Multiple news outlets report that the Republican Party is officially projected to regain control of the House with the call on the Republican’s 218th seat made.  While California’s Kevin McCarthy is likely to be the next Speaker of the House after having been voted the head of the Republican conference earlier Tuesday, he may be challenged for the post.

Convicted felon MAGA insurrectionist Shane Woods was charged with first degree murder Wednesday in the November 8th death of a woman killed in a head-on collision with Woods’ pickup truck on I-55 on Illinois as he fled from cops while drunk driving, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s office, Woods, who was facing eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to felonies for his assaults on a cop and a reporter during the failed attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win over fat former President Trump on January 6th, 2021, was charged with first degree murder based on statements made before and after the crash that he had intended to kill himself in a head on collision. A report from the sheriff’s office said Woods “made statements about committing suicide to the Divernon Police Officer” during a traffic stop from which Woods fled prior to the crash, and that a sheriff’s deputy posted at the hospital overheard Woods telling a relative “he had intended on crashing his vehicle into a truck tractor semi-trailer.” Wood remains jailed after being discharged from the hospital on November 11th, his bond is set at $2 million, but the county filed a petition to deny bail.

Asked if he would testify before Congress and the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress–CBS reporter Margaret Brennan asks if the “public has the right to know”–about the efforts to undermine the 2020 election, Race Bannon cosplayer and former Vice President Mike Pence says no, they don’t.  Nor does Congress:  “Congress has no right to my testimony.”

With 62 votes, the Senate advanced the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would provide federal codification of the right to marriage for interracial and LGBTQ couples, blocking an expected attempt by tight assed conservatives to overturn those human rights judicially, the Washington Post reports.

While the federal recognition of marriage is important, it does not provide the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to marriage in all 50 states that a SCOTUS decision would, Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney said in an appearance on MSNBC.  A challenge to the RMA would provide that ruling.

The need for federal legislation came after Justice Clarence Thomas threatened the status of LGBTQ marriage in his concurring opinion overturning Roe, revoking body autonomy, in which he stated the Court’s Obergefell decision, upholding LGBTQ marriage, should be reviewed.

With just 20 days until the December 6th runoff election against incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, in a race where he lost the general election just a week ago, and when the candidate’s time is tight given the campaign stops, fundraising needs, and PR appearances, Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker of Texas decides to regale the scant audience at a midday, midweek campaign rally with his recitation of the plot of campy horror movie Fright Night 3, including his own commentary that he now wants to be a werewolf, not a vampire.

I cannot reimburse you for the two minutes and seventeen seconds you’ll spend watching the clip, nor can I say you will be a better person for watching the clip.  What I can say, though, is that you will learn (at least some) details about the plot of Fright Night 3, and you will be overtaken by a feeling of bemusement, dread and disgust about the quality of Republican candidates for office.

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has been hinting at immunity deals for some of the fake Trump 2020 electors in exchange for their testimony to the grand jury investigating the larger conspiracy to overturn the result of the election in the state, CNN reports.

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from “Cowboys for Trump” asshole Couy Griffin over his expulsion the Otero County Commission after a court found that his conviction on a charge from the January 6th Capitol riot made him ineligible for elected office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. In September Griffin earned the ignominious distinction as the first American elected official removed and/or disqualified from office under the 14th since 1869.

In very much related news, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), the watchdog group who quarterbacked Griffin’s removal, responded the Trump 2024 campaign launch with notice that they’re getting to work right away on challenging the fat bastard’s eligibility. “When Donald Trump incited an insurrection that led to a deadly attack on the Capitol, he disqualified himself from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. We warned him that should he decide to run again, we would be taking action to ensure the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office is enforced. Now we will be. Trump made a mockery of the Constitution he swore to defend, but we will see that it is defended,” CREW said in a statement.

A 25 year-old Texas man is dead after a freak accident last week in which he was suddenly knocked off the top of the tractor trailer he had been dancing on by an overpass bridge, according to a Houston Police Department report. Video posted by Grizzy’s Hood News on Facebook shows the unidentified man minding his own business, dancing on the top of the trailer in slow-moving traffic at around 11:35 AM Thursday on Eastex Freeway (US Route 59) in Houston shortly before the Tuam Street bridge came out of nowhere and sent him tumbling onto the freeway lanes below.

The tragedy speaks to the inherent fragility of human life, that at any moment that you’re dancing or even simply standing on top of an 18-wheeler on a freeway an overpass could cruelly take it all away from you too. But if it means others will remember to duck while standing on top of a tractor trailer approaching an overpass, then this man’s death will not have been in vain.

OPINION: Broadway is becoming the 'Great Woke Way' https://t.co/v8SgrAtK5q

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 16, 2022

Less than an hour ago there was about a ten minute interruption for our site in which readers might’ve encountered a “DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN” error when trying to load National Zero. It was resolved quickly, but ten minutes feels like an eternity when we’re used to reliable service for our readers. Our site is both hosted and its domain registered with NameCheap, a brand we like as a less spammy bullshit alternative to GoDaddy’s comparably priced services.

Like many, or even most, large tech companies, the Arizona-based NameCheap relies on a workforce spread across the globe to maintain its stack, and as many readers are aware, they host our site in Iceland. However, different from past outages, what happened on Wednesday was not a hosting issue, it was with the domain (which is why the page immediately said “DNS PROBE FINISHED NXDOMAIN” instead of struggling for 20 or 30 seconds). While we can’t be 100% certain this was the result of a power outage wrought by Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s electrical grid, we have a strong suspicion it was, NameCheap’s open job listings in Ukraine indicating that at least some of their domain infrastructure is maintained there. What isn’t in doubt is that the support staff are based in Ukraine, as confirmed by a NameCheap social media rep who responded to a Twitter message from National Zero asking why nobody answered our messages.

