The General Staff of the Ukrainian military announced in a Facebook post Wednesday that approximately 41,350 Russian service members have been killed in action since the invasion began on February 24th, New Voice of Ukraine reports. In addition to the human losses, the general staff estimates the Russian military have lost 1,774 tanks, 191 helicopters, 223 planes, 15 naval vessels, and 4,022 armored vehicles, among other various other staggering numbers that would probably equal the entire military fighting forces of various small countries combined.

It’s not clear if the 41,350 figure includes Russian-backed rebels from the two breakaway eastern “republics” that started this whole shitshow, but either way the Ukrainians canceled a big one on Wednesday: Olga “Korsa” Kachur, a terrorist commander who reportedly would dress up in a Ukrainian army uniform and fire on civilians in the Donetsk region. She reportedly told Kremlin backed media she loved killing Ukrainians, per New Voice of Ukraine. Do svidaniya Korsa.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Congressman John Rose is a phenomenal Representative of Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District.

John is working hard to Secure the Border, Provide Access to Affordable Health Care, Create Jobs, Grow the Economy, Uphold the Rule of Law, Support our Veterans, and Protect and Defend the Second Amendment.

John Rose is a Conservative Fighter, and he has my Complete and Total Endorsement!

9.748 2.201 Aug 03, 2022, 20:24

Congressman John Rose also started dating his wife in 2007 when she was a 17 year old high school student and a member of the Future Farmers of America and he was a 42 year old tech entrepreneur and Tennessee Vice Chairman for FFA. They were married four years later, while she was still an undergrad in college (they still are and have at least two kids). The Republican Acting Attorney General of Alaska resigned in 2021 over after being implicated in statutory rape in which both he and the victim were similarly dispositioned. But Trump doesn’t mention any of this, we guess because heterosexuals can’t be “groomers” in MAGA World. Only the gays.

The Republican former governor of Puerto Rico Wanda Vázquez Garced was arrested along with at least two others Thursday by the FBI on charges related to a corruption probe, CBS News’s David Begnaud reports. While Vázquez Garced officially ran and served as governor from the local “New Progressive Party,” for national fundraising purposes she is a member of the Republican Party and officially endorsed Trump for reelection in 2020, despite his horrific intentional neglect of the island and protracted public doubt over the death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

While it’s hard to sympathize with right wingers on pretty much everything, it’d be easy to see why they might be pretty fucking frustrated with the snail’s pace of the count in the Arizona Republican governor’s primary race between Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson. As of 7:16 AM EDT on Wednesday the count stood at 81% reported, 636,593 votes tabulated. Now, as of 6:41 AM EDT on Thursday, the count stands at 82% percent reported, 657,038 votes tabulated.

How the hell did they count 636,593 votes in the first few hours after polls closed and then only 20,445 over roughly the next 24? Even weirder is how there’s a discrepancy between the reporting numbers in the statewide races. How could the Senate primary be 84% reported but the governor primary is 82%? What happened to that 2%? And this isn’t just the New York Times, because Politico says the same thing (albeit with the decimal points). And it’s not voters somehow leaving the governor pick blank while checking off a Senate candidate, because the Times shows 642,123 total votes for the Senate GOP primary, nearly 15,000 less than the governor’s race.

This is friggin weird although maybe it sticks out less to national media observers because Lake’s circa 12,000 vote lead over Taylor Robson has stayed pretty much the same in the last 24 hours. We obviously have no skin in this particular game, it’s going to be a tough race for Dem Secretary of State and gov nominee Katie Hobbs no matter which one of the MAGA candidates she faces, but it does not exactly bode well for November considering it’s more likely than not that the big matchups in Arizona come down to the wire just as it did between Biden and Trump back in 2020.

“Among the Trumpian core of the Republican Party, this has become mainstream. It’s exceedingly dangerous, because a democracy depends on losers’ consent. If people believe the other side is consistently stealing elections, first of all, you completely delegitimize people in office… but second, you create the conditions where people might be more willing to engage in fraud themselves as a way of trying to even the score,” – Election law Professor Rick Hasen, quoted by Axios in a lengthly, detailed roundup of MAGA candidates who refuse to accept reality.

The Nashville City Council rejected a draft agreement that would have brought the 2024 Republican National Convention to the city, removing the city as a potential site for the shitshow of misogyny, xenophobia and other Trumpian delights, the Tennessean reports.

The council voted 22-10 with three abstentions on the bill that would have accepted terms that would have likely placed the city on the list of finalists for the convention, which could feature demands that delegates change their votes from the candidates their state primaries decided to support because of Dominion voting machines and bamboo ballots.

On the first reading of the proposal, the council voted it down because of the problems with protecting the thousands of attendees, such as setting up official demonstration areas far away from the convention site as speakers rage about Democrats and Big Tech censoring them.  Milwaukee is likely to get the convention contract.

