Trump Announces New Line Of Collectible POGs https://t.co/bzhZklH9RH

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 15, 2022

A Thursday afternoon article in right wing Onion clone The Babylon Bee satirically reporting that disgraced former President Trump had began offering “Pogs” to fans was arguably less ridiculous than the real world rollout of his NFT “digital trading cards” earlier in the day.

Despite being a dumb novelty that this author wasted probably hundreds of dollars (including $8 on a special set of OJ Simpson trial Pogs) on before it fell off in the first half of 1995, these fictitious 21st century Trump Pogs would at least be a physical item that could theoretically create a secondary market of among Trump fans buying and selling them in the parking lots at MAGA rallies, particularly with the $249.99 Pog “slammers” described in the Bee’s article.

Edgelord Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema on Thursday filed the paperwork required to run for reelection in 2024, not guaranteeing that she will actually run again, but allowing her to raise money for the campaign effort should she formally announce she will, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Tell me you are in a cult without telling me you are in a cult.#MajorAnnouncement https://t.co/QRi913fy1L

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 15, 2022

Kevin McCarthy’s inability to lock down support for the Speakership is seriously fucking things up for the incoming Republican majority, as now Politico reports he’s pushed off conference-wide votes for committee chairmanships until after January 3rd, setting the presumptive leaders back weeks as it freezes their ability to start working on bills, hire staff, and set up hearings.

Not sure what else to write about this guy that hasn’t already been written here. Republican voters should be ripping their hair out in rage over McCarthy’s utter void of anything even resembling a typical virtue of courage or leadership. Of course it’s entertaining to us non-MAGA folks, but goddamn it’s also kind of frustrating by proxy in a weird way. McCarthy just sucks that badly.

The National Archives on Thursday published thousands of files about the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy. Free National Zero t-shirt to the reader who reads through the whole thing and finds the document proving Ted Cruz’s dad did it.

It’s been a little over three hours since The Great “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” of December 2022 took the internet by storm and by now you’d think every major right wing website had by now covered what the most badass president of all time had unveiled for his adoring fans. They’re kind of taking their time with it, requiring us to dig a little deeper into the dregs of the MAGA internet beyond our usual Breitbart/Gateway Pundit comments to find some choice reactions to fill this out.

“I’m impressed TGP ran this article. Damn embarrassing for Trump” – The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit’s story, published only about 35 minutes ago. Not clear if the commenter is even a MAGA guy. The Newsmax and Washington Times threads were filled with libs mocking the NFTs.

“It’s hilarious how badly made these are compared to other memes of him made over the years for free, not to mention the dissolving of years worth of garnered trust” – Post on Patriots.win.

“This is embarrassing…and I’m a staunch Trump supporter” – The current top comment on the Breitbart story about the launch. Might not be the top comment anymore because it’s getting absolutely blasted with downvotes from other Trump fans for insufficient loyalty to their god.

I had some MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS the last couple of weeks, too…

✔️ Inflation’s easing
✔️ I just signed the Respect for Marriage Act
✔️ We brought Brittney Griner home
✔️ Gas prices are lower than a year ago
✔️ 10,000 new high-paying jobs in Arizona

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 15, 2022

Oh, the shade from Dark Brandon.

Indicted criminal Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office early last summer requested the state Department of Public Safety to compile a database identifying Texans who had changed their stated gender when renewing their drivers’ licenses in the prior two years, according to internal Texas DPS DMV division emails obtained from a public records request by the Washington Post.

The staff member in Paxton’s office was never identified as some of the exchanges were described as having happened verbally. The purpose of the request was never stated either. Though the matter was fairly quickly dropped as the 16,000 records would’ve required a manual examination to determine if the driver had actually transitioned as opposed to changes simply made to correct inputting errors by DMV staff, the real reason, whatever it was, could not have been anything good.

Not hard to imagine that sick son of a bitch implementing some sort of program to monitor trans Texans, finding out if they work in any field where they might have contact with children in order to harass them out of a job, or worse – “accidentally” leaking their home addresses to MAGA freaks who would then threaten them with violence like a state-sanctioned Libs of TikTok account.

