Category: Uncategorized

A World War II landing craft known as a Higgins boat has been exposed by the receding waters of northern California’s Shasta Lake, which has been hit by climate change and drought, dropping water levels to previously-unseen levels, The Guardian writes.

Designed by a New Orleans boat manufacturer, Higgins boats were shallow-draft barge-like boats made of wood, typically with a landing ramp in the front.  Numbers on the boat’s ramp show that it was part of Attack Transport USS Monrovia, which served as George Patton’s command ship during the occupation of Sicily in 1943.  Monrovia was soon after reassigned to the Pacific, where it participated in six D-Day invasions during the US military’s island-hopping campaign.

However, there are no records about how the landing craft made it from Monrovia to a lake 150 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean.  The boat does not have registration tags from the state, nor do any locals have a memory of seeing a similar vessel on the lake.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez called on the Biden Administration to halt all arms sales and intel sharing with Saudi Arabia in response to the kingdom’s cutting oil production to help Russia, the Associated Press reports.

Last week, Saudi Arabia and Russia persuaded OPEC to cut world oil supplies by two million barrels per day in order to raise the price of oil, which would help cash-strapped Russia.  One of the few valuable exports Russia can make to some nations is its oil, so higher prices help raise cash.  More cash allows Russia to carry on its invasion of Ukraine.

Menendez, however, wants to make the security of the Saudi royal family a bargaining chip and he said he “will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.”

As the sole finalist to become the president of the University of Florida, Republican Senator from Nebraska Ben Sasse seems pretty fluid on his views of LGBTQ rights now that he’s got one foot out the door of the Senate chamber, the Washington Post reports.

At a closed student forum on campus, Sasse was asked if he would support the LGBTQ community at the university given his previous ardent rejection of gay rights laid out in the Obergefell decision.  He responded, “Your question is: Do I support and affirm everybody in this community?  Absolutely.”

Sasse has said he would resign his Senate seat the moment he would be named president by the board of trustees, hinting that he’s tiring of the rank partisanship of Washington.  “One of the things that’s appealing about this, frankly, is the opportunity to step back from politics,” he said.

“The leftists really want to destroy the world in nuclear fire because you have a fetish for hating Russians and Putin because they’ve become a little bit more Christian,” notes Alex Jones, a man touting himself as a “Christian” who sent a photo of his naked wife to Roger Stone and owes the families of murder victims tens of millions of dollars.  “Again, they don’t hate Russia because they’re the former Soviet Union.  The left hates Russia because they’re becoming more like the American Midwest.  They’re becoming more conservative.  They’re against transgenderism and teaching five-year-olds about sex and all the rest of this, so that’s why Hollywood and the Rob Reiners of the world literally have a fetish for destroying Russia.”

On this Indigenous Peoples Day–yeah, yeah, yeah, we know:  Columbus, blah blah blah–a new project allows you to see what indigenous tribe’s land you’re squatting on, covering areas on every inhabited continent, NPR reports.

Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led nonprofit based in Canada, created the map using historic territories of native peoples, incorporating areas that may have overlapped through history or due to nomadic tribal traditions.  Users can enter a modern address, city or ZIP code to zoom into that area to research land claims.  Filters allow you to superimpose “settler lines” that show contemporary names.

“In reality, we know that the land is not something to be exploited and ‘owned,’ but something to be honoured and treasured,” the organization says. “However, because of the complexities of history, the kind of mapping we undertake is an important exercise, insofar as it brings an awareness of the real lived history of Indigenous peoples and nations in a long era of colonialism.”

The dictatorial president of Belarus, a strong Russian ally, said Russian troops will be allowed on Belarussian soil to form a joint force with his nation’s military, the New York Times reports.

After returning from a two-day summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarussian President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko told his nation’s military leaders, “This won’t be just a thousand troops.”  He explained, in a reportedly rambling statement, that they will form a “joint regional group of troops” to counter “possible aggression against our country” by NATO and Ukraine.

Russian troops amassed in Belarus prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Thousands of Russian soldiers and scores of tanks rolled over the border from Belarus into Ukraine in the early days of the invasion as Russia went on to fail to capture Kyiv.

Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the scam company created as a shortcut for disgraced former President Trump’s lame Truth Social platform to go public, has again delayed its shareholder vote to approve a one year delay for the merger, the Wall Street Journal reports. The date: November 3rd, 2022, two years to the day after another vote that went poorly for the Donald.

