Former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was sworn into the governor’s office on Monday, the first Democrat since Janet Napolitano left office in 2009, ABC 15’s Garrett Archer reports on the end result of a stunning failure by the Republican Party to install an MAGA fascists in position to block the certification of a Dem Presidential win in a crucial swing state. Fellow Dems Adrian Fontes and Kris Mayes were sworn into the Secretary of State and Attorney General’s offices just prior, both also having vanquished their election denier Republican opponents in the 2022 midterms.

At one point, Michael Flynn was responsible for the national security of the United States.  Thankfully, that time was incredibly short, with Flynn servicing only 22 days before resigning after having been caught lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kremlin officials.  If it weren’t for a Trump pardon, he’d be known as a convicted felon; instead, we can just call him an admitted liar.

Now, Flynn takes to the airwaves a podcast to claim despite reality that Russia has achieved all its goals in its illegal invasion and attempted annexation of Ukraine and is actually “exposing” biolabs that, Flynn falsely believes, are developing biological weapons, a bit of Russian propaganda that has been debunked over the period of months:  the labs Flynn mentions are monitoring stations taking air samples coming out of Russia to monitor for biological, chemical and radioactive agents floating across the border.  It’s a national defense surveillance program to ensure Russia isn’t violating international treaties. 

New Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Monday said he plans to speak with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday in what will be Jerusalem’s first official contact with the Kremlin since the attack on Ukraine began last February, Axios’s Barak Ravid reports.

“On the issue of Russia and Ukraine we will do on thing for sure – speak less in public,” Cohen said, which at the very least is a major shift toward “neutrality” from the previous Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s open condemnation of war crimes committed against Ukrainians. Lapid himself was a shift from his shitweasel predecessor Naftali Bennett, who in March scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – the only Jewish head of state outside of Israel – for invoking the Holocaust in comparison to Russian war crimes in Ukraine, calling Zelensky’s language “forbidden.”

New data from Vermont, Kentucky, and Nevada shows that the expansion of early voting ahead of the 2022 midterms in those three states did not actually advantage either party, again underscoring that MAGA Republicans aren’t doing themselves any favors by attacking it, according to Politico.

The reasoning is that if, in Nevada and Vermont for example, that total turnout increased only slightly over 2018 and Republicans won the governor’s races, then there was no real distinct boost for Dems coming from the post-2020 universal mailing of ballots to all voters in both states. This shows that the antipathy toward it in other states was not just useless but almost certainly actually hurt GOP candidates by putting the onus on MAGA voters to show up only on election day.

Russia’s defense ministry on Monday said at least 63 Russian soldiers were killed in a Ukrainian strike on a facility in the eastern Donetsk region, the Associated Press reports. The missiles were launched from an American-supplied HIMARS missile platform, according to the Kremlin, so how’s that for an “audit” of the money Uncle Sam is spending on weapons for Ukraine’s military?

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said as many as 40 drones targeting the capital’s energy infrastructure were intercepted overnight but still managed to inflict some damage, resulting in power outages. Another “critical infrastructure object” in the Kyiv region was struck directly, as well as some residential buildings in the barrage, according to the local governor.

New York man Pedro Vilarva, now 26, told the New York Times that Republican Congressman-elect George Santos fed him a bunch of bullshit during a fling in early 2015 when Santos was 26 and Vilarva 18 that ended when Santos lied about tickets to Hawaii and possibly pawned Vilarva’s phone.

“He used to say he would get money from Citigroup, he was an investor,”Vilarva said. “One day it’s one thing, one day it’s another thing. He never ever actually went to work.”

Far right Virginia Congressman Bob Good on Monday told Fox News that 10 to 15 House Republicans will vote against legendarily uncourageous House GOP “Leader” Kevin McCarthy for Speaker on Tuesday, a development that does not at all bode well for the GOP’s ability to actually help govern.

“He’s part of the swamp cartel,” said Good of McCarthy, adding a new candidate will emerge on the second Speaker ballot. “You’ll see that name tomorrow,” on that second ballot.

