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The 22-year-old gunman who killed at least five in a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs is the grandson of a California Trump-alligned Republican member of the state assembly, and he had a run-in with police after threatening to blow up his mother’s house, the Washington Post reports.

Anderson Lee Aldrich’s grandfather is reportedly Randy Voepel, who represents the 71st District in the California state assembly.  Advocacy groups called for Randy Voepel’s expulsion from the assembly for calling for “Lexington and Concord” in the days prior to the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

Aldrich reportedly had an assault rifle and possibly one other weapon when he shot up the Club Q in Colorado Springs, killing at least five and injuring at least 25.  In June, Aldrich’s mother called police and told them her son threatened her and said he had a bomb planted in the house.  Police evacuated the neighborhood and confronted Aldrich at a neighbor’s home, which led to a one-hour standoff.  No bomb was found, but Aldrich was charged with felony menacing, kidnapping and other charges.

Maricopa County, Arizona Supervisor Bill Gates is in hiding and under the protection of a sheriff’s department security detail after receiving multiple death threats from MAGA terrorists blaming him for Republican defeats in the top-tier statewide midterm races, Fox 10 Phoenix reports.

Gates, a Republican, has defended the county’s election system after an issue with printers on Election Day led to numerous tabulation machines being unable to read some ballots. Fans of MAGA psychopath loser gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake have seized on the fuckup as purported evidence of a “rigged election.” It also definitely doesn’t help Gates that he shares his name with the Microsoft founder who right wingers think put mind-control nanobots in the COVID-19 vaccines.

To the delight of fans who chanted “Queremos cerveza, queremos cerveza!” because the fucking pricks refused to sell them any, the Ecuadorean national team defeated 2022 World Cup host nation Qatar 2-0 on Sunday, AFP reports. Serves them right for not serving booze.

You encourage this type of hatred. Get off Twitter and start looking inward.

— Chasten Glezman Buttigieg (@Chasten) November 20, 2022

A number of QAnon fans raged this week following disgraced former President Trump’s official 2024 campaign launch, seeing it as tantamount to conceding the 2020 election, Insider reports. “He just conceded 2020 election we’re just gonna skip over the 2020 and 2022 fraud. There’s no justice for treason, there’s no justice for crimes against humanity,” wrote one Q cultist on Telegram.

“Hey you guys, the elections are all rigged… But vote for me again! This is literally 1984-tier doublethink,” another wrote on the GreatAwakening.win forum. “I’m fucking done with this political shit show and WILL NEVER VOTE AGAIN! FUCK POLITICS AND THE NAZI REGIME!” said another one, though that could have been a liberal troll trying to get them to self-disenfranchise.

Five patrons are dead and at least another 18 were injured when a gunman opened fire Saturday at Club Q, an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, CNN reports. Details about the gunman were not immediately available. In a Facebook post on Sunday, Club Q credited patrons with subduing the scumbag, writing “Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community. Our prays and thoughts [sic] are with all the victims and their families and friends. We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

UPDATE 11/20/2022 10:35 AM EST: The shooter has been identified as Anderson Lee Aldrich, age 21 or 22, who was previously reported to have made bomb threats against his mom.

After his idiotic poll finished with a 52% to 48% margin, Elon Musk announced that “the people have spoken” and that Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Twitter.  Trump has said he wouldn’t return to Twitter, opting to make his failing social media venture Truth Social his outlet.

UPDATE 11/19/2022 8:40 PM EST: @realDonaldTrump is live once again.

Let’s see how long Donald holds out for.

In the course of investigating the leak this spring of a draft opinion overturning the right to body autonomy and the right to access birth control, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts got a letter from a DC-area evangelical minister telling him he learned of a 2014 Supreme Court decision that allowed employers to exclude birth control from health care coverage before it was released because Justice Samuel Alito told a dinner guest.

According to the New York Times, Rev. Rob Schenck said that in June 2014, one of his donors told him she might be able to learn the unreleased outcome of the Burrell v. Hobby Lobby case because she was having dinner at Alito’s house in the coming days.  The donor knew Schenck had an interest in the case, and after her dinner, she called Schenck to say Alito told her it was decided in Hobby Lobby’s favor.  This knowledge allowed Schenck and other anti-choice/anti-birth control advocates to prepare a media blitz.