Should they fail to get 65% of the shareholders – a great many of them probably fanboys who had never traded before in their lives but bought it because DWAC was a “meme stock” – to vote in favor of the delay DWAC will liquidate and the shareholders will be automatically refunded.

Police in an area around 100 miles north of Portland have reported a number of training grenades have washed ashore on beaches in and around Newport, Oregon, prompting officials to warn people to stay away from the devices if they find one, USA Today reports.

The grenades are white cylinders that do not explode like a traditional hand grenade, but instead make a loud noise and percussion.  A sales flier for the M116A1 hand grenade simulator notes that it creates a 123-decibel noise and some flash.  Although it is not a lethal weapon, activating the device could cause permanent injury to people standing nearby when it activates.

Police have no idea where the grenades came from, with the most likely explanation that they were part of a shipping container or other crate of cargo that got dropped into the sea accidentally by either a military vessel or a commercial cargo ship.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office acknowledged Friday they fucked up and mailed 30,000 postcards to non-citizens residing in the state encouraging them to register to vote, the AP reports.

The error occurred when a state worker accidentally imported a list of non-citizen driver’s license holders into the mailing fulfillment software. The Secretary of State’s office will notify the drivers of the mistake in a second mailing, far too late to prevent the fanboys from having a screaming meltdown and tearfully claiming Colorado is trying to allow non-citizens to vote, even though these non-citizens would be immediately rejected if they tried to register at the URL on the postcards.

“[Secretary of State] Jena Griswold continues to make easily avoidable errors just before ballots go out,” Colorado Republican Party chair Kristi Burton Brown said Monday, as if on cue.

“A trail of blood is left behind the Russian delegation when it enters the General Assembly,” Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations said during his address Monday, calling out the invaders of his nation.  “And the hall is filled up with the smell of smoldering human flesh.  That is what we have tolerated too long in Syria.  That is what is happening today in Ukraine.”

Happy Columbus Day Libs! You got owned by having a federal holiday off! It’s offensive to you to acknowledge Columbus Day because of the racial baggage of colonialism and the fact that Christopher Columbus was, by modern standards, a complete asshole. Even though the vast majority of Democrat voters don’t really think too hard about such things, MAGAmericans still stick it to you by reminding you of his legacy which they’re proud of for some reason. Columbus was a hero to them because a vocal minority of leftists want him erased completely the same as a much larger section have more successfully driven an erasure of Robert E Lee and other Confederates.

TRIGGER ALERT! LOL!

See libs, you have to be offended by Columbus Day. It’s the rules. You have to get really angry and demand that he be canceled. You have to be as frustrated and enraged as lots of MAGA voters are by Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth. Those are racist toward white people. And Pride Month is anti-heterosexual. And Labor Day is too pro-union. There’s no alternative viewpoint.

National Zero will resume our regular coverage now that we’ve given our right wing readers their marching orders on how to promote Columbus Day to the libs. We hope they found this informative.

The president of the Los Angeles City Council is resigning the chair, although she will remain on the council, after audio of offensive comments she made a year ago became public Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Democrat Nury Martinez, who has been president since December 2019, was caught on audio making disparaging remarks about colleagues on the council, including some racist comments about their constituencies.  Some members of the council have said they will take up the issue of whether Martinez should remain on the council.

In a recording of a conversation from October 2021 released Sunday, Martinez said council member Mike Bonin, who is white, treated his adopted Black son “as an accessory” and said the child was “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.”  She also said the sizeable population of people of descended from migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico were “lot of little short dark people.”  About Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, she said, “Fuck that guy. … He’s with the Blacks.”

In a sign that she could be getting close to flipping on the Orange Warlord, terrible Trump lawyer/OAN host Christina Bobb spoke with federal prosecutors last week, NBC News reports.

Bobb faces potential criminal liability for signing at least one statements about how many documents were returned to the government prior to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

It appears someone has decided to spam the Fat Bear Week poll, but fortunately it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent. We have discarded the fake votes and today’s official totals are:

747: 37,940
435: 30,430

— Katmai National Park (@KatmaiNPS) October 10, 2022

The “747” and “435” refer to bears living on the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska running for fat bear of the year. Why they have numbers instead of names we do not know.

Vermont State Police press release: “On October 9, 2022 at approximately 2251 hours, State Police in Saint Albans were notified of a vehicle that struck a cow on Route 105 in the town of Sheldon. Initial information was given that it occurred near box #5870 which was just before the Abbey Restaurant. Dispatch advised that there was a nurse on scene that advised the operator of the vehicle was deceased. The cow was also deceased on scene. Upon arrival, it was determined that the vehicle involved was a 2000 Jaguar Type S sedan. The vehicle had been heading westbound near the above location when it struck a cow that was out in the roadway. The operator was determined to be Jason St Pierre (age 48), and his passenger was Cody Sheperd (age 30).”