Three of the men convicted for plotting to kidnap Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have been sentenced to at least seven years in prison, the first major sentence in the plot by right-wing extremists pushing an anti-government agenda, the Associated Press reports.

Pete Musico, 45, will serve at least 12 years in prison.  Joe Morrison, 28, was sentenced to 10 years and Paul Bellar, 24, got seven years.  They will only be eligible for parole after serving those sentences.  The three men were not directly involved in the kidnapping operation, but they were convicted of providing material support to other members of the nationalistic Wolverine Watchmen who would carry out the scheme.

Adam Fox, the leader of the Wolverine Watchmen, faces life in prison for the plot which involved kidnapping Whitmer from her home, trying her for her public health directives during the pandemic, and a pre-ordained guilty verdict and subsequent execution that he wanted broadcast online.

Trump’s major announcement, as taken from Truth Social, was that he’s introducing a line of digital trading cards.  Yeah, “major” announcement.  He’s done.  Over.  An ex-relevant person.  A joke.

Additional commentary by Spartan: Well don’t all of us who thought this MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT might have had some sort of actual political implications – like a run for Speaker of The House, a running mate pick, or a switch to an independent – feel stupid now. Turns out my first instinct of “It’s obvious it’s going to be something really stupid, but I’m actually stumped here. What the hell could it be? And whatever it is will it at least be something we’ll be laughing about and referencing for years in mockery or will it just be something mostly boring and forgettable?” was right on the mark before letting myself get roped into all the theories that it would be something that would matter.

An attorney leading the DC Bar Association’s disciplinary investigation into shitbrained alcoholic Rudy Giuliani on Thursday recommended the disgraced former New York City mayor be disbarred for his role in the failed attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

“Mr. Giuliani has testified on several occasions that he believes there was a conspiracy. There was a conspiracy. And he was the head of it,” said disciplinary investigator Phil Fox, as the disciplinary panel reached a preliminary conclusion that Rudy had committed at least one violation.

Villages, Florida woman Ievgeniia Pinchuk, 21, was arrested at approximately 10:00 pm Tuesday for driving under the influence after she left her 2003 Honda Civic parked in the railroad crossing on Main Street in the nearby town of Bushnell, which promptly resulted in the car being smashed by a southbound CSX freight train, Villages-News.com reports. Pinchuk was apprehended on foot in the area by Florida Highway Patrol officers, who also ticketed her for illegally parking on the tracks.

This story faced tough competition in the Villages crime aggregation game, most notably from the 52 year-old resident who was arrested for throwing a Christmas tree at his wife during an argument over cooking dinner. The tree reportedly broke in half, but it’s unclear if it is a fake one that could be simply reassembled or if it’s a goner. Other strong contenders would include the 64 year-old woman arrested for shoplifting “potato chips, Tostitos Scoops, cinnamon muffins, cheesecake, Bic lighters, pistachios and beef sticks” from a local Walmart, the 74 year-old woman arrested for hitting her 79 year-old male companion over the head with a wine bottle, or the post-trivia night golf cart DUI arrest of a 63 year-old Villages man. Despite its lengthy absence from National Zero we still don’t want to overplay coverage of the vast, dystopian retirement community’s effectively limitless supply of stupid crime stories, particularly if it only really comes from one site upstream.

Senate Republicans are basically patting Kevin McCarthy on the head and saying “Hey, that’s great kid” as he complains over them cutting him out of a spending deal, Semafor reports. Stupid story short, McCarthy wants to drastically cut down the omnibus spending package’s duration from September 2023 to January 2023 so he can get a chance to “negotiate” (but really just utterly fail to control his caucus’s batshittery) early on in his not really certain at all Speakership.

“Allow the American people what they said a month ago, to change Washington as they know it today,” McCarthy said Wednesday. The Senate GOP think that’s fucking stupid and want to give him some time to grow into the role he might just squeak into before taking on a big responsibility. “I just think for Kevin’s sake, even though he’s not asking for it, I think some Republicans just feel like we should relieve him of that burden” said Republican South Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer.

The judges of the International Criminal Court in the Hague on Thursday rejected Ugandan warlord Dominic Ongwen’s appeal of his 2021 conviction on 61 counts of offenses including murders, rapes, forced marriages, and recruiting child soldiers during a 2002-2005 war crime spree, the AP reports.

