Anti-vax protestors who love Bulgaria and love law enforcement hugged and kissed police outside the Parliament building in Sofia while trying to get inside to take selfies on Wednesday, the AP reports. “The aim of the protest is to remove the restrictive measures and especially, first of all, the unconstitutional green certificate,” said Bulgaria First Patriot Kostadin Kostadinov, who didn’t incite the crowd or anything, so shut up libs, and stop politicizing January 12th. The whole investigation is weak borscht. You can bet your last stotinki that Speaker Minchev won’t answer questions about why he left the Parliament building unprotected. It was a setup and the BBI was behind it.

More than 300 police officers died of COVID in 2021, the single largest cause of death for active police officers for the second consecutive year, according to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, ABC News reports.

A record 458 police officers died in the line of duty in 2021, a 55% increase from the previous year when 295 died.  Last year saw the highest number of fatalities since 1930, when 312 officers died. In 2021, 301 of those fatalities were attributed to coronavirus, while 62 were killed by guns, an increase of 36% from 2020.

“This year’s statistics demonstrate that America’s front-line law enforcement officers continue to battle the deadly effects of the Covid-19 pandemic nationwide,” the report said. “Law enforcement officers nationwide continue to be exposed to the Covid-19 virus in the course of their daily assignments; therefore, the number of line-of-duty deaths is sadly ever-increasing.”

A new Politico/Morning Consult survey puts the Dems ahead of the GOP 44 to 41 in the Congressional generic ballot, while the Economist/YouGov shows Dems leading 42 to GOP 37. Rasmussen, who were off by 9 in 2018, have the GOP leading – what a coincidence – by 9 in their most recent survey last month. Both of the real polls continue to show pretty abysmal approval numbers for Joe Biden – 43% in Economist/YouGov, 44% in Politico/Morning Consult, which is roughly the same as the generic ballot numbers. So the takeaway is that despite people’s disappointment with Biden, the GOP is not actually selling their hateful bullshit very well at all. When 12% of Biden disapprove voters in the Morning Consult poll say they’re still going to vote Dem (as opposed to 8% of Biden approve voters saying they’ll vote GOP), there’s cause for slight optimism – and this is before the primaries and the shitshow Trump is going to cause this year.

Jeffrey Epstein pal and royal pervert Prince Andrew’s bid to have a lawsuit from rape accuser Virginia Giuffre was tossed by a New York federal judge on Wednesday, CNBC reports.

The Orange God Emperor’s royal courtiers have beseeched the Holy Corpulent One to cease his fiery wrath at the insolent Muscovite Viceroy of the Turtle Sigil, CNN reports. The danger for the Almighty Degenerate is it shows the limitations of his power in realms outside of his empire. “You have four candidates who would seemingly do anything for [Trump’s] endorsement and yet not one of them is willing to stand up and say, ‘It’s time for McConnell to go.’ That says a lot about McConnell’s survivability and it also shows that there are limitations to President Trump’s influence,” said a thrall – anonymously to avoid incurring banishment from the Imperial Palace.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bloody knackered after a serious row emerged over his attendance at a May 2020 gathering amid the dreary lockdown the commoner populace were forced to contend with, Bloomberg reports from a live blog of a furious carry-on at Westminster. “I bitterly regret it and wish we could have done things better,” Johnson said, apologising to the House of Commons. Two polls indicated a majority of Britons – and even a full third of Tories want the clunge to resign over an incident that would barely register a controversy among the Yanks.

NPR published an article about the weird Tuesday interview between Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep with a 7 minute audio clip toward the end of the interview – Trump hung up when asked if believing the 2020 election was stolen was a requirement for an endorsement. This part when Inskeep asks Trump why he thinks he lost in court so much is pretty hilarious (or outrageous) on its own, with the “It was too early to ask for fraud” bullshit, whatever that’s supposed to mean:

Inskeep: Let me read you some short quotes. The first is by one of the judges, one of the 10 judges you appointed, who ruled on this. And there were many judges, but 10 who you appointed. Brett Ludwig, U.S. District Court in Wisconsin, who was nominated by you in 2020. He’s on the bench and he says, quote, “This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.” Another quote, Kory Langhofer, your own campaign attorney in Arizona, Nov. 12, 2020, quote, “We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election.” And also Rudy Giuliani, your lawyer, Nov. 18, 2020, in Pennsylvania, “This is not a fraud case.” Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud, they said in court they had no evidence of fraud, and the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.