“EMS attempted CPR on St Pierre on scene, but he died from injuries sustained in the crash. At this time, the investigation shows that speed is a major factor. This includes the passenger advising Troopers on scene that they were traveling over 100 mph at the time of the crash. Anyone who may have witnessed the crash is asked to call the Vermont State Police in Saint Albans at 802-524-5993. The investigation is ongoing, including information relating to the owner of the cow”

A Russian hacker undertook a series of attacks on American airports’ public-facing websites, ABC News reports, taking down the sites but not impacting any vital services at the airports like air traffic control, security or communications.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates six airports in the New York City metropolitan region, reported the LaGuardia Airport website was knocked out around 3 a.m. ET Monday morning.  Other attacks were reported at Des Moines International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport, with most able to get their sites up within hours.

Saying “It’s an inconvenience,” one of the authorities said when asked for a comment, noting that the attack was a “denial of public access” attempt, knocking out the consumer-facing websites that promote airport services, features and conveniences.

A new survey by Axios/Ipsos finds that 36% of Republican voters and 25% of Democrat voters responded “Likely” to the question of “If your party does not win control of Congress, how likely are you to blame election fraud?” The 11% difference isn’t all that big when you think about it, but the more striking result is actually in the “Unlikely” and “Do not know” answers. 60% of Democrats said “Unlikely” and only 36% of Republicans said the same while 15% of Dems said “Do not know” to 26% of Republicans. So maybe the real headline should be that more than two-thirds of GOP voters are open to the idea of blaming fraud before the election, while only 40% of Dems say the same.

The survey also found Democrats leading Republicans 35% to 31% on the generic congressional ballot, raising the question of why the hell this poll’s numbers are still so low for both sides.

https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1579468553136508929

Of course New Yorkers deserve a safe city, but the shooting Rudy is referring to happened roughly 50 miles from the city’s eastern limits in Queens. For a former mayor to not know the basics of his city’s geography us pretty impressive, even for a mentally senescent alcoholic like Giuliani.

Weak and cowardly House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy tried to act like disgraced former President Trump was completely unaware his fans were sacking the Capitol during the initial stages of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection when defending his Orange God Emperor in a June 2021 meeting with former DC cop Mike Fanone, Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, and Gladys Sicknick, mother of slain Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, CNN reports on a preview of Fanone’s new book.

“I’m just telling you from my phone call, I don’t know that he did know that,” said McCarthy about how much Trump knew about what was going down at the Capitol in audio secretly recorded by Fanone, who wasn’t having it. “While you were on the phone with him, I was getting the shit kicked out of me!” said Fanone, who wrote he “asked McCarthy why he would take credit for Trump’s pathetic, half-hearted late-afternoon video address to his followers. I said, ‘Trump says to his people, ‘This is what happens when you steal an election. Go home. I love you.’ What the fuck is that? That came from the president of the United States.” Gladys Sicknick also ripped into McCarthy’s lame defense in the meeting, saying Trump “already knew what was going on. People were fighting for hours and hours and hours. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Fanone also raged at the feckless weakling McCarthy for letting 21 House Republicans vote against honoring the cops who had defended the Capitol during the assault. “I told McCarthy I felt betrayed by the way some Republicans were twisting a riotous assault on law enforcement officers into a fundraising grift… ‘It’s crap,’ I said. ‘It’s disgraceful,'” and that “McCarthy offered no response.”

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on Monday reached an “agreement” – but probably more like a “we have no other fucking choice but to help because we’re even more of a pariah state than Russia” – with his boss Vladimir Putin “to deploy a joint regional group of troops,” which, along with his accusations that Ukraine is planning an attack on Belarus appears to signal that he’s committing his military to joining Russia’s faltering war effort against their democratic neighbor.

It’s not clear why it took this long for Belarus to actively enter the conflict, as the satellite dictatorship welcomed Russian troops to use their territory to stage their southward offensive on Kyiv, just 53 miles from the border with Belarus (We had even mistakenly reported that Belarusian troops were in the convoy of Russian troops moving south toward Kyiv via Pripyat when the attack began back in February). Whatever the case is, it would seem that this is Lukashenko’s real birthday gift to Vlad, who was probably less than impressed with the tractor.