Ongwen’s lawyers had argued their client was mentally unfit to be convicted as he was really stressed out and under a lot of pressure to deliver results for Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony’s insurgency to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a Christian theocracy at the time of the war crimes, adding that Ongwen was pressed into child soldiering himself at age 9.

Presiding Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza didn’t buy it, and ruling that the “appeals chamber rejects all the defense’s grounds of appeal and confirms unanimously the conviction decision.” The same judge will also issue a ruling on Ongwen’s appeal of his 25 year sentence later Thursday.

Dan Crenshaw should never be allowed to live this one down. We will give it to him that it was impressive that he actually jumped out of a plane for it, but man this is embarrassing even for lefties to watch. Certainly doesn’t help that the two “patriots” ended up losing three weeks later.

The Biden Administration intends to increase the capability of the Ukrainian military by giving it kits that can turn munitions into “smart bombs” known as JDAM, for Joint Direct Attack Munition, according to the Washington Post.  Curiously, the Post notes that it’s not clear if President Biden himself or his top national security advisors have approved the sale, making it sound like some defense official is floating the idea.

The kits can be used on a variety of munitions, turning bombs up to 2,000 pounds into precision-guided weapons.  American forces typically use them on bombs dropped by aircraft, but the kits could be used on ground-based artillery.

A 44-year-old Ohio man was charged in federal court with threatening an elections official in Arizona, another person whose life was tragically altered because he believed Donald Trump’s election lies.

NBC News reports Joshua Russell of Bucyrus, Ohio was charged by a federal grand jury in Phoenix on three counts each of making a threatening interstate communication and making a threatening interstate telephone call.  Russell allegedly called an official for the Arizona Secretary of State three times from September to November, calling the official a “traitor” and a “terrorist” in voicemails.  If convicted Russell faces up to 20 years in prison.

Forgive the salacious clickbait headline, but c’mon, you’d do it, too.  It’s not that Lindsey Graham.  (If we had that footage, it would be pinned to the top of NationalZero in perpetuity.). It’s the one who identifies on  Instagram as Patriot Barbie.  She’s wearing a cat costume because (A) she’s an idiot, (B) she’s a performance artist, like all of the GOP, (C) she believes a conspiracy theory that schools are buying cat litter because a student self-identified as a cat and the school caters to, um, its fantasies, not because schools keep kitty litter in classrooms because they’re frequently in lock-downs and kids gotta use the bathroom.  Or (D) All of the above.  [Editor’s Note:  It’s (D).  It’s always (D).]

Waves of explosive drones crashed around Kyiv, the second such attack around Ukraine recently, ending a three-week period when such attacks were not used by the Russians, the New York Times reports. The attack was unsuccessful, with Ukrainian air defenses shooting down all of them short of their targets.

Although Russia would lob missiles around Ukraine, waves of targeted attacks by drones hadn’t been deployed since late November, perhaps because the drones malfunctioned in the harsh Ukrainian winter conditions.

For this attack, the Russians employed thirteen Iranian-made Shahed drones, each of which was destroyed by Ukrainian forces.  There were no reports of fatalities or injuries; two government buildings were slightly damaged by falling debris.

Take a state that gets pounded by hurricane after hurricane year after year.  Add in sinkholes, alligators, and Republican leadership, and you can understand why Florida’s property insurance industry is in shambles, with few companies willing to issue affordable policies, as WESH NBC 2 in Daytona Beach notes.

So while private companies continue to charge excessive rates that would eventually make it impossible for most homeowners to afford policies, the Republicans in the state’s legislature have decided to socialize the insurance companies’ risk by forming a taxpayer-funded stop-loss fund that would cover losses after insurance companies’ pools dry up.  The law, however, would allow property insurance companies to keep their profits while making taxpayers cover their shortages.

Some mortgages, particularly those from federally-sponsored programs like Federal Housing Administration and Fannie Mae, require home buyers to secure property insurance, which can add a significant amount of money to monthly payments.  Florida, which God apparently hates because He regularly hurls natural and manmade disasters at it, will still rely on the rest of America to bail it out when it has a problem.  All this does is make sure insurance companies can operate profitably in the state without risk of losing liquidity.