The Supreme Court is investing the leak of the draft of the decision of the Dobbs decision that eliminated a medical right to privacy for pregnant people, overturning the right to an abortion decided in the Roe v Wade case.  Alito also wrote the Dobbs decision draft, which was leaked and later published by Politico, who did not disclose the source of the text.

In what will surely come to be known as “weather reparations” in conservative media, the United States is discussing terms for which it would sign on to a new agreement between the European Union and more than 100 developing nations relating to compensation for damages from climate change, the Washington Post reports.

Negotiated during the UN climate conference, known as COP27, being held in Egypt, the agreement would provide funds to nations impacted by things like persistent droughts, rising sea levels, and changing weather patterns to help them mitigate damage or in some cases, migrate populations.  Talks about the fund started with discussions between European nations and archipelagic states for assistance programs, and progressed into a fund covering a multitude of climate issues impacting poor nations that were typically colonies of European nations.

The United States has previously resisted the formation of such a fund, feeling that previous proposals improperly assign blame or open up contributing nations to liability suits, damage claims and other potential dangers.  This fund does no imply guilt and caps potential claims.  A White House official said US contributions will come out of an $11 billion expenditure Biden has already proposed to help underdeveloped nations tackle climate change’s impact.

Somewhere out in the vast multiverse there’s a world in which National Zero is strictly publishing articles about stuff like morons getting killed dancing atop a moving 18-wheeler and snowplows being brought into clear a mass mink roadkill. Well, strictly those sort of articles rather than just the darkly humorous momentary diversions from our politics-focused coverage they were in this reality.

Because in that dimension we’re too depressed to want anything to do with politics at all really. It’s where Trafalgar polling was right and the Republicans won 60+ seats in the House, have a 55 seat majority in the Senate, and – worse yet -hardcore MAGA scumbags like Kari Lake, Tudor Dixon, Tim Michels, Mark Finchem, Jim Marchant, Kristina Karamo, and Doug Mastriano won their crucial swing state contests, positioning themselves to rig the 2024 election for Republicans.

It’s a world in which fat former President Trump this week had the wind at his back announcing his 2024 comeback bid, giddily anticipating two years of commanding his loyal scumbags in the new deep red House to impeach Joe Biden again and again and again. The MAGA trolls would take over the entire internet while libs would stare glassy-eyed at Netflix reality shows, eating bowl after bowl of Count Chocula with Nesquik in their pjs. Chuck Todd is cackling and chittering with delight.

The Board of Supervisors in rural Cochise County, Arizona, voted 2 to 1 against certifying the results of the midterm elections on Friday after some MAGA assholes convinced them the US Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for the companies that test the vote tabulators to lapse, which in turn voided the certifications all the state’s tabulators, the AP reports.

Naturally the people who actually know what they’re talking about called bullshit. “The equipment used in Cochise County is properly certified under both federal and state laws and requirements. The claims that the SLI testing labs were not properly accredited are false,” state Elections Director Kori Lorick told the board. Loser Republican Secretary of State candidate and hardcore MAGA election conspiracy theorist Mark Finchem was predictably thrilled by their refusal, tweeting that “Arizona cannot certify any election results until all counties have rendered certified results.”

It’s not clear if Finchem was actually citing state law or just making shit up. All 15 Arizona counties face a November 28th deadline to certify the results of the election so the state can certify on December 5th. If he’s just making shit up then it does nothing to change the outcome of the biggest statewide races, just the margin. For example, Dem Senator Mark Kelly defeated Reptilian humanoid Blake Masters 1,320,066 to 1,194,534 statewide to win a full six year term. If Cochise County is left out of that total then Kelly still wins 1,300,064 to 1,168,995. All it does is increase Kelly’s margin by 5,537 votes. So by all means, the MAGA hillbillies in Cochise should be allowed to fuck around to their diseased hearts’ content. The state can move on with or without them.