Everyone knows Donald Trump keeps an Enemies List, a compendium of people he wants to destroy.  Like Nixon.   It’s relatively easy for him to determine who’s on the list:  he just checks to see whose lips marks stain his backside.

Trump’s gone one better:  just released what could be called his Trophy List, the people leaving Congress through resignation, retirement or were defeated in last cycle’s elections.  The list can’t be taken seriously however–I mean, what can be taken seriously from Trump?–because Trump claims he “strongly opposed and fought against” Charlie Baker, who will not be serving another term–not because of Trump, but because the Republican governor of Massachusetts is term-limited after serving two consecutive terms, something that Trump won’t experience.

We all understand Donald Trump is an idiot, but the depths of his idiocy are difficult to plumb.  In this case, Trump asserts that he put a person he knew was compromised by the Chinese government in his Cabinet.

In a post on his failing social media platform, Trump Psycho Tooth Suture Truth Social, based on a Breitbart interview with Josh Hawley, the scampering Republican insurrectionist Senator from Virginia who represents Missouri Josh Hawley, Trump posted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, whom Trump appointed Secretary of Transportation at the start of his single term in office, is apparently compromised and whose  “subservience to China” apparently makes her automatically suspicious.

“Josh Hawley is 100% right about Mitch McConnell, who is a Complete and Total Disaster for the Republican Party and our Nation,” Trump posted in his typical anti-grammar and simultaneously racist style.  “The only one worse may be his wife, Coco Chow, whose relationships and subservience to China is a catastrophe for our Country.”

Thinking someone was stealing his vehicle, a man who was dropping his car off for service Saturday at a Decatur, Georgia shop shot and killed a tire center worker who was driving his car into a service area, according to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

After driving to the Tire Plus store in Decatur, 30-year-old Quadarius McDowell exited his vehicle to enter the customer counter of the shop.  As he was going over the needed service for the car, McDowell saw someone get into his car and drive off; WSB in Atlanta reports that McDowell sought service on his car’s brakes and the employee was assigned to assess the vehicle’s current brake system condition. McDowell ran off in pursuit of the car, firing a handgun he was carrying.  Georgia allows any individual who can legally own a handgun to carry it, concealed, in public without any training or license.

At least one shot McDowell fired struck and killed the shop employee, 24-year-old Daniel Gordon.  McDowell then fled the scene but was arrested by DeKalb County officers a short time later.

It was a wild day in college football on New Year’s Eve, and just some of the excitement happened on the field of play.  During the Fiesta Bowl game in Arizona between Michigan and TCU, ESPN figure and former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III took a cell phone call live on the air while doing sideline commentary with colleagues and announced to his team, “I gotta go! Wife is going into labor!”  A cameraman attempted to follow the speedy former QB as he ran off the field.

Somehow, Griffin was able to catch a Southwest flight that actually took off and made it home in time for the birth of his new daughter.  Griffin’s wife and baby girl are doing well.

North Korea dictator and Third World fashion icon Kim Jong Un vowed during the recently-ended Party conference that his regime will rapidly expand the development and production of missiles in the coming year, Politico reports.

Speaking at the annual year-end meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea–there is no opposition Party permitted in the country; other Parties that support the agenda to the WPK are allowed to exist in North Korea although they cannot openly oppose WPK policies and they must join an alliance called the banner of the “Democratic Front for the Reunification of Fatherland”–Kim said that to respond to American hostility, he would order the faster development of missiles capable of hitting intercontinental targets and increased capacity to produce nuclear warheads.

“They are now keen on isolating and stifling [North Korea], unprecedented in human history,” Kim said using hyperbolic Trumpian language commonly spoken by autocrats, according to the official North Korean news outlet. “The prevailing situation calls for making redoubled efforts to overwhelmingly beef up the military muscle.”

