Turns out our speculating about the “inappropriate behavior and harassment related to private maternal matters, including childhood vaccines and breastfeeding” that got far right South Dakota state Senator Julie Frye-Mueller suspended from the chamber was fairly close to the mark as the staffer has released a public statement detailing the ghoulish exchange with the MAGA lawmaker.

According to a statement picked up by the Daily Beast on Monday, the staffer, who works for the Legislative Research Council, said that Frye-Muller and her husband came into the staffer’s office to talk about a bill. Then Frye-Mueller asked about the staffer’s baby and if she had been vaccinated. “I told her ‘yes.’ Without allowing me to elaborate further, she proceeded to point her finger at me and aggressively say that this will cause him issues,” adding that Frye-Mueller told her people are being used as “guinea pigs for Big Pharma,” warning the staffer she was “taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son,” who could get Down syndrome, autism, or “die from those vaccines.”

The most revolting part was “I was told by Senator Frye-Mueller that my husband could ‘suck on my breasts’ to get milk to come in. She indicated ‘a good time for that is at night.’ She proceeded to provide hand gestures to her chest area and motion to her husband to see if he agreed. He smiled and nodded,” which is just some fucked up shit. About as MAGAmerican as it gets.

A new survey by The Bulwark and North Star Opinion Research of Republican voters finds 28 percent of respondents saying they would vote for disgraced former President Trump in the 2024 general election if he were to lose the primary and run as a third-party candidate against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, an absolutely catastrophic possibility for the GOP.

On the question of the Republican primary itself, DeSantis leads Trump in the head-to-head at 52 to 30 percent, versus a generic “another candidate” at 44 to 28 percent, and in a full field at 39 to 28 percent with Mike Pence in third at 9 percent, Nimrata Haley and Liz Cheney at 4 percent each, and five others not even named at 1 percent each, plus 13 percent undecided.

Allies of presidential son Hunter Biden are weighing a legal defense fund for the lovable fuckup as he faces a criminal investigation into his taxes and a likely onslaught of subpoenas from House Republicans desperate to distract from their own corruption, the Washington Post reports.

Such a proposition brings its own potential problems for would-be donors as they would likely become targets for screeching GOP scrutiny themselves, complicating efforts to establish the fund to cover Hunter’s legal fess, already estimated in the millions, according to the Post.

New “Corruption Perceptions Index” rankings by Transparency International have found Tucker Carlson’s favorite European country tied with a tiny failed state in West Africa that has experienced two coups d’etat in the last year in perceived levels of graft, Bloomberg reports.

Of course Tucker and his fellow fanboys of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban would dismiss the survey as a “globalist” circlejerk that ignores Hunter Biden something something, but you can’t deny it carries a certain additional sting when placed it in relative terms alongside a non-white third world country like Burkina Faso. So bad is the situation in Hungary that Transparency International have concluded that it’s in a “state capture” phase where the corruption is now a self-sustaining spiral.

By a margin of 78 to 13 percent, voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional district responding to a new Siena College survey agreed that lying piece of shit Congressman George Santos should resign.

Photo by Steve Jurvetson via Wikipedia

Donald Trump has certainly made an impact on the world, and not in a good way.  Now, it’s official (sorta) that his scars on the landscape have extended to a new realm:  architecture.  According to British building supply company Buildworld, Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel is the tenth ugliest building on Earth, based on negative comments compiled over the history of Twitter.

Using a “sentiment analysis tool” named HuggingFace, the analysis looked at all the tweets discussing the architecture of a specific building–’cause there are SO many of them–and looked at the percentage of comments that were negative.  Buildworld’s review:  “’The 620-foot-tall structure is an eyesore even in a city filled with over-the-top architecture,’ says Architectural Digest of the ex-president’s giant gold Sin City tower. Radiating a curiously old-fashioned idea of glamour and built in a style most succinctly described as Trumpitecture, the condo tower’s final divisive motif is the 20-foot high TRUMP in glowing serif font at its tip.”

The building getting the worst reviews in the world?  The Scottish Parliament Building.  The American building that takes the “honors” as the most reviled architecture: J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., the headquarters of the FBI.

Bringing back “The Word” bit from his Comedy Central “Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert rips into Republican Ohio Congressman and the See No Evil Monkey Jim Jordan for saying there’s “nothing that can be done against evil” and that episodes like the police violence that took the life of Tyre Nichols, George Floyd and many others cannot be prevented through government action.  (Strangely, aren’t police part of the government?). Colbert notes Jordan’s habit of abdicating responsibility in the face of evil:  “Just ask the people at Ohio State.  If you want nothing done about evil, Jim Jordan’s your man.”