Now, we’ve been tempted to ditch Namecheap over past outages, some of which were upstream from them because of that “CloudFlare” bullshit that’s good for bricking half of the internet every year or two. Then there was the Great Spartan Fuckup of 2022 when a certain jackass forgot to turn on auto-billing for National Zero’s annual hosting fees, leading Namecheap to pull the plug for about 35 minutes on us, which even though it was that certain jackass’s fault, the staff weren’t very helpful. Now that it’s apparent that those support staff weren’t helpful because they might’ve been running to an underground shelter as cluster bombs rained down on their city, we’re thinking we should just shut up and deal with it next time there’s an outage. Yeah, it sucks, but it doesn’t suck nearly as badly as what the people of Ukraine have had to deal with for the past nine months.

We’ll stick with NameCheap as long as they stick with their employees there. Slava Ukraini ??????.

A mass jailbreak from an Ohio mink farm instigated by animal rights libtards got more than a little gruesome on Tuesday as some of the erstwhile future fur coats were squashed by traffic on a nearby road, prompting officials to call in a snowplow to clear the mess, the AP reports.

Some 25,000 to 40,000 of the mustelids were freed from their cages at Lion Farms in Van Wert County by perpetrators who spraypainted “ALF” – apparently for “Animal Liberation Front” – and “We’ll be back!” The ALF previously claimed responsibility for a smaller jailbreak at the same farm a few years ago, per the AP. Many of the fancier versions of weasels were corralled back in at the farm, but local officials estimate as many as 10,000 still remain at large, warning residents to be extra vigilant around their koi ponds and chicken coops that may tempt the sneaky bastards.

Security at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night blocked attendees from leaving disgraced former President Trump’s rambling, overlong 2024 campaign launch speech early, reports ABC’s Olivia Rubin, who fittingly caught it as just as Donald was talking about “securing” the “open” border.

Moscow Mitch loyalists on Tuesday responded to ghoulish white collar criminal Rick Scott’s bid for Senate Minority Leader by asking where the fuck all the money that was supposed to help their candidates win went and demanding an audit, Politico reports on a contentious caucus meeting.

Senators Marsha Blackburn and Thom Tillis demanded an independent review of how the Scott-led GOP Senate campaign arm spent its money during a campaign in which it captured zero seats back from incumbent Democrats. The demand was met with predictable pushback from the NRSC. “We get audited every month. It’s called an FEC report,” said NRSC spokesworm Chris Hartline, adding “every member of the caucus was kept in the loop on NRSC strategy and spending all cycle.”

Steve Law, a former McConnell chief of staff turned president of Mitch’s PAC called bullshit on Hartline. “An FEC report has nothing in common with an independent audit, which is designed to evaluate the financial controls and potential conflicts of interest in an organization,” Law said.

Private equity oligarch Stephen Schwarzman on Wednesday told Axios he’s out of Donald’s 2024 campaign, saying “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday. It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.” Schwarzman is the second “major defection” from the Orange God Emperor’s quest to return to power after other fascist oligarch Ken Griffin earlier this month announced he was backing evil Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who hasn’t actually officially announced a 2024 presidential campaign yet.

NATO officials concluded that the missile strike that killed two Polish farm workers in a town near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday was from an errant Ukrainian defense missile, CNBC reports.

“Let me be clear, this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears the ultimate responsibility as it continues its war against Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The initial launch of the Artemis rocket system, carrying an unmanned Orion capsule, which will travel for six days to circle the moon before returning to Earth, is scheduled for around 12:33 a.m. ET.  This is the third attempt to launch the rocket, the previous two canceled due to fueling issues.  The rocket stayed on the pad as Hurricane Nicole swept through the area a week ago.

As we listen to President Trump remind us of what is possible regarding our borders, economy, and national security, it is my hope that he will continue to focus on the solutions that he offered tonight to restore a broken America.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 16, 2022

The Russian-made missile that struck a rural agricultural coop in Poland along the Ukrainian border, killing two, was not shot out of Russian territory, President Joe Biden commented while attending the G20 summit of economic leaders, the Washington Post reports.

While noting that the assessment was based on preliminary information so it was not conclusive, Biden said he had been in contact with the President of Poland, to whom he offered US support for an investigation into the strike.  Biden said he met with the G7 leaders at the conference in Indonesia as well as with NATO leaders.  Poland is a NATO member.

In a statement, Russia’s defense ministry said that it did not fire into Poland, a statement made less reliable when partnered with the claim that it saw photos from Poland and didn’t see any Russian equipment.  Curiously, though, after reports of the explosion circulated, the Russian delegation isolated itself in its hotel.

At least if putting me to bed, add some policy, real ideas, and solutions to the problems facing our great country. Leadership that unites

— Jeb Bush, Jr. (@JebBushJr) November 16, 2022

“Biden is the worst”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “BREAKING: Donald Trump Making Major Announcement at Mar-a-Lago,” posted Tuesday night. If you want another metric for their level of excitement, consider that Breitbart’s Trump livestream article has about 1,950 comments to National Zero’s 1,721 on the same topic as of 9:55 PM EST Tuesday. Meaning the biggest right wing site on Disqus, with daily traffic 50, 100 times higher than ours can only muster 13% more comments.

“*BREAKING NEWS * FOX NEWS HAS CALLED THE 2024 ELECTION FOR FJB,” says the top reply.