The Summer of Brandon continues to be a nightmare for fanboys as inflation dropped to 8.5% in July, beating a Bloomberg survey estimate of 8.7% and down from the 9.1% June peak. Get ready for the largest caravan the world has ever seen to start in about 10 minutes.

Republican Brad Finstad won Tuesday’s special election for the Minnesota House seat held by GOP Congressman Jim Hagedorn before he died of cancer earlier this year, with a current lead of 51.1% to Dem Jeff Ettinger’s 46.9% which obviously sucks but it was a longshot no matter what.

However Dems should really like what they see in the not-yet final tally, which isn’t going to change much given over 95% of the count has been reported. Prior to the call, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman wrote “Trump carried #MN01 54%-44% in 2020. So if Jeff Ettinger (D) were to finish within single digits of Brad Finstad (R) in tonight’s special election, it would be a good result for Dems. If Finstad’s margin is 5 pts or less, it would be a great result for Dems. We’ll see,” so by Wasserman’s estimate a 4.2% loss was indeed a great night. Dems in array.

Small bonus for “RINOs”: Finstad simultaneously won the Republicans primary for the November election for a full term, defeating some asshole backed by the Freedom Caucasians.

I just tried calling the FBI to ask them why they confiscated a sitting Member of Congress’s personal cellphone.

It rang twice and went to voicemail. pic.twitter.com/pb0nA3lTIC

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 10, 2022

“You’re either ‘law and order’ or you’re not. There are a number of Republicans who like to talk about law and order while simultaneously picking which laws and order they want to follow. I can see it becoming possibly an issue” – Former Minnesota GOP Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb asked by Politico about how the raid on Mar-a-Lago affects the Midterms for the GOP.

While many pundits are putting the race “Leans R,” I’m gonna make the stretch and say the Democrat Mandela Barnes will flip the Wisconsin Senate seat supporting the tushie of Republican fan of Moscow Ron Johnson.

Barnes took more than 78% of the Democratic primary vote Tuesday, while incumbent Johnson got 84% on the Republican ballot.  Barnes will pull more Democrats to the polls in the midterms, and he’ll soak up his challengers’ votes.  Plus, he’ll get the rather substantial number of disaffected Republicans who don’t like the fact that Johnson was on-board with a group of insurrections.

Johnson’s got nowhere to go but down.  Barnes picks up the non-Johnson voters from both Parties; Johnson loses voters as more of his chicanery from January 6th gets played again and again in hearings and trials.  There will be no uptick for him from the primary.  (Plus, don’tcha know, we’ll be busin’ in all those “illegals” to vote on those Venezuelan voting machines that will count the votes in Luxembourg.)

Update 11:46 p.m. ET:  The New York Times has called the race for Vos.

Cook’s Dave Wasserman tweeted out a declaration by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Republican Robin Vos that he won his hotly contested district seat, but doesn’t seem to endorse the sentiment.  According to the New York Times Elections page, Vos had 51.3% of the vote to Trump-endorsed challenger Adam Steen’s 48.7% with 89% of the vote in.

Vos texted an associate, “We won!” around 11 p.m. ET, even though he only had a 260 vote lead.  No concession seems to have been made, and no call from elections officials.

Vos became the target of Trump scorn for being insufficiently insistent that the state overturn the results of the November 2020 elections to unjustly hand the state’s Electoral College slate to Trump.  So upholding your state’s and country’s Constitutions is counter to Trumpism.

After planting his ex-wife and useless tax credit Ivana at his Bedminster golf club, Donald Trump has apparently completed his mourning–with the help of a few million dollars from the Saudis for hosting a golf tournament–and he’ll sit for a deposition with the New York Attorney General’s office as early as Wednesday, his personal public relations agents at Fox report.

Trump will be the last member of his family to be deposed in the investigation into financial reporting irregularities at the Trump Organization that allowed the Trumps to avoid paying taxes by devaluing properties, but raising the stated value of the properties to get loans and financial benefits.

Emotionally abandoned son Ewic, who runs the Trump Organization, reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times in his deposition.  Lusted-after daughter Ivanka and reportedly super excited but TOTALLY not using cocaine son Junior testified last week, but reportedly did not invoke the Fifth, although it’s unknown how many times they claimed they didn’t know something.

“But I’ll tell you where the danger is and the fire is here, okay?  What comes around goes around,” Republican Florida Senator and man who doesn’t listen to what he’s saying Marco Rubio asserts.  “And here’s what’s gonna happen now — one day they won’t be in power. And whoever is in power, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure on them to do it back to the other side. And now we do become a banana republic.  Now we become like those countries come to America to get away from, where there is no rule of law and everything get politicized and where opposition to those in power is criminalized.”

