Two of the most prolific pollutors in the world and the two largest global economies, the United States and China will reinitiate discussions on curbing the greenhouse gasses released by the countries in an effort to get climate change under control, the New York Times reports.

Meeting in Indonesia prior to the Group of 20 summit, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed Monday to a series of negotiations to curb emissions while protecting the economic growth of each nation.

In Egypt, international negotiators at the COP27 climate conference responded positively to the two largest economic leaders agreeing to discuss climate change policy.  Breaking with their international counterparts, American conservatives whine about US efforts to cut carbon emissions because they believe if every other country isn’t doing more than the US to curb emissions–even though they have less developed economies–than the US doesn’t have to do anything.

Illinois MAGA insurrectionist Shane Jason Woods, currently out on federal bail while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in September to assaulting a cop during the January 6th Capitol riot, was arrested in his home state Tuesday on charges of reckless homicide, aggravated driving under the influence, driving under the influence and fleeing/eluding police after he killed a 35 year-old woman in a head-on wrong way collision on I-55, The State Journal-Register reports.

Woods, who admitted he had ripped a female Capitol cop off her bicycle while she was pursuing another rioter who had sprayed a chemical irritant on her – and then hours later body checked a reporter while the rioters were smashing media equipment as the insurrection was winding down – faces up to eight years in prison on the federal felony charges at his sentencing in January. Now he faces considerably more time behind bars for killing a woman while drunk driving.

Need we reiterate our point about how not coincidental at all it is that the people who fought to overturn the 2020 election turn out to also be just fucking awful human beings separate and apart from their politics of MAGA malevolence and cruelty? Seriously, we challenge the right wingers in our audience to bring us an example of a Capitol rioter who is active in charitable efforts, built an orphanage in Cambodia, volunteers with inner city kids, runs a food bank that helps the less fortunate, whatever. Something, just anything more concrete than and preferably predating the shit their defense lawyer writes for them like “Oh he’s really active in his church community.” We would sincerely welcome the challenge to our perception – based on a vast body of evidence – that they’re just fucking terrible people. Please by all means try to change our minds here.

Shitty right wing blog American Greatness got all black-pilled over the weekend in a Midterms post-mortem titled “Third World Electorate – Candidate quality? How about voter quality?” exploring this new “blame the voters” line of self-pitying bullshit in the MAGA media universe.

“The picture we got from Tuesday is that of a decadent, vegetative electorate easily swayed by platitudes and sentimental appeals, fervently attached to its entitlements. Within the living memory of many Americans, abortion was widely illegal and considered a grave evil. Americans now appear to regard it as a treasured right. In Montana, voters even rejected a measure to provide life-saving care to infants born alive after a botched abortion. Republicans performed well with married men and women—the people who should be the center of our civic life, while Democrats dominated with unmarried women and the twitchy, nihilist Gen Z. Again: voter quality.”

“Where did Republican messaging stumble? The party, perhaps, could have been more affirmative about what they support. But they cannot be blamed for betting that voters would recoil at the ugliness of the alternative. Even the Democrats are surprised by their success. The choice here was pretty stark: ‘You can vote for more crime, child mutilation, and toddlers in masks, or you can vote for us, but you have to give up your abortions.’ There was a rational choice, and the people didn’t make it,” and please by all means check it out for some more delicious copium.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday hailed the recent recapture of the eastern city of Kherson as the “beginning of the end” of the war but acknowledged the price paid in blood as he spoke to civilians and troops in the city’s central square, the Washington Post reports.

“Nobody just gave us anything,” Zelensky said when a reporter suggested that Russian troops had fled the city without much of a fight. “The price of this victory is considered very high,” he adding that the cost was “a lot of people wounded and a very high number of dead. I think they ran because our army threatened the enemy and they were in grave danger,” Zelensky said of the Russian invaders. “There were intense fights. And here is the result: We are here today in Kherson.”

Fat former President Trump is announcing his 2024 campaign launch on Tuesday, come hell or high water, because any delay would be seen as an admission that he more than any other single person fucked up the midterms for Republican voters, Politico reports. One minion told Politico Donald wants the launch to feel “more like 2016, less like 2020,” so he comes across like an “outsider.”

Disgraced former President Trump was found to have government documents with classified markings mixed in with correspondences dated from after he left the White House in 2021 in his desk at Mar-a-Lago, the Guardian reports on details from a new filing from the Justice Department.

The DOJ’s description pretty clearly is meant to demonstrate that Donald didn’t merely accidentally or even just carelessly stuff the shit in boxes when he was leaving the White House but knew exactly what he had and that he wasn’t supposed to have it. The motion was filed Saturday to Special Master federal Judge Raymond Dearie, whose role in the case has been diminished by a stay from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and may end entirely as soon as the court rules on the Justice Department’s appeal of MAGA judge Aileen Cannon’s bullshit intervention in the case. Dearie’s task now is to sort out what records could be attorney-client or executive privileged, something that does pretty much jack shit to help Trump stave off a criminal investigation over his theft of classified documents, which definitionally cannot be “privileged” at all and are out of Dearie’s hands. So even though it’s a pointless exercise overall, Saturday’s filing shows the Justice Department aren’t going to waste the chance to have a little fun with it by dropping hints to the public about Donald’s guilt.

In response to questions from the New York Times, Donald Trump’s second White House Chief of Staff John Kelly stated Trump repeatedly sought to have the IRS and the FBI launch investigations into his political enemies.

Using mob-esque phraseology like “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on,” Trump would tell Kelly and others about his plans to use the IRS and the Justice Department to harass people like FBI Director James Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.  Trump also wanted to use the IRS to harass his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton; CIA Director John O. Brennan; Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post; and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page former FBI officials who became the target of scores of conservative conspiracy theories.

“The U.S. government, whether it’s the I.R.S. or the Justice Department, should never be weaponized or used to retaliate, and certainly not because someone criticizes you in the press or is your political opponent,” Kelly said in an email responding to the Times’ questions. “The average federal employee or F.B.I. agent or I.R.S. agent goes to work and executes the laws and regulations and shouldn’t be put in this position.”

Democrat Katie Hobbs maintained her lead in the Arizona Governor’s race after the latest dump of more than 97,000 votes by Maricopa County, although her lead shrunk a bit.  After the latest dump, Hobbs holds a 26,011 vote lead over Republican conspiracy theorist and future Sean Hannity replacement Kari Lake.  With about 100,000 still outstanding in Maricopa County, Lake would have to take 63% of the remaining vote to claim victory, but the current splits don’t merit a lot of hope.

Democrat Andrea Salinas has defeated Republican Mike Erickson for Oregon’s 6th District, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman projects. Erickson was the Herschel Walker of the House, meaning he paid for an abortion before running for Congress as a “pro-life” conservative.

pic.twitter.com/JlpP39uOKm

— Doug Mastriano (@dougmastriano) November 13, 2022

National Zero skipped this “FTX meltdown” bullshit because we had actual politics and elections to report on this week. Then there’s that crypto is for pseudo-libertarian man-boys playing pretend with digital Monopoly money so we pretty much only cover it when we feel like mocking it.

Anyway, shitty right wing news site The Post Millennial reports Bahamian authorities have detained FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, and his minions Nishad Singh and Gary Wang before they could flee to Dubai. FTX, an exchange for crypto nerds, collapsed spectacularly this week when a report revealed they had leveraged funds in customer accounts for their own trades, causing runaway withdrawals and tanking the price of Bitcoin and other fake digital fiats. Bankman-Fried’s net worth went from tens of billions to relative jack shit overnight and FTX is now being run by a former CEO of Enron as it unwinds. Amazing how the whole crypto thing – which was supposed to be a response to the corruption and incompetence of the real world financial system epitomized by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 – ends up collapsing in a remarkably similar mess of incompetence and corruption. Much faster than Lehman Brothers actually.

President Biden’s granddaughter Naomi, 28, will marry her dude Peter Neal, 25, at the White House on Saturday, November 19th, in the 19th ceremony to be held at the presidential mansion since the British burned it down in 1814, the Associated Press reports. Naomi, Hunter Biden’s oldest daughter, is a lawyer while Pete is a recent University of Pennsylvania law school grad.

It’s the first presidential family wedding at the White House since Tricia Nixon married Chris Cox in 1971. Their son Chris Jr married Andrea Catsimatidis, daughter of right wing billionaire John Catsimatidis when Cox was 30 and she was still in high school but got divorced a few years later. Andrea is now the chair of the Manhattan Republican Party. They have zero elected candidates in office. Older Nixon sister Julie is the one who married Dwight D Eisenhower’s grandson, David. They didn’t want a White House wedding and got hitched quietly in December 1968. As far as we know none of their kids married high schoolers. Camp David in Maryland is named after David Eisenhower.

