More than three-quarters of the guns confiscated by police officials in various Caribbean nations from 2018 to 2022 were manufactured in the United States and illegally imported to the nations, precipitating a spike in gang-related violence in places like Haiti and Jamaica, CNN reports.
So while the guns themselves did commit the violence, the increasing presence of the guns in the 25 nations surveyed lead to increasing gun violence. Of the nearly 5,400 weapons recovered, 88% were handguns.
Maori members of the New Zealand Parliament performed a haka, a traditional dance and chant designed to intimidate opponents, to protest a bill that would undermine more than 180 years of precedent regarding the status of Indigenous peoples in the nation. It’s a much more effective photo op than Jim Jordan holding up posterboard during a Weaponization Committee hearing.
Yup. Politico reports none other than Bobby Jr is convicted felon President-Elect Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and yeah, it looks pretty official.
“Four Los Angeles area residents were arrested today after a Department of Insurance investigation found the suspects allegedly committed insurance fraud by claiming a bear had caused damage to their vehicles, but it was actually a person in a bear costume. Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, of Glendale, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village, have all been charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy. The Department’s investigation began after an insurance company suspected fraud. The suspects claimed on January 28, 2024 in Lake Arrowhead a bear entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost and caused interior damage to the vehicle. They provided video footage to their insurance company, which showed the alleged bear in the vehicle,” says the California Department of Insurance in a press release.
“Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume. Detectives found two additional insurance claims with two different insurance companies, for the suspects with the same date of loss and at the same location. Each involved two different vehicles, a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350, and the suspects again appeared to use a bear costume to make it appear that a bear also damaged those vehicles. They provided the video footage to the other insurance companies as well to substantiate their claims.”
“To further ensure it was not actually a bear in the video, the Department had a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife review the three alleged bear videos and they also opined it was clearly a human in a bear suit. After executing a search warrant, detectives found the bear costume in the suspects’ home. The insurance companies were defrauded of $141,839, because of the alleged fraud committed. Detectives were assisted by the Glendale Police Department and the California Highway Patrol. The San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting this case.”
Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn on Thursday told a Reuters reporter “there should not be any limitation” on the Senate’s investigation as the chamber considers whether they should confirm credibly suspected statutory rapist Matt Gaetz to lead the US Justice Department, “including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” and when asked if that meant the full report that Gaetz so far has prevented from release by resigning his seat, Cornyn said “Absolutely.”
Of course Cornyn and other GOP senators getting to see it versus whether it would ever see the light of day are two completely separate things. Probably makes a leak far more likely though.
Non-Correction: The current version of this article misspelled Senator John Cornyn’s name as ‘Cornhole’ in the headline. National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.
These confirmation hearings may just save cable TV for the short term.
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) November 13, 2024
As dark as the current moment is for a lot of people, there’s also something refreshing and liberating about having an answer to the vexing question of whether the collective hive mind of “the media” is worth saving after they failed again and again and again to just be real with people… and here the rodent-faced embodiment of some of its worst qualities provides us with such stunning clarity.
Now are there plenty of good, decent, honest people in the mainstream media? Yes. Most of them are, actually. Can the reporting continue to be a useful resource? We would scarcely exist as a site if everything had to be sourced from social media, message board posts, press releases, and so on.
But sometimes we cite from Fox News – hell even Breitbart every now and then – as our upstream source with little to no qualification of their reporting. That doesn’t mean we suddenly trust or absolve them of having an agenda, it just means in that specific situation the info appears real.
From here on out the same largely applies to the legacy and legacy-ish media: The Times, The Post, CNN, CBS, and so on. They’ve made their agenda clear enough for some time, but here’s Chuck Todd ending all ambiguity and grey area. And that’s why we in the anti-MAGA media sphere can feel a sense of liberation and purpose, that even if we lean on their coverage factually, it’s on us to spread the actual takeaways and implications that the lamestream cunts bury under sane-washing and both-siding. It’s the only way forward in the four year shitshow ahead.
The world-class standard in satirical news coverage, The Onion, has won the auction to buy the Infowars brand, Variety reports. The families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims, whose successful lawsuits against conspiracy freak Alex Jones had forced the asset sale, had lowered the asking price specifically so The Onion, bought up by former Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson earlier this year, could acquire Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts, and the production equipment used to put Jones on the air.
Asked why convicted felon President-Elect Trump picked credibly suspected statutory rapist Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, a minion of the Orange God Emperor texted an Axios reporter a clip of a colleague’s story about a Wednesday FBI raid on the home of scam political betting site Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan, telling the reporter Donald wants to “stop shit like this.”
Gaetz, who resigned just two days before the House Ethics Committee was to drop a report outlining all the sex trafficking, drug use, and bribery accusations against him, had convinced Trump he was the victim of a Deep State witch hunt and thus the perfect pick for US Attorney General.
CBS’s Robert Costa meanwhile reports that Senate Republicans would “prefer to not have a messy fight over Gaetz. Not their favorite. But they also don’t have a lot of energy for pushing back. Trump runs the show, they say. If Gaetz can reassure them, they’re open to backing him.”
A man carrying an explosive device was killed Wednesday as he tried to enter Brazil’s Supreme Court, the premature detonation ruining the satisfaction he sought, the AFP reports.