Happy new year! I'm excited for 2023. Accountability is coming. pic.twitter.com/bbm3oeud53

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 1, 2023

Sione Veikoso, a 22-year-old Brigham Young University offensive lineman, was killed Friday at a house in Kailua, Hawaii when a 15-foot stone retaining wall he was working on collapsed and fell on him, NBC News reports.

Six men were working on repairing the wall, according to the homeowner, whose relationship to Veikoso and the other men is unknown.  The 6-foot-7, 305-pound offensive lineman and another man were trapped under the fallen stones.  When firefighters arrived, they found family and neighbors trying to move a pile of rocks by hand and with a small excavator.  The men were freed about 15 minutes after first responders arrived, but Veikoso was pronounced dead at the scene.

Veikoso transferred to play football last season at Brigham Young after spending last season at Arizona State.  Prior to enrolling in college, he has spend two years as a Mormon missionary in Brazil.

President Joe Biden is possibly eyeing as early as mid-February for a 2024 campaign launch, around the time of the State of the Union, amid improved political fortunes, Politico reports.

As the second North American time zone hits midnight, ’cause planning for the first one is SO not our style…

From Spartan and Jack, the staff at our field offices in Maricopa and Fulton Counties, the folks up in the booth, the roadies, the kids in the band, the behind-the-scenes production team and of course, Mr. Soros himself, we wish you all a happy, safe, healthy and prosperous New Year filled with as much snark as you can handle.

And now, for amusement, we direct you to the list of year-starting traditions undertaken to start the year off right we posted last year.  I can say for certain that en masse, they were ineffective for me this year, but then, maybe they wouldn’t have found the cancer and would have had to amputate my broken arm if I hadn’t undertaken the quest last year.  Glass half full, y’know?

Ready to get things done in 2023. pic.twitter.com/5COS9e4KMy

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 1, 2023

To call this “The Best of Trump Moments” is a misnomer:  it’s definitely not Trump at his best.  (Even his best would be far below average.) More accurately, this is “The Things that Happened to Trump in 2022 that Amused Us or Made Us Cheer and/or Made Trump Mad or Sad.”  Better known as The Schadenfreude Special, which is numbered, but not ranked.

12. Manhattan reopens criminal investigation into Trump:  Just when you thought it was safe to go back into financial fraud.  But when you have 17,492 lawsuits and investigations going on around you, what’s a 17,493rd?

11. Tiffany’s wedding:  To paraphrase Young MC, there’s one more girl he won’t be getting.

10.  Tax Returns Released:  They couldn’t even fill out the form properly.

Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya, 2022!  A lot happened during the year, and in any other year, stories like the assault of the Speaker of the House’s spouse, a megalomaniacal billionaire impulse-purchasing a major social media platform (and subsequently destroying it), or the death of England’s longest-serving monarch would be some of the top stories.

But this year, they didn’t even make the cut to the top 10.  Others that fell below the fold:  the cryptocurrency debacle; Iran’s women’s rights demonstrations; the ongoing climate crisis, particularly in the American west due to lower water levels in the Colorado River; billion-dollar legal decisions against Alex Jones; Nancy Pelosi’s resignation as Speaker; and the space exploration advancements led by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Orion program.  And way outside NatZero’s sweet spot are the sports and celebrity news, like the Britney Griner detainment, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, or the deaths of a lot of people and the (ex-) Pope.

Taunting the Gods of the Trite and the Tired, here’s my list of the Top 10 stories of 2022 and–spoiler alert!–Hunter Biden’s laptop is not one of them.  And to the chagrin of Fox acolytes, neither is the “ongoing immigration crisis at the Southern border” they tout… because these are actually important stories.

10.  The Continuing Pandemic:  How fucked up does a year have to be when more than a quarter million Americans die in one year from a pandemic virus and it isn’t the top story?  Omicron swept the world, and researchers developed a series of vaccines adapted to counter the threat.  But insolent conservatives continued to resist the march of science, resulting in Republicans being 76% more likely to die from coronavirus, leading more credence to Darwinism. 

Would hate to see this whole thing get pulled after Republicans take over on Tuesday.