After three previous downward revisions, the International Monetary Fund raised its outlook for the 2023 global economy, saying that US spending and China reopening its borders will overcome inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to increase output by 2.9% in 2023, Bloomberg reports.

Though a decrease from the fast 2022 post-pandemic recovery which led to a 3.4% expansion in 2022, IMF projections point to a 3.1% growth in 2024, meaning 2023 will show a slight dip.  The revision increases the global forecast by 0.2% from the IMF’s October prediction.

“And finally for the regime, the greatest threat to humanity other than climate change comes from social conservatives, or whatever faith,” Trump advisor and Fox hostess Laura Ingraham declares unilaterally.  “They’re far more dangerous than the CCP or even foreign terrorists for that matter.  The regime knows the people whose hope lies in heaven and who pay more attention to the Bible than to the media aren’t easily manipulated or bounced around.  This is why they seek to upend traditional institutions like law enforcement, the military and the nuclear family.”

Asked by a reporter if the United States would send F-16 fighter jets to Ukrainians defending against a Russian invasion, President Joe Biden responded with an abrupt, “No,” apparently ruling out a move that had been gaining support in the Pentagon, the BBC reports.

A week after the US confirmed it would send 31 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, Biden seemed to put a cap on the type of aid going to Kyiv as the Ukrainians plan for a Spring offensive to push the Russians out of key areas.  The US and its allies will ship more than 300 main tanks made in the US, the UK and Germany.

Germany has also stated it would not send higher-generation fighters to Ukraine.  Ukraine’s air force is made up primarily of Soviet-era technology, with its top fighter being the MiG-29, designed in the 1970s.

We truly apologize to our National Zero audience for subjecting you to two Tucker Carlson clips in a row, but the son of a frozen food heiress has gone the way you just *knew* it was going to go when you learned the five Memphis officers indicted for beating unarmed motorist Tyre Nichols were Black.  Carlson says that the incident happened not because Tyre Nichols was Black… but because the officers were.

So the race riots of 2020 were never about George Floyd, obviously,” Carlson slimes.  “That’s why there are no statues of him in American cities.  They were about changing the country forever.  The first step, of course, was defunding the police departments across the country and forcing them to lower their standards to attract unqualified applicants, hiring officers based on skin color rather than integrity or skill or self-control, all in the name of equity.  But does that end up in better policing? Well, what happened in Memphis a few weeks ago. [Carlson here shows the mug shots of the five Black former officers indicted in Nichols murder.]

Never one to not whine about how rich white men are downtrodden, Fox host and crossdressing Karen Tucker Carlson now takes up for a product 3.5% of people consume.  “Taxes are not just a way to raise money for the state. They’re an instrument of social control also. You don’t like something, you tax it into extinction.  With that in mind, you should know the state of New York currently imposes a 75% on cigars ’cause they’re so dangerous. Number of Americans killed each year by cigars:  Not many.  … Meanwhile, the tax on cannabis in NY is 13%. Why is that?”

That whole thing about “social control” Carlson is babbling about is what conservatives dubbed the “sin tax” on products that their puritanical morals deemed to be sinful, like alcohol and tobacco, and the additional sales taxes go to help fund things like treatment programs, emergency medical services and cancer treatments the users of those products will have a higher likelihood of needing.  And cannabis is a medical treatment for some people, Tuck.  Compassionate conservatism has died at the throne of Fox.

Three decades after closing the largest American overseas military facilities at Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base, the governments of the Philippines and the United States continue negotiations to give American military greater access to the facilities as US forces reposition to face a looming threat from China, the Washington Post reports.

Days after Air Force General Mike Minihan told officers in his command to prepare for war with China in two years, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to travel to Manila this week to finalize a deal that will allow US forces greater access to Philippine military bases and ports, including along the northern coast of Luzon, a strategic location from which to defend Taiwan.  The Biden Administration has been negotiating with Philippine President Bongbong Marcos since 2022 to renovate and reopen some US facilities on the island.

“[I]t’s a pretty big deal,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is significant not just in terms of what it means for a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency. This is a signal that the Philippines are all in on modernizing the alliance, and that they understand that a modern alliance means they have responsibilities, too.”

Republican Florida Congressman and Dimestore Beavis Matt Gaetz took a rare stroll outside the rightwing media Bubble to appear on MSNBC’s “The Beat” with Ari Melber, where Melber gave a targeted question about accusations Gaetz was involved in a child sex trafficking ring with his friend, convicted corrupt Republican tax official Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison in a plea deal after cooperating.  To his credit, Gaetz says he regrets his association with Greenberg, who it’s apparently okay to distance himself from now that he’s a convict.

