While American liberals should never allow ourselves to fall prey to Trumpian “the media is the enemy of the people,” style rhetoric, we do have every right to do as John Stewart used to do, and call American media outlets out for their laziness and sensationalism.

Many media outlets seem to have grown afraid of the conservative movement, and mindlessly repeat conservative tropes about inflation and the US Border, while completely ignoring key stories about US policy. This same pattern applies to concerns of the Ukraine, where Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing to have NATO exclude several countries from their membership, creating a geographic “buffer zone” for Russian military interests.

“The Philippines has reported at least 21,819 new COVID-19 infections, raising the country’s positivity rate to another all-time high of 40 percent,” reports Al Jazeera.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has called for the arrest of the un-vaccinated if they leave their homes and go out in public.

Many Trump supporters in the US are upset with the new policy. Defeated former President Donald Trump idolized Duterte for his strong-man habits and his policy of executing drug dealers and addicts. Reports indicate Philippino police officers may have performed summary executions of up to 7000 people in the country’s crackdown on drug use.

The House January 6th Select Committee is weighing whether Trump and his minions’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election amounts to a criminal conspiracy based on the massive trove of evidence gathered so far, the Guardian reports. The movement marks a serious escalation of the congressional inquiry and strongly indicates the committee is going to take the explosive step of sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department to indict the disgraced former president.

The report cites specific communications between former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others coordinating efforts to disrupt the certification as the main evidence supporting a conspiracy charge. In recent weeks a number of Capitol rioters have had their attempts to have conspiracy and obstruction of official proceeding charges dismissed in court, and some observers noted the motions for denial written by federal judges were a clear danger sign for the Trump team.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube announced Friday that appointments for the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine have went from 1,500 per day to 6,000 per day immediately after the ministry announced that only vaccinated Quebecois would be permitted to shop at provincial monopoly owned and operated marijuana and liquor stores, CTV Montreal reports.

• Just a reminder that in the myriad lawsuits Trump’s cabal filed to overturn the 2020 election–more than 60 total–he only won one:  in Pennsylvania, to allow observers to get closer access to vote counters during a recount (but not over their shoulders as Trump’s lawyers wanted).  Even the judiciary laughed at Trump.
• I am the Destroyer of Fruit Flies and the Slayer of Gnats.  If they come into my realm, they shall perish… but unfortunately not before they have 6,000 offspring each.
• Funny how Sean Hannity was texting Trump and Meadows to stop the attack on Congress by Trump supporters, but he never texted or called Pelosi, whom he now blames for “allowing” the Trump-supporting mob attacking the Capitol.  It’s like he knew who was responsible for the attack at the time, but something pushed him to blame a Democrat.  
• Sidney Poitier was a deserved Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, not just for his acting talents, but for his charity and human rights work.  He was the exact opposite of the people awarded by Trump, who gave the PMF to 24 people, 14 of whom were sports figures.  Only three of the people Trump recognized were black; only three were women (including the wife of Sheldon Adelson).  Only one was involved in the arts in any way:  Elvis Presley.  None were scientists or medical professionals.  And he forever tarnished the award by giving it to Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LI”

“And in that spirit tonight, I give you Senator Ted Cruz,” Anderson Cooper described.  “Assuming the position last night in front of Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson, who had already raked him over the coals the night before.  Senator Cruz’s alleged sin was having the gumption, or whatever you want to call it, having dared on Wednesday, to refer to the assault on the Capitol as a terrorist attack–something he’s done seventeen times before.”

“Jeopardy!” champion Amy Schneider launched her overall prize money over $1 million in 28 regular-season victories, becoming the first woman to surpass that threshold, the Associated Press reports.

With her $1.02 million, Schneider joins Ken Jennings with $2.5 million; James Holzhauer, $2.46 million, and Matt Amodio, $1.52 million as the top winning contestants on the quiz show.  She is also fourth in consecutive wins on the show.

Schneider also becomes the first transgender woman who will appear in the show’s “Tournament of Champions,” the end of season challenge that pits the season’s top winners against each other.

North Carolina MAGA rioter Virginia Spencer has been sentenced to 3 months in prison for bringing her 14 year old son into the building with her on January 6th, 2021, WBTV reports. “It must have been a traumatic experience to witness this kind of violence,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Spencer at the Friday hearing. “It’s a complete lack of judgment on your part.” Virginia Spencer pleaded guilty in September to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. Her husband Christopher, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty to felony obstruction of an official proceeding. The Spencers are not the only family who brought a minor with them to the Capitol during the insurrection. Five of the six members of the Munn family of Texas were charged in the riot. The sixth, an unidentified minor, was not charged for entering the Capitol.

If you can wait in line for a covid test, you can wait in line to vote. pic.twitter.com/Y8YrKEspYP

— Texas GOP (@TexasGOP) January 7, 2022

Glynn County, Georgia racist vigilante father and son duo Travis were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday for the February 2020 murder of 25 year old Black man Ahmaud Arbery. Neighbor William Roddie Bryan was given the possibility of parole. Bryan and the McMichaels, all white, chased down Arbery in a pickup truck as he was out for a run, believing he had been responsible for a number of burglaries that had occurred at a vacant home nearby. Travis McMichael then fatally shot Arbery after a brief confrontation. After a months long period involving malfeasance and cover ups by the Republican Glynn and Brunswick County district attorney’s offices, the three white men were indicted by a grand jury and arrested in May 2020. In November the three were found guilty of nearly all charges against them for the murder.