• Nancy Pelosi will go down in history as the most consequential Speaker of the House in US history.  Not just for being the first woman in the seat, but also for shepherding landmark legislation like the ACA and the Inflation Reduction Act through–and then literally staring down Trumpism.
• In the midterm, Vermont became the final state to elect a woman to Congress.  In 2022.  The state’s first female representative will take office the same day the first female Speaker steps down.
• The appointment of the Special Counsel shows (1) the investigation into Trump’s malfeasance has been going on for a long time at the DOJ and it is not complete; and (2) there are charges coming.  You don’t appoint a Special Counsel to start a new investigation or take over the end of an existing investigation, and you don’t appoint one if you think no charges are likely.
• Trump calculated the announcement of his candidacy would tamp down the various investigations into his questionable actions.  Garland countered with the appointment of a Special Counsel who will have independent indictment power.  Once again, someone calls Trump’s bluff and Trump loses.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XCVI”

Reinstate former President Trump

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022

Donald Trump’s Save America PAC and the Republican National Committee have paid at least $500,000 to three law firms defending the Trump Organization or its officers, including convicted criminal and former company CFO Allen Weisselberg, CBS News reports.

When Weisselberg’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante of the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft law firm was asked about a $75,000 payment his firm received from Save America PAC, Gravante could not confirm it was to cover his fees.

Law firm van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin, representing a Trump company in the case, received $100,00 from Save Amerca PAC and nearly $150,000 from the RNC.  Michael van der Veen could not specify if his firm was doing other work for those entities.  His law firm has 13 attorneys, according to its website, and he is listed as the senior partner.  One of his partners is Bruce Castor, who represented Donald Trump during Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Attention QAnon fanboys! We made you an awesome meme template for new Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith! No need to explain it to you guys, you’ve done your own research already and decided that given Smith’s resume as a prosecutor at the Hague, he’s the vanguard of the globalist Deep State and thus a sworn enemy of President Trump and patriots like you.

To regular National Zero readers, sorry. The joke wrote itself. We couldn’t not do it when we saw the picture of Smith in his vaguely new age-y war crimes tribunal court robe. You knew where this was going anyway, that all the right wing “oppo” is going to be about Smith’s connections to the international elite and blah blah blah. Might as well get ahead of it. Figure around Monday morning at the latest the fanboys will have their talking points together about Smith. It’ll be all over Mediaite, Breitbart, the Gateway Pundit, etc… If it isn’t already. Should’ve checked first.

“I personally think that they probably have the basis for legitimately indicting the president [Trump],” Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr says in an interview on PBS.  “I don’t know, I’m speculating.  But, but given what’s gone on, I think they probably have the evidence that would check the box.”

According to testimony in the company’s criminal trial, Don Jr. and Eric Trump gave Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg a $200,000 raise on top of his million dollar salary after they learned of his efforts to avoid paying taxes by compensating himself and other employees off the books, NBC News reports.

Weisselberg testified that in 2017, as Donald Trump took office as  president and his sons worked to make the family business appear legitimate, Weisselberg told the sons about having to stop the illegal pay scam, which resulted in an effect loss of income for himself and other employees.  To compensate for the loss, the sons gave Weisselberg a $200,000 annual salary increase.

Fresh off her second defeat in three months to Dem Congresswoman Mary Peltola, dumbass former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Thursday was the honorary first signatory to a ballot initiative petition to end ranked-choice voting in the state, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Speaking to a crowd of several dozen fans gathered at a church in Anchorage, Palin said ranked choice voting is “whack” and promised to “fight for what’s right and to lead the rest of the nation in getting back to fair, free, transparent, clear elections.” The effort to revert back to regular voting is being pushed by a newly formed PAC called “Alaskans for Honest Government,” which – surprise! – does not publicly disclose the identities of its current financial backers.

Semi-Robin Hood-like figure Elizabeth Holmes, who stole from oligarchic criminals Rupert Murdoch, Betsy DeVos, and the Waltons of Walmart fame and gave to herself, was sentenced Friday to 135 months in federal prison for her scam with some fake blood testing device, Bloomberg reports.

We vehemently disagree with this sentence. And only half-jokingly. As far as we know Holmes wasn’t Bernie Madoff, she didn’t wipe out the life savings of regular upper middle class retirees on this scam (and if she did then fuck her, by all means lock her up then). It was all rich assholes getting bilked. Nobody suffered besides her employees who lost their jobs and if that’s not a crime when Elon Musk does it then it shouldn’t be a crime for Holmes. A few years probation and community service should do fine, incarcerating her is pointless and a waste of taxpayer resources.