Trump: It was too early to ask for fraud and to talk about fraud. Rudy said that, because of the fact it was very early with the — because that was obviously at a very, very — that was a long time ago. The things that have found out have more than bore out what people thought and what people felt and what people found. When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don’t know what his game is, but I will just say this: You look at the findings. You look at the number of votes. Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?

National Zero will publish video of the entire interview when it becomes available.

New York City Councilwoman Vicki Paladino, 67, elected to her first term in November, is apologizing for comments she made to NY1 in an interview that aired Monday in which she said “I don’t need to show you my papers. This isn’t Nazi Germany,” over her being locked out of the city council chambers for refusing to say whether or not she’s vaccinated for COVID-19.

“During an hours-long interview with a reporter in which I spoke passionately about many issues, I made an ill-considered and inappropriate comparison between our government’s vaccine mandates and Nazi Germany. Though I immediately regretted what I said, and even asked the reporter to strike it from the record, I take complete ownership of that mistake” wrote Paladino in a statement.

Nice of her to apologize, because her history suggests she doesn’t think Nazi Germany was necessarily a bad thing. During her ultimately failed 2018 New York State Senate campaign, Gothamist reported that her since deleted old Twitter account regularly retweeted white supremacist and anti-semitic accounts, and liked a tweet saying elected officials should “stop catering to Asians” (supposedly an accident, per Gothamist). In 2017, when Black author Mikki Kendall tweeted “Your American Dream was built on the bones & blood of my ancestors. Want that dream to be reality? Time to pay the toll. We all get free,” Paladino replied with “Nothing was preventing your ancestors from building ships and conquering Europe. Except for their technological inferiority of course.” Vicki’s son Thomas Paladino Jr, 44, is a Proud Boys member who served as her “campaign strategist” during the 2018 run as well, using his Gab account to solicit donations in between also threatening to kill Maxine Waters and calling Africans “savages”.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show’s work to investigate the case of the forged 2020 Trump electoral college certificates continued Tuesday night as she showed viewers the bogus docs from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. “It wasn’t one state. It wasn’t three states where they did this. It was at least five states where we have now obtained forged documents created by Republicans,” said Maddow. “They sent them into the government as if they were real documents… They actually created these fake documents purporting to be the real certifications of them as electors… They all match, exactly. Same formatting, same font, same spacing, almost the exact same wording. All of them,” adding how Trump DOJ coup plotter Jeffrey Clark on December 28th, 2020, wrote in a memo the states had “submitted” the forged certificates to the government.

Republican West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has tested positive for COVID-19, the AP reports.

President Joe Biden has directed federal Cabinet agencies to implement plans to have all unvaccinated employees tested for the coronavirus on a weekly basis, as Biden wants employers to mandate, Reuters reports.

The Executive Branch directive gave employees until November 22nd to get vaccinated, after which the individual could face disciplinary actions or termination.  Provisions were made to accommodate people with medical or religious exemptions.

The testing requirement would not apply to anyone working from home, but someone “should be tested weekly for any week during which they work on-site or interact in person with members of the public as part of their job duties. Agencies may require more frequent testing.”

Still staggered from the torching he received in an afternoon committee session, Senator (and wayward Muppet) Rand Paul (Q-KY) fled to one of Fox’s resident Trump advisors, Laura Ingraham, to seek revenge against Dr. Anthony Fauci, an actual doctor with credentials and shit, with Paul saying Fauci should be criminally charged.