Liddle Marco seems to misunderstand what’s happening here:  the Department of Justice is enforcing the law, not seeking political retribution.  Political retribution is what happens when a political leader leads a “Lock her up!” cheer at political rallies.  Politicizing opposition is what happens when a group (cough, cough… Republicans) tries to implement large-scale voter suppression.  and banana republics rarely use Constitutional provisions like court-issued search warrants to enforce their laws against a citizen who happened to at one time hold political office.

Super ultra socialist radical liberal leftist mega Squad-ocrat Ilhan Omar has survived a strong primary challenge from some Moderate-ocrat in Minnesota’s 5th Distrct, Dave Wasserman projects.

Trump endorsed cock knob Tim Michels has won the Wisconsin GOP governor primary, beating loser former Lt Gov Becky Kleefisch and Timmy “Decertifiable” Ramthun, and will take on incumbent Democrat Governor Tony Evers in November, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman projects.

As Columbus, Georgia attorney Michael Eddings prepared for the opening of the murder trial of his client Tuesday, the judge entered the courtroom and made an unexpected announcement:  Eddings could no longer represent the defendant because he had been disbarred that morning.

As the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reports, the state bar association announced Tuesday that it found sufficient cause to disbar Eddings for his conduct in a different trial.  Eddings himself blamed the district attorney, Stacey Jackson, for his disbarment.

Prior to becoming DA, Jackson was a defense attorney like Eddings who was representing a client in a different murder case where Eddings was representing a different defendant.  Jackson filed a complaint with the bar after learning Eddings had a private meeting with his client, with him being present, a violation of bar association ethics.

With a limited supply of monkeypox vaccine, Florida is rationing distribution of inoculations as the number of new cases in the state have nearly doubled since last week, with 985 cases reported in the last week versus 525 the previous week, Politico reports, just one week after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that monkeypox was no big deal and it was just another way the federal government was trying to keep people scared, a sentiment he made about the coronavirus vaccine as well.  Florida is home to about 10% of all monkeypox cases in the US.

A coronavirus vaccine denier, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo apparently has no qualms about the monkeypox vaccine.  Unlike with the vaccines for coronavirus, which Ladapo decried while promoting disproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, he is now ordering 72,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.  Previously, Ladapo had lambasted DHHS efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and decried efforts to get people vaccinated as an action of a police state.

Ladapo’s reputation was questionable when he was appointed to be Florida’s Surgeon General.  The Nigerian native said that he treated many Covid patients while working at the flagship hospital of the UCLA health system in Los Angeles, but the hospital has no record of him being on the record of treating any coronavirus patients. 

Hey, there’s still elections going on! This is news! Vermont at-large Congressman Pete Welch won the Dem primary to take over for retiring Senator Patrick Leahy on Tuesday! Guys! Look, Pete Welch won the primary! That means he’s getting promoted from the House to the Senate! Pete Welch! He beat some other Democrat in the Prima- Oh fuck. Alright fine. Yeah, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.

The Republicans who have for months been feverishly working to stop the Orange God Emperor from announcing his 2024 run before the Midterms have now done a 180 and are now urging him to launch the comeback campaign as soon as possible after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, CNN reports.

Like we wrote earlier, that if – besides getting ahead of Ron DeSantis – the whole point of launching the campaign had been to preemptively paint anything like being searched by FBI agents or indicted as “politically motivated” then doesn’t this kind of make Donald look pretty fucking stupid and weak that he let Merrick Garland move first? Now he’s just reacting to his adversary. Some smart Chinese guy wrote a book about that a very long time ago. It’s very popular.

Then there’s the Midterms. “Trump being front and center could affect GOP gains in the House by five seats or so. But it could really affect the Senate, which could end up 50/50 again based on how the seats are looking,” said Texas GOP strategist Jeff Burton in a story in the Washington Examiner less than two months ago, adding “Anything, and I mean anything, that takes the focus off the miserable job Joe Biden is doing is bad for Republicans.” Well guess that’s out the window now and they’re going to lash themselves to the bow of the Trumptanic come hell or high water.

Albuquerque police announced the arrest of 51-year-old Muhammad Syed in connection of four Muslim men murdered over the past nine months, including three murders in the past two weeks, CNN reports.

Police raided Syed’s home last night, finding a gun and bullet casings that match the weapon used to kill the four men.  Funeral services were held for two of the men Friday; the fourth victim attended the funerals and was killed later that night.

