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“I’ve always interpreted Trump’s claim that…’they LET you grab them by the p***y’ to be an indictment on the low morals of your typical female celebrity groupie. Y’know, women like E Jean Carroll” – The current top comment on Power Line blog’s article “Grotesque Bias Against Trump,” posted Monday. In the article founding editor John Hinderaker whines over the inclusion of the tape as evidence of motive to pay off Stormy Daniels (it won’t actually be played for the jury though).

“What on God’s green Earth does the Access Hollywood tape have to do with Trump’s accounting records? Nothing. I can see no basis for this ruling other than an outrageous effort at election interference by the trial judge, Juan Merchan. It does not bode well for the coming weeks – during which, by the way, Trump will be required to be present at the trial and will not be able to campaign. More election interference,” Hinderaker writes, even though it’s been well-established, long before Trump was indicted in Manhattan, that in October 2016 Team Orange felt a serious urgency to pay off Stormy and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal after the Access Hollywood tape leaked.

Shouldn’t be surprising that Hinderaker – well-established as a complete worm – is less honest than one of his (supposedly more sophisticated than Breitbart and Gateway Pundit, etc) blog’s readership, who refreshingly find way to turn this all around on women and say what they’re actually thinking about them: It’s not Trump’s fault they’re all dirty sluts who throw themselves at him.

I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.

It's time to put an end to this nonsense.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) April 16, 2024

Per usual with Republicans, this isn’t just a bloodthirsty and twisted response to the pro-Palestinian libs blocking traffic in New York and San Francisco on Monday, it’s also the opposite of what he tweeted after his shitshow of a New York Times op-ed nearly four years ago.

Murders are down 82 percent in Boston, 37 percent in Philadelphia, 33 percent in Miami, 27 percent in Dallas, 25 percent in both DC and Houston, 15 percent in New York, and 6 percent in Chicago as of varying dates in April 2024 compared with same periods in 2023, Axios reports.

Los Angeles and Atlanta did see increases of 9 and 15 percent, respectively, but overall the trend is going in the right direction and since this can’t be divorced from the political context, Axios notes that Dems are “seeing signs that they are closing the gap with the GOP among voters who say which party is better at fighting crime. An Axios-Ipsos Latino Poll conducted in partnership with Noticias Telemundo and released this month found that Republicans had only a 4-point edge on which party was better at dealing with crime. Previous polls had them leading Democrats by double digits,” even though this shouldn’t really be a national or presidential election issue.

“NASA has selected a new crew of four volunteers to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Jason Lee, Stephanie Navarro, Shareef Al Romaithi, and Piyumi Wijesekara will step into the agency’s Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, on Friday, May 10. Once inside, the team will live and work like astronauts for 45 days. The crew will exit the facility on June 24 after they ‘return’ to Earth. Jose Baca and Brandon Kent are this mission’s alternate crew members,” says a NASA press release issued Monday.

“HERA enables scientists to study how crew members adapt to isolation, confinement, and remote conditions before NASA sends astronauts on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Crew members will carry out scientific research and operational tasks throughout their simulated mission to the Red Planet, including a ‘walk’ on Mars’s surface using virtual reality. They will also experience increasing communication delays lasting up to five minutes each way with Mission Control Center as they ‘near’ Mars,” the press release continued. This is not the BIG simulated mission where the guinea pigs have to live in the confined simulation space for a year.

Still the four picked are definitely not the average schmucks a fictionalized, PR-hungry version of NASA were seeking in the classic 1994 The Simpsons episode “Deep Space Homer.” They’re definitely more the “clean-cut, athletic go-getters” that got the public bored with spaceflight.

A source tells the Associated Press that alarms went off on the Dali container ship hours before the vessel crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor, meaning these fuckers new the ship was having electrical problems but launched it anyway and killed six people.

“On September 31 of 2021, the Biden Administration entered into a strategic partnership agreement to support Ukraine’s admission not just to NATO but to the European Union,” Ohio Republican Congressman and challenger for the state’s dumbest representative Warren Davidson asserts.  “So everything from then was an escalation that I, frankly was designed to result in conflict and they continue to escalate today and to do everything possible to scuttle any effort towards peace.  This is an escalation of the war, not a path to peaceful resolution.”  [Watch the clip for Abby Phillip’s exhausted “… Congressman …” as she obviously tires of the misinformation.]

A judge awarded a Black former St. Louis police officer a $23.5 million default judgment for injuries sustained when he was beaten by other St. Louis officers while he worked undercover at a 2017 demonstration protesting a cop being acquitted after shooting a Black man, the Associated Press reports.