“This citizen approached the Federal Supreme Court, tried to enter, failed, and the explosion happened at the entrance,” said Celina Leao, governor of the capital Brasilia. No one else was harmed and the judges were safely evacuated. Another bomb went off it a vehicle parked nearby.
At some point before dawn the clock struck 50 years to the moment that the town of Amityville on the South Shore of Long Island became destined to have its name appropriated for no fewer than 45 and as many as 54 horror films, the most recent of which, and we shit you not, is titled Amityville Backpack, the premise apparently that a possessed backpack originated in the house in which a tragic massacre occurred 50 years ago. Backpack is at least the third straight-to-DVD (and that’s DVD, not Blu-ray, not video on demand) Amityville film that became available for sale earlier this year on Amazon, right off the heels of Amityville Ripper and Amityville Bigfoot.
And actually Backpack is not the most recent, since that one’s Amazon page says it was released in June. Once Upon a Time in Amityville dropped. Apparently it’s a “Western” themed horror even though Amityville is on the East Coast and… You can get it in a $15.58 two-pack with Jurassic Exorcist. Both films list the director as Mark Polonia and bill Ken Van Sant as the lead actor.
Nice to see folks still getting work in the money laundering industry these days…
Habitual embarrassment Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers filed a motion in court on Wednesday requesting to withdraw from the case, saying their client is uncooperative, demanding an infeasible defense, and asking them to suborn perjury, according to court filings.
Demonstrating that it’s shocking to find anyone working for Team Trump that exhibits a modicum of ethics, the lawyers’ withdrawal from the New York Southern District Court case regarding his bankruptcy turnovers to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.
The incoming administration is reportedly planning to purge the ranks of the military leadership of any officers they perceive to be loyal to Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called the incoming former president “fascist to the core,” Reuters reports.
The Defense Secretary-designate, Fox News weekend bro Pete Hegseth, believes his mandate to overhaul the military includes removing any “woke” officers and presumably any officers who may have been appointed due to “DEI” requirements, making the military white and male. One source said the Joint Chiefs–made up of the heads of each branch of the military–is too crowded and needs to be thinned.
The real reason, of course, is a loyalty test: the incoming cabal wants to get rid of any officer who has anything but unabiding loyalty to Trump, so if your loyalty lies in with former chairman Mark Milley or with, say, the Constitution, you’ll be gone.
Evidently hell-bent on counting his underage chicks before they hatch and grow into chickens legally capable of giving consent, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is now former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.
Just throwing this out there that, irrespective of whether Gaetz will actually get confirmed as attorney general by the Senate or if his Orange God Emperor will jam him in through that “recess appointment” loophole, this resignation’s probably some end-run around the ongoing House Ethics Committee probe into Gaetz over the whole underage sex trafficking thing. What exactly, we don’t know. Maybe they automatically have to end once a member quits and/or all the files get purged at the end of the current Congress. Otherwise why not just continue collecting a paycheck for doing nothing for the next 2-to-3 months instead of doing nothing for free?
UPDATE 11/13/2024 7:45 PM EST: Shocker. House Ethics on Friday was to vote on whether to release a “highly damaging” report on Gaetz’s conduct, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports.
FBI agents on Wednesday executed a search warrant on the New York City apartment of Shayne Coplan, the founder and CEO of scam political betting site Polymarket, Axios reports.
“This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election,” a Polymarket spokesperson told Axios in a statement, lol. “Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections.”
Owasso [Oklahoma] Public Schools reached a settlement with the US Department of Education for failing to protect, Nex Benedict, a non-binary gendered 16-year-old student, committed suicide following frequent, intensive bullying the school system failed to address, USA Today reports.
And this, gentle readers, is why we have a federal Department of Education. It’s not to have a federal dictate of what is taught in classrooms to indoctrinate children to go down to the nurse’s office to get gender reassignment surgery. It’s to make sure all children, regardless of their sex, ethnicity or religion, get safe access to an education, and to make sure that that education helps those students become productive members of society. Not that they get bullied by wannabe MAGA voters until they kill themselves.
“It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William and Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department” and blah blah blah posted convicted felon President-Elect Trump on Wednesday and holy shit, lol.
“Safe to say that GOP senators are stunned – not in a good way – on Matt Gaetz for Attorney General,” tweeted Punchbowl News founder John Bresnahan immediately after the announcement.
We can’t ever know if the 2024 election was won or lost because of Israel’s genocidally depraved indifference to civilian lives in its neighboring warzones, but probably not, even if it would definitely have been closer. Still, it’s interesting to see this fucker trying to appeal to Joe Biden on “legacy” when he knows full well that it’s just going to get far, far worse for people there now.
Future Secretary of State Marco Rubio is seen by the ChiComs as soft, weak, low energy, and the kind of guy they can push around, the Wall Street Journal reports, writing that “Beijing is relieved.”
“The cabinet choices are viewed as bad by China,” said DC think tanker Yun Sun, adding “But for now, there appears to be still room for dialogue,” meaning Rubio is not seen as a threat to them.
South Dakota Senator John Thune on Wednesday was elected to succeed Mitch McConnell as the leader of the GOP conference and soon the chamber, defeating other McConnell lieutenant John Cornyn for the post on the second ballot. White collar criminal Rick Scott lost in the first round.
Wednesday’s an action-packed and darkly weird in DC, as House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer’s crew will hold a hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.”
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