CNN reports that two of Ivana Trump’s children, apparently fit to testify after hosting a Saudi-sponsored golf tournament at the club where their mother’s corpse merited them a tax break, sat for depositions in the New York state attorney’s investigation into financial fraud by the Trump Organization.

Donald Trump’s favorite, Ivanka Trump, and her brother, alleged Colombian Marching Powder aficionado Donald Jr., had their depositions Wednesday and last Thursday, respectively.  Junior then went to the Trump golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey to pay respects at the graveside of his mother run among the sparse crowd to high-five people.

The New York AG is reportedly investigating a number of crimes committed by the Trump Organization relating to the manipulation of property values:  lowering them to avoid paying taxes or conversely raising them to obtain loans and other financial benefits.

On the day Joe Biden was being sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers behind the failed attempt to submit false slates of electors to the National Archives to be counted on January 6th was trying to raise money for another wild goose chase:  to overturn the two 2021 Georgia Senate runoff elections won by Democrats, the New York Times reports.

Stunningly, John Eastman claimed that his plan to overturn the two January 5th elections–one won by Democrat Raphael Warnock over Republican Kelly Loeffler by 94,000 and the other victory by Democrat Jon Ossoff over Republican David Perdue by 55,000 votes–would help restore the reputations of those people involved in the January 6th plot.

“A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Eastman wrote in an email sent to Trump lawyer and frequent drag queen Rudy Giuliani and others, including people within the Trump campaign. “If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”

First, Alex Jones learns his lawyers turned over incriminating evidence to the plaintiffs’ attorneys in a potential $150 million civil lawsuit.  Then the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress requested copies of those communications.  And now, in another case, a group of plaintiffs have asked a judge to cut off his cash.

Reuters reports that families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre have requested the judge overseeing the bankruptcy filing of Jones’s conspiracy-spreading network Infowars to halt all payments, including his paycheck, from the company to Jones.  The motion also seeks to prevent Jones from handling any cash distributions from the company, trying to stop him from funneling money through his other business entities to him.

Jones has stated that he is using the Infowars bankruptcy filing as a tactic to stem the loss of money he is expecting with the decision in the civil case, claiming that the bankruptcy filing will save him money in the long run instead of going to the people he’s harmed by his lies and harassment.

In a sign that her investigation is really starting to get to them, Trump minions are trying to organize a recall effort against Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, Yahoo News reports. While the MAGA scumbags admit Georgia’s high bar for recalls makes it extremely unlikely they’ll be able to get it on the ballot before Willis makes a decision on whether to charge the Donald, the point is more of a political one as they seek to discredit the law-woman by any means necessary.

So expect a lot of “She’s ignoring street crime while conducting a witch hunt!” type bullshit. “The purpose is to politicize it,” said one source in the Georgia GOP. “The message here is, ‘OK, you [Willis] want to play this [political] game, we’ll make this about politics.'” Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus is among the big money GOP donors Trump and pals are looking to pay to bankroll the effort, as if Donald hasn’t suckered enough money out of his fans to pay for it himself.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that would allow states to file for Medicaid waivers to assist patients seeking abortions who have to travel across state lines for reproductive health care because their home states have oppressive abortion bans, the Washington Post reports.

The move comes one day after voters in Kansas summarily rejected an attempt by the state’s Republicans to outright ban all abortions by a nearly 3-to-2 margin, a significant victory for pro-choice advocates in a deeply Red state.

“[Republicans] don’t have a clue about the power of American women.  Last night in Kansas, they found out,” Biden said Wednesday at the signing ceremony, adding, “The [Supreme Court] has made clear it will not protect the rights of women — period. Period. After having made the decision based on a reading of a document that was frozen in time in the 1860s when women didn’t even have the right to vote, the court now practically dares the women of America to go to the ballot box and restore the very rights they’ve just taken away.”

New Jersey Republican National Committee member Bill Palatucci, already on the MAGA shit list for vocally opposing the RNC’s infamous “legitimate political discourse” resolution back in February, may be causing more headaches for leadership by circulating a resolution to get the party to back the bipartisan Electoral Count Act reform bill coming up on deck in the Senate, NBC News reports.

“I don’t care what you think of Donald Trump, I don’t care what you think of Liz Cheney,” Palatucci told NBC News. “The peaceful transfer of power is so important to American democracy that we should eliminate the confusion that happened. You can blame whoever you want, but that to me has nothing to do with urging Congress to fix what was obviously a problem last year.”

Trump obviously opposes the reform because without it and with a pliant Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, he thinks he can lose in 2024 but still be installed back into office on January 6th, 2025. A resolution supporting the changes being floated at the RNC’s Summer meeting is obviously kind of problematic for someone like Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel, who either risks angering the Orange God Emperor if she lets the resolution pass or being ridiculed by the public as she was with the “legitimate discourse” resolution back in February if it doesn’t. She probably thinks Bill Palatucci is a fucking pain in the ass and she’s not wrong to do so.