Luther Hall secured the judgment against a former officer already locked up for civil rights violations, Randy Hays, who never responded to the lawsuit.  Hall says Hays and two other officers,  Dustin Boone and Christopher Myers, beat him so severely at the 2017 protest they herniated discs in his back and caused a jaw injury that left him unable to eat, injuries that required multiple surgeries to repair.  Hall’s lawsuits against Boone and Myers are pending; he secured a $5 million settlement with the city.

Hall was working undercover at a demonstration protesting the acquittal of former St. Louis officer Jason Stockley, who claims he saw 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith reach between the seats of his car, believing–but not seeing–Smith was grabbing a gun.  Stockley shot five times, killing Smith.

Cryptid of the House Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently thinks she runs things in the next Republican House Conference saying, “[Mike Johnson] is definitely not gonna be Speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have the majority and I think that is, is, is widely, um, held belief throughout the Conference.”  Asked a follow-up if Johnson will make it through the term, the Georgia dumpster fire replied, “That is to be determined.”

Pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel protestors blocked major bridges and roadways across the nation Monday causing huge traffic problems from the Golden Gate Bridge to O’Hare Airport to Philadelphia’s City Center, the Washington Post reports.  In a rural Connecticut town, protestors blocked the country road that leads to an aircraft engine manufacturer in Middletown.

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was tied up for five hours in both directions after protesters stopped traffic in the middle of the span.  At O’Hare Airport in Chicago, cars stopped randomly on the already clogged routes into the airport, causing drivers to slowly weave individually around vehicles, just the kind of easy ride to the airport you want before boarding a flight on Crying Baby Airlines.

We’ve used many colorful descriptors when it comes to former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn, mostly revolving around his constant lying, alleged sexual assault and firearm carelessness, and there’s also the assault on a tree, but the one thing we frequently forget is his frequent, periodic run-ins with traffic cops.  Well, this one is literal.  A North Carolina activist caught the ousted embarrassment after he ran into the back of a Florida state trooper; at the time, Cawthorn was behind the wheel of an automobile.

Given the fact that Cawthorn ran a car directly into a police officer at apparently high speed, and it’s well known that he usually carries a gun, and he likely didn’t immediately comply from armed (and famously impatient) Florida police officers to exit the car with his hands visible, Cawthorn’s lucky he walked away from this violent interchange alive.

The Very Important Policies at the center of the GOP’s culture war–no, no… not the one on the LGBTQ community, or the one on migrants, OR the one on voting rights–regarding endangered home appliances has been put on the back burner after the House Rules committee rescheduled five hearings critical to the cause.

Per the Rules Committee website, Iran’s attack on Israel took center stage with four bills supporting Israel put on the agenda, as was another attempt to reform FISA and other data protection issues.  Postponed:  discussion about the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, the Liberty in Laundry Act, and the Refrigerator Freedom Act, among others.  Apparently, freedom for oppressed refrigerators is only convenient when it gets camera time on Fox, right, Republicans?

Hey remember President Joe Biden? Yeah, we like him too and kind of miss news about him since he hasn’t been in a headline for like days now because of the other guy’s stupid crimes. Anyway CNN’s Annie Grayer reports that Biden White House Counsel Richard Sauber responded with an “lol, no” on Monday to House Oversight Committee Assclown James Comer’s stupid request for the president to come testify at a hearing in Comer’s already failed impeachment inquiry, writing “Your impeachment investigation is over” and “We decline your invitation for President Biden to testify.”

No fewer than five New York State Court Officers denied to National Zero that any of their number cried or apologized to disgraced former President Trump when he was in the New York County Criminal Court building in Manhattan on Monday. “All I can say is we’re professionals,” one said, laughing, in response to a question about whether they had become emotional either on Monday or at Trump’s arraignment in early April 2023, as the fat bastard had falsely claimed afterward.

Another pair of officers posted to a side entrance to the 100 Centre Street complex became visibly annoyed by the question, denying they had even heard the original 2023 claim by the orange slob.

The Inspector General of the Architect of the Capitol officially closed an investigation into former Speaker of the House and man currently happy he’s dealing with that shit anymore Kevin McCarthy for a set of eight wooden gavels McCarthy requested the AOC make from trees taken down from Capitol grounds during the brief time he was Speaker.

Roll Call reports that the IG found that while the request seems odd, it’s not all that uncommon for members to ask for gavels to be made from felled campus trees.  Such requests “go back for years,” the AOC/IG found, although the probe noted that using the carpentry craftsmen employed by the Architect’s office to make the gavels is not the best use of taxpayer dollars.

A Donald Trump loyalist who headed his campaign in Wisconsin in 2016 and was “on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull” was hired to be executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party which will host the July national convention where Trump is slated to get nominated for the Party’s top slot for the third time.