“We want people to go to RandPaul.com if they want to get rid of Tony Fauci,” Paul shilled.  “It is a political thing.  He is a political creature.  We think he should be put up on charges, but he’s not going to until there’s an intervening election, so elections do make a difference.  I think he is a menace.  I think he has lied to the American public.  I think that he funded the lab in Wuhan that in all likelihood this virus came from.  I think he’s ignored natural immunity.  I think he is, told people to wear cloth masks that don’t work, I think that puts people’s ri–, lives at risk.  If you’re an 80-year-old person, a man, takin’ care of your wife who has Covid, you’re wearing a cloth mask, you’re puttin’ yourself at risk because Tony Foochi [sic] has been lying to you about cloth mask work. [sic]”

First, Paul doesn’t explain who the “we” is who want Fauci “put up on charges,” and he’s blatantly saying that a future Republican regime will bring unwarranted charges against their political enemies, even for things as slight as embarrassing someone on national television.

Arizona “Democratic” “Senator” and wannabe fashion icon Krysten Sinema had a meeting with a number of key conservative and moderate Democratic Senators to discuss filibuster reform, a reporter for Politico tweeted.

“Sinema met with a small group of Senate Democrats on rules changes this evening in the LBJ room,” reports Politico’s Marianne LeVine.  “The senators in this meeting, in addition to Sinema, were Kaine, King, Tester, Schatz, Warren, Cardin, Coons and Hassan.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to bring the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to the floor for a vote, a tough prospect to win unless the filibuster is reformed to allow a voting rights bill to pass with just a simple majority of votes (with the Vice President’s tiebreaker).

Fox host and Trump campaign insurrection communications advisor Sean Hannity implored Republican Ohio Congressman (and misprisioner of sexual assault) Jim Jordan to explain why people aren’t turning over their text messages to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress–and Jordan had no answer as to why he’s not cooperating with the select commi—

What?  Hannity was commenting on Democrats not turning over their texts and communications, showing that they were responsible for urging people to storm the Capitol, not how he and Jordan have obstructed the investigation by propagating false information. (And why can Jordan straighten his tie for Hannity but not on the House floor?)

After conducting a missile test in defiance of Western leaders Wednesday (local time), North Korea now claims the missile fired in that test was actually a hypersonic missile, according to the Associated Press, which would suddenly catapult the isolated nation into the top tier of military technology in the world, if true.

North Korea’s official news agency said the missile carried a hypersonic glide vehicle atop it, which detached from the missile and proceeded in “corkscrew maneuvering” toward a target more than 600 miles away.

This was the second missile launch in less than a week by the renegade Asian nation. Intelligence units from the US, South Korea and Japanese militaries were all monitoring the launch and analyzing data.

On Tuesday, Republican Wisconsin state House Speaker Robin Vos filed an emergency petition to the State Supreme Court to block his scheduled Wednesday deposition in a liberal watchdog’s lawsuit to obtain records from the Assembly for their bullshit “review” of the 2020 election and was promptly rejected, WISN12’s Matt Smith reports. Maybe Vos should just plead the Fifth.

“If America’s so racist then why have tens of thousands of Haitians snuck across our border this year?” asks a person who never saw the crusts on his WonderBread growing up because his maid had better cut them off, dammit, Hazel!

Could it be because Haiti is one of the poorest nations on Earth, wracked by earthquakes and hurricanes, where one in four people live in abject poverty?  Could it be, ya traveling dingleberry, that they–like us (not you)–see the continuing potential of this great nation despite the hate promoted by people (like you)?  Could it be, ya braindead butter fart, that they understand they can get a better education here in the US so long as anti-science flat-earthers like you don’t run anything?

And if we’re such a socialist country–something you claim to despise–why are you still here?

Why did Russia target you? Probably not for coke.

“If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.” https://t.co/Gw2XX9MFA5

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 11, 2022

Florida’s 20th Congressional District will be represented by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick: the Democratic nominee will follow Alcee Hastings, who died last April, to Congress, the New York Times reports.

The people of the south Florida region, around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, overwhelming selected Cherfilus-McCormick over Republican challenger Jason Mariner by more than 50 percentage points.

The Earth’s oceans have warmed for the sixth consecutive year in 2021, setting a new record with the highest water temperatures recorded in the last seventy years, since data has been recorded, the Guardian reports.

Water temperatures in the top two kilometers of ocean water increased last year by at least 15 zettajoules over the previous year, according to two independent research organizations.  Since 2018, ocean temperatures have increased at least 30 zettajoules, an increase of 15%.

“The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research.