said a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman.

Former and likely soon-to-be-again far right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu on Monday said he didn’t agree with his asshole son Yair’s call for senior prosecutors to be executed for investigating his father, Haaretz reports. “I love my son Yair who’s an independent person with his own opinions,” Netanyahu wrote about the Don Jr-like failson, adding “Although everyone has a right to express criticism, I didn’t agree with the things he said yesterday.”

“What happened is a malicious coup d’état,” Yair Netanyahu had said on his radio show on the “Galey Israel” station, calling Bibi’s prosecution “a treason, and everyone is welcome to read the Israeli criminal law book and look for themselves at what the punishment is. It’s not imprisonment.”

With temperatures hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit and wind chill much colder due to high winds, three buses from Texas dropped off more than 100 recent migrants in front of the Vice President’s residence on Christmas Eve, the latest in a string of human trafficking sponsored by the Republican Governor of Texas Greg Abbott.

Politico reports that between 110 and 130 migrants were dropped off by three buses late Saturday.  Local aid organizations had been told the group would have been dropped off Sunday, Christmas Day, a day chosen by Abbott apparently to give the proverbial finger to the lessons of the person whose birth he’s supposedly celebrating today.

More than 14,000 customers in Pierce County, Washington were without power Christmas morning after three electrical substations were attacked in what police are currently describing as vandalism, ABC News reports.

Unlike the attack in North Carolina earlier this month when two power substations were shot out with a rifle, these attacks were described as “break-ins” by authorities, implying that the hooligans responsible gained access on-site to damage equipment.  The attackers struck two substations operated by Tacoma Public Utilities and one by Puget Sound Energy.

The local sheriff’s office does not have any suspects or motive, nor do they know if the actions were coordinated or the result of three exceptionally coincidental attacks by separate nutjobs.

[CAUTION:  The following story contains spoilers some readers may not appreciate.]. After two years of a pandemic-created dip in demand, the market for Santa Clauses skyrocketed in 2022, with an increase in pay jumping even higher.

As the New York Times reports, the average rate for people paying to have someone portray Santa Claus at parties, stores or other events [I did mention spoilers were included]–but only when the real St. Nick was unavailable, of course–has jumped more than 35% from the 2020 pandemic year.  Part of the increase is due to increased demand, but also a reduced number of Claus cosplayers available to fill gigs.

The increased demand is due to the narrow window in which most children hold on to the Santa folk tale and the ability of parents to capture the photo of their precious little child kicking in screaming in the lap of a strange man in a red felt costume that smells vaguely of urine, vomit and chocolate.

From the entire Biden family to yours: Merry Christmas, America.

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 25, 2022

And now, a string of three posts on his personal posting platform from the titular head of the GOP:

A Christmas non-miracle occurred in Austria on Sunday as at least 10 people were buried by an avalanche at the Lech/Zuers free skiing area, Reuters reports. “We are doing everything we can to rescue the winter sports enthusiasts,” said the Lech municipality of the too-white Christmas for the unfortunate holiday skiers. At least 100 rescue personnel and volunteers were involved in the search for 10 or more Christmas miracles to undo the one big non-miraculous avalanche.

Veteran activist Mike Prysner this month guest hosted a special two-parter of the QAnon Anonymous podcast. The podcast’s subject matter often goes far beyond just QAnon-connected conspiracy theories and cults. And goddamn did Prysner tell a story about the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) and its leader Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, aka Chris Butler, a former hippie surfer dude turned maniacal cult leader. SIF could accurately be described as a slightly less militant and “Hindu” version of the Branch Davidians. The members of the cult sprinkle the sand Butler walks on into their food. They send their kids to a SIF-run boarding school in the Philippines where they’re subjected to all sorts of abuse. They are virulently homophobic and Islamophobic, and in the 1980s began running candidates for local offices in Hawaii, with one of their candidates making it to Maui County Council as both a Dem and Republican.

There is a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story: a silent night when all the world goes quiet.

And all the clamor, everything that divides us, fades away in the stillness of a winter’s evening.

I wish you that peace this Christmas Eve.

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 24, 2022

And from the titular leader of the GOP:

The transcript of former Trump White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien’s testimony to the House January 6th Select Committee from contains a pretty alarming exchange in which O’Brien said Moscow Mitch called him on January 8th, 2021 to ask to look into a supposed plot by Trump-loyal retired and active Navy SEALs to prevent Biden’s inauguration 12 days later.

O’Brien said he thinks McConnell’s intel came from former Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Karem, who left the Pentagon in 2018, but prior to that worked as a policy advisor for the Turtle Man. O’Brien looked into it and found nothing, as he had expected, and of course nothing actually happened. But what makes this so freaky is that it wasn’t coming from the Kraken or fucking Louie Gohmert with that stupid story about the Army Rangers fighting a gun battle at some secret server farm in Germany. Mitch McConnell may be a scumbag, but he isn’t dumb or prone to such batshit fantasies. Something scared him enough to want to pick up the phone.

My Election Case provided the world with evidence that proves our elections are run outside of the law. This Judge did not rule in our favor. However, for the sake of restoring faith and honesty in our elections, I will appeal his ruling.

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) December 24, 2022

An Arizona judge on Saturday tossed the MAGA hell witch’s lawsuit against Maricopa County, finding no merit to her case after – Surprise! – she provided no evidence of election malfeasance.

The Fulton County, Georgia special grand jury impaneled to investigate fat former President Trump and his minions’ criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in the state has wrapped up, having heard the testimony from dozens of high profile witnesses, the AP reports.

The next step is for District Attorney Fani Willis to convene another, non-special, grand jury to consider the evidence gathered and recommend charges for the fake electors, Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani, the Kraken, Mark Meadows, and of course the Orange God Emperor himself.

At least 15 Americans are dead following this week’s massive winter storm which pummeled most of the United States’ eastern two thirds, CNN reports. Most of the deaths came from car accidents, though at least one homeless person in Kentucky froze to death, and two others died of unspecified medical emergencies in upstate New York after ambulance crews were unable to reach them.

Obsessed with the location of an overweight, jolly elf making a fantastical worldwide journey in a sled with seemingly endless trunk space pulled by a squad of reindeer on magical steroids that help them fly, led by a formerly-ostracized fawn whose nose radiates in some freak evolutionary misstep that functions as aircraft navigation light for said flying sleigh?  Well, you’re in luck.  The federal government’s national defense complex is on the job, with NORAD tracking Santa’s route worldwide starting at 4 a.m. ET.

• Elon Musk is a goddamn Aesop fable about overvaluing self.  He just doesn’t know it yet.
• Unpopular opinion:  Biden is using Twitter far more effectively than Trump.  Trump used social media to inflame people’s fears and biases; Biden’s using it in a low-key manner to tout his administration’s accomplishments without boasting.  Trump’s continued use of social media led to burnout and to his overwhelming unpopularity.  It worked in 2016, but people quickly tired of the eternal outrage he emits.
• Would love to see a bit of performance art from Democrats during the next House session:  Demand that every House floor session and committee meeting begin with the member re-taking their oaths of office AND a hand-on-the-Bible oath to tell the truth under penalty of perjury.  While Democrats would also object, let the Republicans raise hell about it so they look like they’re scared to be required to be honest.
• Had TFG been the current president, the meeting with Zelenskyy would never have happened.  Trump would have been too scared to piss off Putin.  Biden embodies not just American leadership and support, but the support of the entire Western world for Ukraine in its fight to save democracy against the Kremlin.