Police have not released a motive for the killings, but say Syed had previous connections to his victims.  The murders put the entire Muslim community in Albuquerque on edge.

A 17-year-old Nebraska girl and her mother have been charged with numerous felony counts after the girl performed a medication abortion and disposed of the 28-week-old fetus, with prosecutors getting evidence from Facebook, Vice reports, in an ominous foreshadowing of how law enforcement in red states will use private communications to enforce totalitarian rules.

In April, prior to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Celeste Burgess obtained the chemical abortifacient combination Pregnot, a combination treatment of mifepristone and misoprostol, via a mail order provider, and the treatment prompted a stillborn birth.  Burgess and her mother then buried the fetus with the assistance of a family friend.

Nebraska law bans abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, so the Burgesses and their friend were charged with a variety of crimes.  Celeste Burgess faces five charges, including three felonies, including obtaining an illegal abortion.  Her mother faces a felony charge of disposing of a corpse.

MAGA asshole Congressman Scott Perry told Fox News on Tuesday that FBI agents came and relieved him of his cell phone pursuant to a subpoena. “This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish. I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,” Perry said in a statement to Fox News. “My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”

“Wahhhhhhh!” the loser may or may not have said afterward. The seizure calls further into question whether the Mar-a-Lago raid was really about classified documents, whether it was merely used as a pretext for the FBI to get in the door or if was unrelated to Trump pilfering boxes of White House materials entirely. It’s a pretty safe bet Scott Perry had nothing to do with Trump stealing the letter from Kim Jong Un and the Sharpiegate hurricane map. His iinvolvement with the Trump coup attempt of December 2020 – January 2021 is a different story though.

Questions are being raised over whether Merrick Garland’s order to raid Mar-a-Lago was a distraction meant to overshadow media coverage of Democrat former Kentucky state lawmaker and Justice Cabinet secretary John Tilley’s arrest on rape charges as the timing seems awfully suspicious to certain conservative commenters. Obviously every political actor knows how to “flood the zone” and divert media attention from damaging stories, and what better for Attorney General Merrick Garland to crowd out a serious allegation against a fellow Democrat than to send the FBI to conduct a raid on the home of the Republican former President of the United States?

And the Mar-a-Lago raid story is probably the biggest news story since the Russian Invasion of Ukraine – which Biden started to distract from the allegations that Hillary Clinton spied on President Trump in the White House – so it’s pretty obvious that Garland was pulling some strings here.

Even if Tilley was appointed by Republican former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin in 2015 and for whatever reason didn’t stay on with Dem Governor Andy Beshear, which kind of calls into question whether or not Tilley is even a Dem at all, it still makes Biden, Harris, Pelosi, etc look bad that there’s a rapist in the party. So Garland probably did order the raid as a distraction. Case closed.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve thrown our right wing readers a bone after the awful day they had. We hope they enjoyed this “Just asking questions” article.

“An unsuccessful candidate for Sterling Heights City Council now faces felony charges related to ballot application forgeries, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced today. Paul Manni, 27, of Sterling Heights, is charged with the following in Macomb County’s 41-A District Court: nine counts of forging a signature on an absent voter ballot application, five-year felonies; and nine counts of making a false statement on an absent voter ballot application, 90-day misdemeanors. He was arraigned August 5. The charges stem from the November 2021 election,” says a Tuesday statement from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office.

“Leading up to the election, the City Clerk for Sterling Heights became suspicious when a candidate for city council – Manni – personally dropped off approximately 50 absentee voter applications with his signature and an indication that he was delivering the applications at the voters’ request. Nine of the voters included in the applications were reached by clerk staff to verify if they did, in fact, wish to apply for an absentee ballot. Each of the nine individuals advised they did not seek to apply for an absentee ballot. The Clerk then contacted the Bureau of Elections (BOE) to report the suspected fraud, which prompted an investigation. When that investigation was complete, it was referred to the Department of Attorney General (DAG) for evaluation. To be clear, none of the applications turned in by Manni resulted in a valid ballot going to the voter.”

After an errant pitch beans a batter from Oklahoma in the Little League World Series, the batter makes an amazingly mature and sportsmanlike action, comforting the East Texas team’s pitcher, who is obviously distraught at the possibility of having injured a fellow athlete. Upon taking first base, the batter tosses his helmet to the side and walks to the mound, where the pitcher is tearing up in distress. The Oklahoma player gives the pitcher a hug and says some reassuring words to his opponent, as the pitcher’s teammates and coaches gather to comfort him.