🚨 BOMBSHELL DISCOVERY 🚨

Today’s Senate Testimony CONFIRMS nearly 40,000 ballots illegally counted (10% of the signatures reviewed).

I think all the “Election Deniers” out there deserve an apology. pic.twitter.com/3g2x5zgd2c

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) January 23, 2023

Well probably did, according to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who on Monday sent a letter to Attorney General Kris Mayes referring Lake for prosecution. “I am writing today to ask you to investigate and take appropriate enforcement action against Kari Lake for potential violations of Arizona law committed under her Twitter handle, @KariLake… Nothing in this section shall preclude public inspection of voter registration records at the office of the county recorder for the purposes prescribed by this section, except that the records containing a voter’s signature …shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter… Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-168(F) authorized person reproduce a voter’s signature. A violation of this provision is a Class 6 felony.”

Sources tell CNN that two of the staff members who were hired to continue searching Trump properties for classified documents in the months after the Mar-a-Lago raid testified last week to the grand jury impaneled to investigate the fat former President’s thefts, CNN reports.

The staffers, who in November ended up finding at least two classified documents at a storage unit in Florida, reportedly did not decline to answer any questions while testifying separately for about three hours each. On a related note according to CNN, investigators on special counsel Jack Smith’s office have also been hammering at Trump’s minions over access to computers at Mar-a-Lago to see if there’s any evidence there relevant to the probe, describing Team Smith as “unwilling to negotiate with defense attorneys over recent subpoenas, leading to tense conversations.”

A Texas judge on Monday rejected corrupt piece of shit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s bid to dismiss an ethics lawsuit brought by the state Bar Association over Paxton’s misconduct during his failed effort to get the Supreme Court to toss the electoral votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin after the 2020 presidential election, Reuters reports.

Paxton, who has twice been reelected despite being under felony indictment for securities fraud since 2015 and blocked National Zero on Twitter in 2021 (later reversed by a court order) for mocking his marital infidelity and his wife’s terrible country music songs, is accused of making multiple false statements in the December 2020 complaint to the Supreme Court against the four swing states and faces sanctions including disbarment. Paxton’s team contended that any challenge to his authority to make shit up are “tantamount to a judicial veto over the exercise of executive discretion.” The Bar Association responded by saying their conduct rules “apply to any attorney engaged in the practice of law regardless of their position,” to which the judge agreed.

Maybe what’s more newsworthy here is that there actually still is a state of emergency going on nearly three years after Former Guy declared it in March 2020, but the AP reports that President Biden will formally end the state of emergency on May 11th “as US adjusts to living with virus.”

Suppose that’ll be the time to reflect on what it looks like from here on the other side of the dark valley, a changed world on the long road back to “normal” where the lucky among us get the sniffles every once in a while from the pesky virus and others still mourning the deaths of family members cruelly taken from them – and the ongoing suicidal resistance to salvation by the unvaxxed.

New Jersey to investigate county election after votes counted twice | Just The News https://t.co/A6GlgDGf7w

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) January 30, 2023

Monday is not any specific anniversary, but just generally it’s been roughly two years since mild, everyday fuckups in local election administration – particularly in Blue States – became newsworthy to national right wing media. No longer can these sort of mistakes by municipal employees, the details of this one too dull and innocuous for us to even bother explaining here, go unnoticed by “election integrity” crusaders like John Solomon. He doesn’t actually say there’s some grand conspiracy in the article, he plays it mostly straight. But simply by bringing it to his MAGA-brained readers’ attention does he continue to sustain their perception of a “crisis” in American elections, even if he can the “evidence” of it exists only in podunk local contests. Covering it is the implication.

So cheers to you disingenuous pricks in the MAGAverse for your reporting on this localized incompetence depressing red voter turnout. That and your efforts to make it look like no younger, seemingly healthy person ever tragically died of an undiagnosed heart condition before COVID-19 vaccines became widely available really did wonders for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

Fat former President Trump on Monday filed a $19 million lawsuit against Bob Woodward for releasing audio of their taped interviews, claiming Donald never authorized it, Bloomberg reports.

“This case centers on Mr Woodward’s systematic usurpation, manipulation, and exploitation of audio of President Trump,” the complaint says, also accusing Woodward of selectively editing portions of the interviews, serving as yet another reminder that Trump willingly allowed the guy whose reporting helped set in motion the events that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon to record his voice on tape during in-person and over the phone. For 20 hours of audio recordings.

The complaint specifically mentions the audiobook of the recorded interviews released late last year, but somehow forgets that in September 2020 Woodward gave CNN a tape of when Trump had told him he was lying to the public purposely downplaying the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic.