You can’t really blame Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his publicity stunt of flying undocumented migrants to Martha’s Vineyard blowing up in his face:  he’s a Republican, and the only way Republicans know how to get things done is to pay someone else to do the work.

As the Miami Herald reports, it appears that the flights of migrants to the Massachusetts vacation spot DeSantis has made his central talking point over the last two days originated from Texas.  Those undocumented migrants, who DeSantis attempted to portray as being uprooted from Florida, had never stepped foot in Florida.

Questions have arisen if DeSantis broke the law by using money from a $12 million fund set up to “remove” undocumented immigrants from Florida.  DeSantis reportedly defended the expenditure by claiming that trafficking his human chattel to a sanctuary city makes it unlikely they’ll ever go to Florida.

File this with the “It took this long?” Department:  On Thursday, the Tampa Bay Rays became the first team in Major League Baseball history to start a batting lineup consisting of all Latino players, CBS News reports.

The feat took place on the day the league honors Roberto Clemente day, remembering the Puerto Rican player for the Pittsburgh Pirates who died on a humanitarian flight to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua in 1971.  All the Latino players on the Rays wore Clemente’s number 21 on their jerseys to commemorate the day.

According to MLB.com, the starting lineup was:  Yandy Díaz and Randy Arozarena from Cuba; Wander Franco, Manuel Margot and Jose Siri from the Dominican Republic; Harold Ramírez from Colombia; David Peralta and René Pinto from Venezuela; and Isaac Paredes from Mexico.  (The pitcher, a position that no longer bats, was Shane McClanahan of Baltimore, Maryland.)

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon has baffled legal experts and at least one former Attorney General with her legal rulings, and tonight’s is no different.  The jurist, however, made a very telling statement in the last paragraph of her ruling noted below (with my emphasis).  Not only does Cannon openly state that she doesn’t believe the prosecutors’ claims, made in sworn statements, but she also acknowledges she’s giving Donald Trump special treatment because of his old job.  Apparently, she never learned the adage, “Justice is blind.”

III. Relevant Principles

The Government also presents the argument, in passing, that making the full scope of the Lastly, the Court agrees with the Government that “the public is best served by evenhanded adherence to established principles of civil and criminal procedure,” regardless of the personal identity of the parties involved [ECF No. 88 p. 10]. It is also true, of course, that evenhanded procedure does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice. Based on the nature of this action, the principles of equity require the Court to consider the specific context at issue, and that consideration is inherently impacted by the position formerly held by Plaintiff. The Court thus continues to endeavor to serve the public interest, the principles of civil and criminal procedure, and the principles of equity. And the Court remains firmly of the view that appointment of a special master to conduct a review of the seized materials, accompanied by a temporary injunction to avoid unwarranted use and disclosure of potentially privileged and/or personal materials, is fully consonant with the foregoing principles and with the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under unprecedented circumstances.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Thursday that his government has located at least one mass burial site outside the newly-liberated city of Izium, furthering the evidence of Russian war crimes, the Associated Press reports.

Situated in a forest, hundreds of graves are marked with simple crosses with numbers written on them.  One of the markers notes that it is the grave of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.  Investigators say posting made to social media accounts by Russian soldiers point to 25-30 bodies in the grave.

The graves document the massive loss of civilian life that occurred as the Russians attempted to seize Ukraine.  Scores of those buried are dead as the result of a missile attack on an apartment complex in Izium. 

“And I have come to the conclusion–and I want to be definitive on this–the election was not stolen,” New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial nominee–and a guy who just last month spouted election conspiracy theories at Republican rallies–Don Bolduc says on Fox during his rehabilitation tour just two days after winning the nomination.  Bolduc finishes his statement by acknowledging, “Elections have consequences, and unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country.”

Granite Staters obviously told him to cut the bullshit about the election being stolen because it makes you look like an idiot, so he’s going to do his predetermined election strategy which is to abandon the far-right whackjob antics that helped him win the primary and would’ve drowned him in the general.  In other words, MAGAts, Bolduc knows you’re an anchor on his election hopes.

REDS RISING: Xi Tells Putin 'We are ready to team up' | Just The Newshttps://t.co/XYxyTRVxow

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) September 16, 2022

Donald Trump is already winnowing down his list of potential candidates for the second slot on the Republican presidential ticket in 2024, and those options will not include either his former Vice President Mike Pence or his former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Yahoo News reports.

In “The Divider:  Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” writers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser say Trump told them in an interview he wouldn’t choose Pence because “[i]t would be totally inappropriate,” adding, “Mike committed political suicide,” which, if I’m Mike Pence, political suicide is better than my actual lynching.

Trump also ruled out former South Carolina governor Haley, who has been a loyal Trumpian while still attempting to stay grounded in reality.  That’s not good enough for Trump because, he’s told various people, she has a “complexion problem.”  Haley, whose first name is Nimrata, is the child of immigrants from India.

Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon has ruled in favor of her client, disgraced former President Trump and denied the Justice Department’s motion for a stay, appointing New York Senior Federal Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as a special master to review the documents the Orange Satan stole from the White House, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.

In another sign of how socially inept Republicans are, Senate leadership has postponed a vote on a bill that would codify marriage rights for LGBTQ couples in the United States because they can’t secure commitments from just ten GOP Senators to support the legislation, Reuters reports.

With more than 70% of Americans supporting the right of non-traditional couples to marry, supporting such legislation would help Republicans fend off attacks that they’re out of touch with the nation’s populace and that they’re not out to strip people of their rights, particularly after dancing in the streets when Roe was overturned.  But Republicans aren’t interested in protecting people’s individual rights unless they’re paid to do so by groups like the National Rifle Association.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019 there were an estimated 543,000 same-sex married couple households and 469,000 households with same-sex unmarried partners living together.  In his concurring opinion to the Dobbs verdict, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas announced his intention to ensure the right for LGBTQ couples to marry should be reexamined by the Court, which has Democrats and other human rights supporters working to codify the right to marriage into law.

“I’ve got some of the best lawyers in the country:  Alan Dershowitz, Ala- um, Andrew Parker, Kurt Olsen amongst others,” packaged foam salesman and Zelig of the January 6th plans Mike Lindell tells convicted criminal Steve Bannon.  “What can we do with what happened on, on, ah, with this seizure of my phone, thi-al FBI corruption and ah, we are suing–you’re hearing it hear first, everybody–we’re suing the United States government and the FBI.”

We all know accused child predator Alan Dershowitz.  Andrew Parker, who nobody has heard of, is a local labor and employment lawyer in Minnesota who apparently dabbles in constitutional law while also taking on property tax appeals and civil rights lawsuits.  And Kurt Olsen is also part of the Department of Justice investigation into his attempts to overturn the Constitution.

FBI agents on Tuesday seized the phone of “Doctor” Doug Frank, an Ohio high school teacher who thinks his theory of a “sixth-order polynomial” or some sort of horseshit explains how the election was stolen from President Trump because it’s a super secret algorithm and…

…well it’s great to know this asshole is also under federal criminal investigation along with his buddy Mike Lindell for their tampering with election equipment in Colorado in a scheme that also involves Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne and Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.

In remarks at a press conference following an important meeting with his more powerful partner in the fight for global repression and authoritarianism, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said ChiCom dictator Xinnie the Pooh had expressed some “concerns” about how badly the Russians are getting their asses kicked by the furious Ukrainian counteroffensive, the New York Times reports.

Xi didn’t say anything publicly about Ukraine, an omission taken by the Times as a sign the ChiComs are not going to help turn the tide. Since we don’t have any further info to report about the meeting and don’t feel like filling in three paragraphs of background info, we’re just going to pretend Xi told Putin “YOU INSOLENT FOOL! We worked for decades to develop these carefully laid plans to defeat Dark Brandon and you’ve been made to look weak and cowardly by a TV comedian!” as a lightning bolt split the sky outside of the the Jade Palace and Xi’s pet mutant dragon tigers growled and bared their golden teeth at Putin. “And your supposed brilliant mad scientist Doctor Arkady Fenix choked on his own vomit from drinking homemade vodka mixed with paint thinner and died the day before he was supposed to complete the time portal and send modern ChiCom-Russian commandos to invade Washington in 1925! I’m tiring of your incompetence!”

A woman who lives about 100 miles from Boston was arrested Thursday for making a bomb threat against Boston Children’s Hospital, a provider targeted by the intolerant right because it provides medical care to transgender children, the Boston Globe reports.

Thirty-seven-year-old Catherine Leavy of Westfield, Massachusetts was arrested in connection with a phoned threat to the hospital on August 30th.  Investigators have said Leavy has not been connected to a second bomb threat to the hospital, received on September 9th; that incident is still unsolved.

Boston Children’s Hospital has been targeted by right-wing professional whiners and windbags like Matt Walsh have launched what critics call a “stochastic terror” attack on the hospital because it has a care program for trans children.  Walsh has inaccurately stated that Boston Children’s performs sterilizations and gender reassignment surgery on children under the age of 18, among other graphic lies, to stoke anger and hatred in his audience, pushing them to attack–figuratively and physically–the institution and the people who work there.

KWTV News chopper pilot Jim Gardner was a little sheepish on Wednesday when asked point blank by the in-studio anchor what it was spilled all over the I-40 offramp west of Oklahoma City, but according to TheLostOgle.com it was indeed a shit ton of sex toys destined for adults of all ages with certain desires they like to enjoy privately, so how about don’t be so fucking judgey, okay?

