Category: Uncategorized

A Republican judge in Missouri has refused to order the closure of a privately run boarding school in Stockton despite entreaties from local and state officials investigating multiple complaints of abuse, the Kansas City Star reports, siding with a defense attorney who claimed scheduled victim testimony was for the benefit of the media, not the pursuit of justice.

On Monday, Judge David Munton of Missouri’s 28th Circuit Court tutted down concerns by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and the Missouri Department of Social Services, both of which have pushed to close Agape Boarding School, a school with around 60 male residential students that bills itself as a “Christian Boarding School That Turns Around Rebellious Boys.”

Munton halted all proceedings yesterday, including the testimony of two former students who were prepared to provide traumatic accounts of the abuse they experienced at the hands of staff at the boarding school.  The government has argued that students still at the school are at risk of continuing threats to their health and safety. 

Some bloody bogan living in the bush far out southeast of Perth was keepin a wild kango in a cage on his property and the fuckin cunt done kicked him to death, the Associated Press reports. The jacks come and they’d no choice, they had to blast the kango since it developed what them animal experts and croc huntas call a “predatory instinct” towards bogans who ain’t too sharp.

They’s a lot of bogans like that out in the bush. Most of em bout as sharp as a kolly’s ears. Bloody wankers got to worry about crocs and dingos enough, the last thing they need is fuckin killeh kangos stompin on them for they jollys on a Saturday night. Hell of a unique situation, the first time a bogan got killed by a kanga since back in 1936. Imagine he feelin a little sheepie when Saint Peter askin him how’e ended up with a fuckin kango claw marks right down’is guts. Bet Saint Pete got a good chuckle from that and from the kango with a bullet in his kisser.

US Marshals enforcing a federal warrant shot a killed an alleged fugitive last month seconds after the man and other pallbearers loaded his father’s casket into a hearse to take it to a cemetery from the funeral home, the Washington Post reports.

Jason Arnie Owens was turning to embrace another mourner when a team of marshals approached the group and called Owens’ name.  Witnesses say Owens turned toward the men when they opened fire, killing him and spraying his blood on his 18-year-old son who was standing nearby.

“They yelled Jason’s name. They just said ‘Jason’ and then started firing,” family friend Cassandra Whitecotton said. “There was no identifications they were U.S. Marshals — anything. They did not render this man any aid at all. Never once they touched him to render any aid whatsoever.”

The inflation in the United States stayed relatively flat month over month, with the inflation rate compared to the previous year slowing from its peak in June, the Associated Press reports.

Consumer prices were up 8.5% in August compared to a year ago, an increase of just 0.1% month-over-month, with the core prices increasing 0.6% when volatile food and fuel prices are removed from the calculation.  Year-over-year, core prices increased 6.3%, driving largely by increases in rents, medical care services and new cars.  Food prices have increased 13.5% year over year, the biggest 12-month increase since 1979.

Though inflation appears to have peaked, economists predict it will take at least two years before the inflation rate drops to around 2%.

Right wing hell witch Giorgia Meloni is now a favorite to become Prime Minister in Italy, the Washington Post reports. Shocker: she uses the words “woke” and “cancel culture” a lot.

Woman who’s never once thought about what’s really in a Chicken McNugget and Trump advisor Laura Ingraham wants to dismantle all the federal law enforcement agencies because they’re doing their jobs, and you know that because the criminals are getting nervous.  Plus, why do I think she means revenge when she says reform?

“Congressman, if Republicans take back the House, the Senate, there has to be real reform, not just talk of reform but moves to break up these compani– th-th-these major, like, ATF, total corruption, ah, in the ATF.  Um, they have to be broken up, yes?” the Hausfrau suggests in a completely unleading question.

“FBI, DOJ.  Rest assured that myself and Jim Jordan and the rest of the Judiciary Committee will stop at nothing to ensure that freedom is back in America, that investigations are done to show how deep the Deep State is,” Florida Republican Congressman who’s not under investigation Greg Steube–oh, wait, you’re saying he is likely under investigation for his role in refusing to certify the results of the 2020 election?  My bad–anyway, Greg Steube, goes really authoritarian with the “freedom” and “investigations” threat.

After ten years, the city of San Bernardino, California’s bankruptcy case was formally closed by the court, marking the end of what was, at the time, the largest city to declare bankruptcy, the Associated Press reports.

While denying it had a problem with cheap coke and hookers, San Bernardino woke up one day in 2012 finding that it was running a $45 million budget shortfall.  The city of 210,000 became the largest American municipality to declare bankruptcy; Detroit’s bankruptcy the following year quickly took the title.