What was this article about again? Oh yeah, Naomi Biden’s wedding. We suspect it’ll be a happier occasion than a certain wedding hosted by a certain former President was on Saturday. That poor fucking kid, having to have Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Donald, Don Jr, Melania, and Eric for in-laws.

“Students for Trump” founder Ryan Fournier, who is kind of like a low rent Charlie Kirk (as if Charlie Kirk himself isn’t low rent enough), blocked National Zero at some point after this reply:

Heard about your little DWI problem, Baby Goebbels

— National Zero (@NationalZeroUSA) October 26, 2022

Unlike the recent Glenn Greenwald situation which we reported on pretty much immediately, National Zero staff were unaware of Fournier block until Sunday, nearly three weeks after the little Nazi punk had apparently gotten all pissy about us just making conversation. Jeez.

A new post-midterms survey by YouGov finds Napoleonic little bastard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leading disgraced former President Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination 42 to 35 percent among GOP voters and GOP-leaning independents. However, Trump leads by a tighter 45 to 43 among those who self-identified as “Strong Republicans.”

It’s a reversal from a Yahoo-sponsored YouGov survey from last month which found Donald leading Ronald 45 to 35 percent for the nomination among GOP voters and exciting hype for those of us eager to watch an all out war between its top two personalities consume the Republican Party.

MAGA Republican Congressman Jim Banks on Sunday told Fox News he’s not endorsing Trump’ 2024 run just yet. Banks said the Orange Pharaoh remains “a popular figure in the Republican party,” and “could be a very effective President” in the future, but withheld an endorsement while the GOP is “still unpacking” the failure of what was supposed to be an apocalyptic red wave to materialize.

This is kind of surprising considering Donald has reportedly been backing Banks’ bid for Republican whip in the House. For Jimmy to not reciprocate and risk the Holy MAGA King’s wrath while everything’s still up in the air could be another sign of Trump’s weakness.

President Joe Biden’s ongoing federal judicial nomination machine – already outpacing his disgraced predecessor’s at the same point in their respective terms – will run even faster with a Warnock win and a 51-49 Senate majority, according to University of Texas Law Professor Steve Vladeck.

With 51 Senators, Democrats have actual majorities on each committee and no longer require the time-consuming “discharge petitions” to put the confirmation votes to the floor. More important is the raw math where no single Dem can block a nomination and that two can be absent if all the rest are in agreement on a nominee. Clarence Thomas better be taking his vitamins.

Six people are dead after a collision between two WWII-era military planes during an air show Saturday in Dallas, the AP reports. Video of the crash above immediately raises the question of whether the guy in the smaller fighter plane was texting behind the wheel or something, because how the fuck else do you rear end another aircraft in apparently perfect weather conditions.

We like to be timely with the news, but in a fast-paced environment sometimes things slip by and we’re a few days, occasionally even weeks, late on reporting certain items. The best thing to do in such a situation is to report them in the present tense and hope readers won’t notice, so here goes: Senate Republican campaign chief Rick Scott says the GOP has a path to a 55-seat majority in the chamber given the current map and late MAGA momentum, the Hill reports.

“It starts right here, we’re going to get 52 Republican senators, we have to win here. I think we can get 53, 54, 55,” said Scott at an event with North Carolina Congressman Ted Budd. “The energy is on our side. People are fed up with the Biden agenda.” The view was more confident than that of Scott’s frenemy, Minority Leader Moscow Mitch, who said the race for the Senate would be very close, and that whichever party pulls ahead would control a narrower majority.

“If you look at the weekly polls and do we lot of polls, every week is getting better,” said Scott in an interview with The Hill, adding that “Blake [Masters] is barely behind” in Arizona, and “We’ve defined [Arizona Dem Senator Mark] Kelly.” Scott expressed similar hopes in Nevada, “Adam Laxalt has been up consistently, every one,” referring to recent polls and that Colorado Republican Senate Candidate Joe O’Dea is “barely behind, [Washington Republican Senate candidate] Tiffany Smiley is down two.” Turning to the New Hampshire Senate race, Scott said “there’s a poll out showing [GOP challenger Don] Bolduc down two,” adding that “Hassan’s numbers have been horrible as far as her approval.”