CNN reports that the subpoena provided to torn foam magnate and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell when the FBI seized his cell phone while he was at a drive-thru at a Hardee’s in Minnesota named seven people federal authorities were seeking information from relating to illegal access to election machines and data.  And one of the people on that list had their cell phone seized Thursday.

The Washington Post reports that one of the people on the list, Doug Frank, had his phone taken by federal investigators on Thursday.  A one-time math and science teacher in Ohio, Frank claims to have reconstructed algorithms used by Dominion Voting Systems to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, thereby giving Biden the victory.  Computer scientists have scoffed at Frank’s claims, and no reputable researcher has been able to verify anything he claims.

The investigation seems to center on the efforts by people including Colorado election clerk Tina Peters, assisted by Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown, members of her Mesa County election bureau staff who helped her provide confidential data to people trying to overturn the certified results of the 2020 presidential election in Colorado.

Lefty news site Raw Story switched from Disqus to the inferior OpenWeb platform on Thursday, the latest in a string of political-centric sites to either depart from the Big D or quit comments altogether. The reasons why are unclear, but we can say we’ve tried commenting with OpenWeb on FoxNews’s website and really did not like it, so we’re not sure what Raw Story is thinking.

Now we’ll be the first to say Disqus’s administrative backend is complete shit, almost to the point of being useless for moderation purposes. It needs a complete top-to-bottom redesign that is nowhere in sight. Their support sucks, it takes hours to get an answer to a simple fucking question and they don’t give a shit about feedback. It’s overpriced, as we’re now paying $115/month to get a handful of extra features that should’ve been included in the $12/month basic package.

But those are our problems, not our commenters’. They are the heart and soul of our site, and though they may be significantly smaller in number than the lurkers, they are our most critical resource for story tips and feedback on our content, and the vast majority of them are kind, loving, decent folks to us and to each other. It would take nothing short of a head injury to wake up one day and think our needs would ever outweigh theirs. “Oh OpenWeb has all these cool little tabs for pinpointing aggressive language use in our community. Who cares if we piss everyone off by switching away from the system they’ve used for a decade or more to interact on our site?”

Now we’re not going to say anything more about how we feel about Raw Story – how we’ve felt about their site and content long before they switched away from Disqus – as we would like to encourage our readers to think positively when we humbly ask them to go to their still-active Disqus portal, pick a story thread from the last few days, and let a few of them know they’re welcome at National Zero. They may even find this profane rant endearing and stick around.

MyPillow assclown and likely target of a federal criminal investigation for his involvement in a plot to tamper with election equipment in Colorado Mike Lindell on Thursday told convicted felon Steve Bannon he’s planning to sue the FBI and Biden Administration to get his phone back after it was seized while he was waiting in the drive-thru to buy a mushroom Swiss burger at a Minnesota Hardee’s on Tuesday, shitty right wing propaganda website The Post Millennial reports.

Lindell claimed he’s hired “some of the best lawyers in the country,” listing Jeffrey Epstein-linked Alan “Dersh” Dershowitz and two others we’ve never heard of. “We are suing the United States government and the FBI. This isn’t just to get the phone back, this is my First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights were broken… We aren’t going to put up with this, we aren’t going to be the Gestapo like in Nazi Germany. We’re being proactive, “I was on the phone with these attorneys, I said ‘no, I want to sue.’ … We have all the lawyers on the phone, they looked at all these statutes, we are going to go to places that no man has gone before. This will set a precedent. This has to stop,” Lindell ranted, plainly on the edge of a nervous breakdown at least two years overdue.

Newly sworn Alaska Dem Congresswoman Mary Peltola leads former Governor Sarah Palin 53% to 47% of the vote when the numbers were crunched on a Fabrizio-Ward AARP survey simulating the ranked choice election. The Senate election meanwhile is much tighter, as “RINO” Senator Lisa Murkowski in a 50/50 final vote dead heat with MAGA challenger Kelly Tshitkablahblah.

Crazy shit here: Politico reports that disgraced former President Trump is actually has paid $3 million upfront his newest lawyer, former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise to defend against both of the two major onongoing federal criminal investigations into him, AND it’s real money too, not like $3 million in commemorative Impeachment II Victory Special Collector’s Coins or Mega-MAGA-Millions x3000 matching limited time offer act now or whatever. AND unlike before, the money’s coming from donors to Trump’s “Save America” PAC and not from donations to the GOP that were supposed to be spent on trying to win actual political campaigns. That’s insane, right?

Talking to fans at a “College Republicans Tailgate” last week, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he’s open to a contraception ban in the state, depending on “where the legislatures are.”

“You could take up pretty much anything but you got to be in the legislative session to do that,” Kemp said on audio provided to Heartland Signal from an anonymous Dem source. “I think, I’d have to check and see because there are a lot of legalities,” Kemp added. Definitely not a no.