Cirsten Weldon, a QAnon influencer with tens of thousands of followers died of YOU WILL BE SHOCKED Thursday, the Daily Beast reports, but don’t click on that link yet because it will spoil the SURPRISE ending. Weldon was a rabid anti-vaxxer – oh shit there’s that TANTALIZING CLUE – notable for saying things like “The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” and “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccine!” and YOU WILL BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

Yeah she died of COVID-19. No extra click necessary here, but check out the Daily Beast story.

After wavering on and off for a year about whether to keep his 2016 re-election campaign pledge to run for two terms max, human urinal cake and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson will soon announce he’ll break it and run for a third in 2022, per WISN12 political reporter Matt Smith.

Liberty reigns across Florida as the state celebrates a new record high 76,887 Coronavirus cases on Thursday, the Miami Herald reports. This comes just seven days after the previous record of 75,962 cases reported on December 31st. Faucism defeated again. Suck it libs.

GREAT news for our economy and workforce! Unemployment rate fell to 3.9% last month – the lowest since December 2000!

— Ronna McDaniel (@RonnaMcDaniel) May 4, 2018

We’re a bit late reporting this tweet, and even though it was posted two years, one month, and 21 days before National Zero was launched, we still felt it was really important to make sure our readers were aware that the Republican Party Chairwoman says 3.9% unemployment is great news for the economy, which is red hot due to the President’s leadership. Because that’s where the United States workforce is at right now, 3.9% unemployment. And even though Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel posted something completely different this morning, her view is still newsworthy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has invited President Biden to deliver his first State of The Union Address in the House Chamber of the Capitol on March 1st, CNN’s Manu Raju reports. This will be the latest date in the year that a State of the Union Address has been delivered since the modern format was adopted in 1934 following the passage of the 20th Amendment.

“And by the way, the stock market – the last guy’s measure of everything – is about 20 percent higher than it was when my predecessor was there, it has hit record after record after record on my watch” says the true President on the economy, trolling his demented predecessor with facts.

Reports indicate that former Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his family have fled the country amid massive unrest, per Perild.com, which also cites official comms chatter no longer referring to the Central Asian nation’s capital Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana, before Nazarbayev’s successor renamed it in his honor), but simply “capital of Kazakhstan” or “capital”. Though he resigned in 2019 after 29 years of hardcore autocratic rule, Nazarbayev continued to wield significant power behind the scenes after one of his former lieutenants, the current President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, took office. Whether Putin will force Nazarbayev to bunk with fellow exiled autocrat former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych probably depends on Putin’s mood.

And no, we don’t have any reporting on if Nazarbayev actually fled to Russia, but come on. Where the hell else would he be headed right now? Okay maybe Saudi Arabia, in that case we’ll have to make the joke be about Idi Amin’s old suite and extensive collection of self-awarded medals.

“What we witnessed yesterday was the last gasps of a corrupt and discredited left-wing political and media establishment that has, for decades, driven our country into the ground—shipping away our jobs, surrendering our strength, sacrificing our sovereignty, attacking our history and values, and trying to turn America into a country that our people can barely recognize. These radical leftists in Washington care NOTHING for American Democracy. All they care about is control over you, and wealth and riches for themselves. But they are failing. No one believes them anymore. And the day is quicky [sic] coming when they will be overwhelmingly voted out of power. Joe Biden’s voice is now the voice of desperation and despair. His handlers gave him that speech to read yesterday because they know the unprecedented failures of his presidency and the left-wing extremism of the Pelosi-Schumer Congress have destroyed the Democrat Party.”

“Part of their panic is motivated by the realization that, just like the Russia Collusion Hoax, they cannot sustain the preposterous fabrications about January 6 much longer. The truth is coming out. But for them, the worst part of it all is the knowledge that the American People are seeing right through their phony media event – which despicably compared a Pelosi-led security failure at the Capitol to the darkest days in American history and the deaths of 3,000 Americans. The people see right through that sham. They see a cynical politician who ran for office promising unity who is now doing the most divisive thing possible – slandering his political opponents as domestic terrorists, just like insecure dictators do in communist countries” and it goes on and on for another page of his sob stories, where he again tiptoes up to the line of but doesn’t declare for 2024.

Also note Trump’s outrage over Harris comparing the Capitol riot to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 in her remarks, as if Trump himself never compared his first impeachment to a lynching and the Salem witch trials, the 2020 election to that of a third world nation, Baltimore to Afghanistan, the Russia probe to McCarthyism, himself to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, JFK, FDR, and more, among many other overdramatic and/or downright fucking histrionic comparisons. But Kamala Harris…

Thursday night’s candlelight vigil outside of the D.C. Central Detention Facility for the “political prisoner” Capitol riot defendants held within was a complete bust, with far more members of the media showing up than actual MAGA protestors, the Daily Beast reports. The vigil was put on by former Trump campaign minion Matt Braynard, who organized the September “Justice for J6” rally outside the Capitol, also a poorly attended dud of a protest.

On Thursday the New York Post reported former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lost 90 lbs in six months as he tries to build toward a 2024 GOP presidential run.