The Senate voted 95-1 to ratify Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, CNBC reports.

After receiving a “questionable source rating” and graded as “FAR LEFT” biased by the Media Bias Fact Check website, we the co-editors of National Zero, respond individually as follows.

JACK: We’re not them–and by “them,” I mean a website that really gives a damn about what other people think. National Zero wasn’t set up to be a be-all, end-all news source. We’re two guys who post stories when we can, trying our best to keep up with the news, curating material, and adding our commentary to the stories–all while supporting a community of commenters who contribute to the esprit de corps of the site.

What we are, however, is honest in our opinions, and we’re honest with ourselves. We’re liberals. We support liberal causes and we find many people on the conservative side of the discourse to be, well, fucking idiots. It’s not like we try to hide, and I believe the transparency of our views is more honorable than those who hypocritically claim, “We Report. You Decide.”

Republican Congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District was killed in a multiple-fatality head-on car accident in Elkhart County, Indiana on Wednesday, WTRC 95.3 FM in Mishawaka, Indiana reports.

Cars heading northbound and southbound on State Road 19/119 smashed head-on into each other.  Police have not yet released more details of the accident.  Also killed in the accident were Zachary Potts of the St. Joseph County Republican Party and Emma Thompson, Walorski’s communication director.  The fourth victim was apparently the driver of the other vehicle.

The four-term Congresswoman was part of the GOP contingent to vote against the certification of the 2020 Presidential election, and she was one of 126 members of the House who signed on to an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of the Texas effort to violate the Constitution and sue to have the results of the 2020 presidential election from Pennsylvania overturned; the Supreme Court rejected the motion. 

That was quick. Rolling Stone reports the House January 6th Select Committee are readying a subpoena for the contents of Alex Jones’ phone from the Sandy Hook plaintiff’s attorneys. “These internal deliberations among the committee, which is probing former President Donald Trump’s role in causing the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, began within minutes of the lawyer’s revelation being heard on the trial’s livestream on Wednesday afternoon,” said the Rolling Stone report.

Maybe everyone really is out to get Alex Jones–including his own lawyers.  In the Austin civil trial to determine how much money Jones will have to pay the families of Sandy Hook massacre victims whom Jones defamed and harassed, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers has (what can only image) what every trial attorney dreams about:  incontrovertible evidence that the defendant is lying.

In this instance, Jones’s attorneys turned over a digital copy of the entire contents of Jones’s cell phone to the plaintiffs, including two years of his communications that contain damning evidence that he lied multiple times under oath in depositions.  The plaintiffs’ lawyer explains that even after Jones’s attorneys were informed of their error, they took no action to recall or exclude the incriminating evidence and otherwise privileged information, which includes proof that Jones withheld incriminating evidence of his acts.  The stammering Jones tries to play it off like the disclosure was intentional, but he’s clearly rattled.  “My lawyers sent it to you, but I’m hiding it,” Jones says smarmily.  “Okay.”

In a land with 130 documented volcanoes and located in an area known as the Ring of Fire, Iceland has periodic eruptions that can lead to some spectacular sites.  According to Reuters, a fissure opened up about 40 miles southwest of Reykjavik, causing disruption to air traffic.

What happens to a conspiracy theorist who can no longer admit that his conspiracy theories are lies?  Well, we’re about to find out, as popular conspiratorial blowhard Alex Jones was forced to admit under oath that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre actually happened and more than two dozen people actually died.

According to the Associated Press, Jones said on the stand, “It was … especially since I’ve met the parents. It’s 100% real,” without elaborating why meeting the parents would shift his view when there was overwhelming evidence–like 28 dead bodies riddled with gunshots that were found at Sandy Hook Elementary School–would’ve convinced a normal person who was not out to exploit others’ grief for their own personal wealth and fame.

Jones has made a career–and a media empire–convincing people that real things aren’t real, from the 9/11 terrorist attack to mass shootings to vaccine denialism to the safety of various food (which he has claimed are infused with various nanobots to have The Massive Galactic Manipulators control all aspects of our life).

Another poll by Monmouth University rigged to demoralize and lie to traditional Americans who value faith and freedom puts Communism ahead of the Constitution 50% to 43% on the generic midterm ballot, down from the less fake polls that had America winning in the Spring. Meanwhile 38% of Americans approve of fake President Joe Biden, while another 56% are right about him.

“Recent events, such as the [fake, highly partisan, no cross-examination] Jan. 6th committee hearings and Supreme Court decisions [protecting life from the liberals], seem to have generated a bit more energy for the [Satanic socialist] Democrats, but it is not clear that this is actual momentum. It may simply be ongoing volatility in a public largely unhappy with the way things are going in [the swamp] Washington,” said Monmouth liberal Patrick Murray, who hates America.