The city is currently paying off past debt while experiencing a $2.5 million annual budget surplus as a “rainy day fund.”  Since 2017, the city has been paying down its overdue bills, with 1,000 outstanding claims remaining open.

“I have it on good authority that Republicans in the Senate will bring up a national abortion law sometime this week which will have mandated time of 15 weeks, which is what the Mississippi law calls for,” Lego cosplayer and Trump advisor Sean Hannity said on his Fox show, likely because he was golfing with Republican leaders and Devin Nunes at Trump’s Virginia golf club.

Hannity’s testing the water for such a bill for Republicans that the GOP hopes–nay–prays will not portray them as the misogynistic sect who want to require women to breed. Facing utter embarrassment in the midterm elections because the revocation of body autonomy by the conservative Supreme Court fired up women, Democrats and people who don’t like forced pregnancies and dying women, the GOP is trying to find some way to twist things and claim, “the Democrats are the ones who want to enslave women!  We’re the good guys!  We are!  Forget that whole Roe thing.  It was a mistake, a one-time thing.  It’ll never happen again, I swear.”  The problem?  No GOP Senator who campaigned to eliminate abortion will be able to vote for it, and that’s roughly 96% of the caucus.

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin announced in a letter to the Justice Department that the committee is opening a formal investigation into pressure put on the Southern District of New York by then-president Donald Trump to indict political enemies like former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC read from the letter, which instructs the Justice Department to hand over its documents and communications between Main Justice in Washington, DC and the SDNY offices relating to specific investigations and prosecutions.

The investigation was prompted by a report last week in the New York Times based on a book by former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who served from January 2018 to June 2020.  In his new book, Berman alleged that senior members of the Justice Department pushed for him to stop, initiate or alter investigations to meet political ends.

Now to CLARIFY and make it EXTRA CLEAR about a mini-controversial editorial decision to certain folks in the audience: A number of subpoenas and search warrants were served by FBI agents to Trump minions last week over their failed coup attempt – and here’s an opportunity to add Trump 2020 Campaign manager Bill Stepien and CFO Sean Dollman to that list, per CNN. The first word of which we got on Friday, September 9th from Steve Bannon ranting on his bullshit show saying that at least 35 “senior MAGA Republicans, allies of Donald Trump” were “raided” by the FBI the previous day. We believed that the claim was suspect but almost certainly had some kernel of truth to it, though we admittedly did understate our skepticism in the writing.

Now today, with reports that as many as 40 Trump minions (and related entities, e.g. Women for Trump aka Women for America First) were served subpoenas, with at least two of them having their phones seized by FBI agents. We (really just “me,” as in Spartan) did not mean to use the word “raids” to directly describe these not very friendly visits from FBI agents to Trump minions, but merely to say kind of “Haha, fuck you skeptics, we were right to pick up Bannon’s claim and treat it as probably based in truth,” because something happened even if it fell short of an FBI raid or raids.

We did not on Friday or Monday think literally 35 houses had been torn apart by FBI agents and we certainly should have done better to make that belief as clear as possible. However it’s not unprecedented in this investigation either (and smart money says it happened again last week and we just don’t know about it yet). This all to say, get over it, imprecise language was used, happy to explain why, though not really feeling an apology is necessary here given the skepticism the first report was met with Friday. The difference between “raid” and a subpoena is not nothing, but it sure as fuck is a lot smaller than the difference between a subpoena and nothing at all.

It’s true:  Tucker Carlson thinks the world is about 500 years old, because nothing ever happened until guns become widespread in the white world.  And this screed came after Carlson called the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol “an election justice protest.”

In addition, we should say, we… obtained a subpoena… ah…this subpoena goes on to demand the communications from dozens of other Republicans and people who have spoke to them including state representative Jake Hoffman in Arizona, Republican National Committee member Kathrine Berden in Michigan, former US Representative Lou Barletta in the state of Pennsylvania and Republican state Party Secretary ShJames Graffenfreud [Editor’s note:  the man’s actual name is Jim DeGraffenreid] in Nevada, among dozens and dozens of others.  So, what is this about?  It can’t possibly be about JANUARY 6th, the fake insurrection, the only insurrection in history with no guns.

Public health officials are investigating the death of a patient in Los Angeles County, California as the second possible death due to monkeypox in the United States, NBC News reports.  The first suspected monkeypox fatality was reported in Texas in late August.

Nearly 22,000 monkeypox cases have been confirmed in the United States since this outbreak occurred earlier this year, with more than 57,000 cases confirmed around the world.

Never one to put national security first, Donald Trump and his lawyers filed their opposition to a Justice Department request that would have allowed the DOJ to continue its review of the classified documents recovered during the August search of Trump’s reunion venue and buffet club Mar-a-Lago, Reuters reports.