Per the Associated Press, Andrew Iverson claims he was talkin’ ’bout practice, not a game in the 2016 shenanigans to unset the correct winner of the states, and he’s yet to be indicted for any crime–yet.  In February, GOP lawyers and the fake electors from the state settled a civil lawsuit and turned over thousands of pages of communications between themselves, Party officials and others involved in the fake electors caper.  Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General has stated he’s deferring to federal cases are over to decide if he should carry out separate prosecutions.

Wisconsin will not only be a swing state in the upcoming Presidential race, but it also has a critical seat in the battle to control the Senate as well as several new state legislative districts.  (The state also has new Congressional districts, but they won’t be in effect in the November elections because of Republican fuckery.)

Ranting in the courthouse hallway on Monday, disgraced former President Trump complained that Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan would not excuse him from trial proceedings so he could attend son Barron’s high school graduation, something that maybe we’d believe he was actually upset about and brought it up earlier, rather than probably seeing an official @GOP tweet saying as much.

The fat fuck was also upset that Merchan wouldn’t allow him to go to DC to attend arguments at the Supreme Court over his bullshit presidential immunity bid. That we can believe he wanted to be at.

“Who will explain for me, to my wonderful son, Barron, who is a GREAT Student at a fantastic School, that his Dad will likely not be allowed to attend his Graduation Ceremony, something that we have been talking about for years, because a seriously Conflicted and Corrupt New York State Judge wants me in Criminal Court on a bogus ‘Biden Case’ which, according to virtually all Legal Scholars and Pundits, has no merit, and should NEVER have been brought. This Fake Case is solely meant to attack Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME, who is seriously leading him in the Polls, for purposes of Election Interference. The Judge, Juan Merchan, is preventing me from proudly attending my son’s Graduation. Seems very unfair, doesn’t it? But this whole event is unfair. Every one of the many Fake Cases that are perpetuated by the White House in order to help the Worst President in History, by far, get Re-Elected, are UNJUST SCAMS. We won’t let that happen, but we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!“ the fat bastard later posted at 5:45 EDT Monday, lol.

National Zero’s New York City bureau was underwhelmed with the scene at Collect Pond Park across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, as it was but a pale glimmer of the (relatively) livelier scene 370-some-odd days earlier when fat former President Trump was first arraigned on his 2016 election interference/hush money charges. Might’ve helped if we were here in the morning but by all accounts it was pretty dead then too, as a cop was over heard there were no more than 30 MAGA and 30 lib demonstrators in the park. However there was some excitement when a deranged looking man who may or may not have been a Russian Orthodox monk appeared for the first of at least two – and possibly many more – laps around the court complex and into the park, loudly dinging a bell but otherwise silent in his incantations to the Unholy Spirit.

Inside the courtroom Trump reportedly glared angrily at the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman for having called him out for apparently falling asleep at the defense table earlier in the day.

DC federal Judge Beryl Howell on Monday tossed tossed alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Giuliani’s appeal of the $148 million defamation judgment awarded in December to former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss, Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld reports on another L for MAGA.

Judge Juan Merchan on Monday published the full list of the 42 witnesses expected to take the stand in fat former President Trump’s 2016 election interference/pornstar hush money trial, per the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery. The witnesses are, non-exhaustively: Trump himself, his kids Don Jr, Ivanka, Eric, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Kellyanne Conway, Stormy Daniels, Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, National Enquirer guys David Pecker and Dylan Howard, former Trump Org CFO Allen Weaselberg Weisselberg and controller Jeff McConney, former Trump lawyer Robert Costello, and Trump social media guy Dan Scavino. Obviously that’s not 42.

In related news at least 50 of the 96 potential jurors seated in the courtroom raised their hands and were excused when Merchan asked them to if they felt they couldn’t decide the case impartially.

Monday was billed as “the first day of the trial, but really the first day of jury selection,” but that was really a “bunch of motions and shit before they got to jury selection,” and now finally, as of 2:19 PM EDT on Monday the jury selection process is just about to to get underway in disgraced former President Trump’s first criminal trial. It could last two weeks or longer and arguments may not be heard until the first week of May… As long and annoying as that sounds, remember: Trump HAS to be in court every single minute of it and it’s very important to him strategically even if it’s boring.

As the selection began Donald was possibly angry with his defense, as Politico’s Erica Orden tweets the fat bastard was “talking to his lawyers Blanche and Bove in a much more animated way than we’ve seen until now, using lots of hand gestures.” Maybe he’s pissed that they woke him up.

Or maybe it was that the judge laid down the law and told him he was subject to arrest if he didn’t show up. Or that he scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday to determine whether Trump should be found in contempt and fined $3,000 for violating the terms of his gag order. Might be all of that.