More than 100 separate classified documents were among 11,000 government documents found at the club.  Trump requested a special master to review all the documents for issues of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege, something a Trump-appointed federal lawyer in Florida shockingly granted.

Now, federal investigators and national security officials want to assess the damages, but cannot because the judge’s order precludes the FBI, one of 18 national security agencies, from accessing the information.

Justice Department lawyers on Monday said in a motion they agree that one of the Trump team’s picks to serve as special master to review the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, Eastern District of New York Senior US Judge Raymond J. Dearie, is an appropriate choice, which probably means Trump’s lawyers will think it’s some kind of trap and try to back out of suggesting Dearie.

Oh, thank gawd, that’s been settled:  the two Welsh corgis who were constant companions at Queen Elizabeth’s side will now go to live in Royal Lodge, an manor on Windsor estate and the residence of the Duke and Duchess of York, Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Washington Post reports.

The two dogs, Muick and Sandy, were selected by the Duchess, and they were gifted to Queen Elizabeth from Prince Andrew.  The fate of the Queen’s lesser known cocker spaniel, Lissy, is unknown, as is the fate of the Queen’s unnamed corgi-dachshund mix, known as a dorgi.

Well it turns out National Zero was mostly right when we only semi-credulously reported last week on Steve Bannon’s claim that 35 of his fellow Trump minions had been “raided” by the DOJ in another sweep of targets/subjects/witnesses in the Jan 6th criminal investigation, as the New York Times reports lawyers Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman had their phones seized, while douchebag Dan Scavino and disgraced former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik were among as many as 40 subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in the investigation into the failed Trump 2020 coup attempt.

The names of the others were not available yet, though this tracks with earlier reporting that scumbag Stephen Miller and another worm, Will Russell, were served subpoenas by FBI agents.

A three judge panel on the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling validating the signatures petitioning for a statewide ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana offenses from criminal records in the state this November, much to the chagrin of the conservative assholes who want it blocked, the Missouri Independent reports. The deadline to lock down the ballot itself is Tuesday, however the “Protect Our Kids PAC” dickbags said they’re taking it to the state Supreme Court to see if democracy can be defeated over some bullshit technical issue with the signature verification process there.

“We feel like it’s a very cut and dry point of law,” anti-weed activist Luke Niforatos said, “where these clerks have a statutory authority to disqualify these signatures, but they do not have the authority to re-qualify them. And that’s just a matter of law.” It’s unclear if this jerkoff’s opposition is sincere or if this is more of a matter of timing, that if the measure was attached to the primary ballot last month that Republicans mostly wouldn’t really give a shit, but in November it will probably drive extra turnout from younger, and therefore Dem-leaning, voters. Disgraced former President Trump reportedly freaked out ahead of a 2020 legal weed referendum in Arizona, which passed by a far wider margin (655,018 votes) than his loss to Biden (10,457).

Fearful that far-right candidate Don Bolduc will win the GOP primary for the New Hampshire Senate nomination, Republicans have started to dump money into the last days before the primary to defeat his campaign, which is currently leading the polls, ABC News reports.

Bolduc goes far beyond traditional Trumpism into the whacky and conspiratorial:  he has called New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, a “Chinese Communist sympathizer.”  He has advocated that the US put Americans military on the ground in Ukraine’s fight against Russian invaders.  And he holds the more mainstream GOP position that the 2020 Presidential election was rigged.

A retired US Army brigadier general, Bolduc ran in the 2020 New Hampshire Republican Senate primary, losing to Trump-endorsed Corky Messner, who lost the general election to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.  In the 2022 primary race, however, he holds a double-digit lead in Tuesday’s primary, with a University of New Hampshire poll from the end of August showing him with a 21 percentage point lead over Republican state senate leader Chuck Morse, his closest opponent.

President Joe Biden will outline his plans for finance research on finding a comprehensive treatment to cure cancer, a mission started during the Obama administration.

“BREAKING: Ukraine says that the Russian military has suspended new unit arrivals in Ukraine,” reports Oxford Geopolitics egghead Samuel Ramani, which we clipped verbatim as to not garble what an expert is saying secondhand. Obviously the situation is deteriorating very rapidly for Russia, but we don’t want to ascribe any more to this than what a smart guy says is “BREAKING.”

Separately the Daily Beast reports Putin has stopped showing up to military strategy meetings in the Kremlin, which we will happily ascribe to him losing interest in his long-held personal ambition to annihilate his smaller neighbor. He worked hard for more than two decades to wreak endless political and economic havoc on Ukraine, then six months of death and destruction by military means, only to simply give up after a bad week. It’s undeniable that Vlad is a low energy cuck.