Bringing Harry Chapin’s “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” to life, 26-year-old tracker-trailer driver received a 110 year sentence for a 2018 accident that killed four people after the truck’s brakes failed at the top of a mountain hill on I-70 near Lakewood, Colorado, the Denver Post reports.

District Court Judge Bruce Jones noted that his hands were tied on the length of the sentence, which is significantly longer than that imposed on criminals who commit rape and murder in the state.  “I will state that if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence,” the judge said.

On April 15, 2019, Rogel Aguilera-Mederos lost his breaks at the top of a mountain on I-70.  As his truck, which apparently was not filled with 15 tons of bananas, careened down the highway, Aguilera-Mederos missed an exit for a runaway-truck ramp.  His semi then slammed into cars stopped in traffic at the bottom of the hill, causing a 27-car pile-up and killing four. 

“I don’t know enough – just what I’ve seen, I have not spoken to anyone. It seems to me he’s worthy of being held in contempt” – President Joe Biden to reporters while departing for Kentucky via CNN, in response to question about Mark Meadows, whose new book probably isn’t selling well now that we think about it. We should probably look into that and follow up with sales numbers.

House Capitol riot select committee Chairman Congressman Bennie Thompson told NBC News that less than ten lawmakers are on the list of contacts Mark Meadows texted with during the riot, adding “there won’t be any surprises as to who they are”, reports MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin.

MAGA anti-vax dipshit Anchorage, Alaska mayor Dave Bronson ordered the 49th state’s largest city’s water public utility to shut off fluoridation in October before reversing five hours later upon learning he can’t actually do that, Alaska Public Media reports. Bronson’s office acknowledged the incident in a Tuesday statement, claiming he was protecting city workers from harmful effects of exposure to the fluoride supply, which “burned the eyes and throats of staff who handled it” but not why they weren’t using proper safety gear. Jon Cecil, president of the local public workers union, called bullshit on that claim, saying “No one has contacted us with any information related to potentially AMEA members being injured on the job at the AWWU water treatment plant”.

Regardless, Bronson backed off the order after finding out the city’s municipal code requires the public water supply to be fluoridated. He probably hoped the episode would go unreported since he looks like a complete asshole – again, since it came just weeks after he publicly called anti-vaxxers wearing yellow Judenstern badges a “nice tribute” to Holocaust victims before walking that back too. But surface it did, two months later thanks to the work of some intrepid bloggers.

Drinking water fluoridation is to paranoid right wing conspiracy theories what “Stairway to Heaven” is to hard rock. Sometimes it’s important for the old guard to bring back the classics and expose them to a new generation of young pups raised on insipid, manufactured pop hits like “Biden is a cyborg” and “the Chinese thermostats hacked the 2020 election”.

Emboldened by Trump’s hatred for the turtle-faced sociopath, Republican Senators and Senate candidates are looking to dethrone Moscow Mitch McConnell, per a summary report in Axios. Trump-endorsed Alaska Senate candidate/tongue-speaking maniac Kelly Tshibaka and sick bondage freak Former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens both have indicated their desire to destroy Mitch for his marginally less extremist leadership of the Senate GOP caucus – turning the question of support for him into a candidate “litmus test” – while human urinal cake Lindsey Graham has been warning Mitch to fly low and stop upsetting the Orange Warlord.

“If we’re going to be successful in 2022, we’re going to have to work together as a team. And here’s what I would say to every Republican: If you want to be… a Republican leader in the House or the Senate, and you don’t have a working relationship with Donald Trump, you cannot be effective. So, I hope we’ll get on the same page here” said Graham on Fox News Sunday.

The Axios rundown also details Tucker Carlson’s issues with Mitch, acting like it’s completely normal and acceptable to let some unelected dickhead televevision propagandist call the shots for what’s supposed to be an institutional, governing party of a functioning democracy.

Capitol rioter Avery MacCracken was arrested on charges of assault and obstruction of Congress in Telluride, Colorado last Friday when a sheriff’s deputy spotted him wearing the exact same outfit as he appeared in photos on the Sedition Hunters and FBI Most Wanted website of the insurrection on January 6th, per the federal criminal complaint. “Sheriff [Bill] Masters made particular note that MacCracken, as a resident of the community, is oftentimes homeless and lives out of his vehicle. He further explained he has seen MacCracken dressed in the very same clothes on multiple occasions in Telluride, as depicted in the FBI and Sedition Hunters websites” a Colorado-based FBI agent wrote in the complaint. MacCracken is being held pending arraignment.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’s December just got a little bit worse as the House chamber voted to refer him to the Department of Justice for prosecution on the charge of criminal contempt of Congress over his refusal to testify to the Capitol riot committee. The final vote count was 222 yes to 208 no. All Democrats voted aye, all but two Republicans voted nay. You can guess which Republicans they were. One Dem and three Republicans did not vote.

Orenthal James Simpson is now a former professional football player, a former actor, a former memorabilia collector, a former inmate–but always and forever a murderer!–and now, he’s a former parolee after the Nevada State Police granted him an early release from parole, Reuters reports.

“Mr. Simpson has been on parole since October 1, 2017, and his parole term would otherwise expire on February 9, 2022,” Nevada State Police spokeswoman Kim Yoko Smith said in a statement.  “A decision to grant early discharge from parole was ratified on December 6, 2021.”

While he avoided a guilty verdict in the trial on charges for murdering his ex-wife and her friend, Simpson was convicted in 2008 of robbery and kidnapping in a dispute over sports memorabilia at a Las Vegas casino hotel, and sentenced to nine years in prison.

“I beg you, Sean, to remember the frame of mind you were in when you wrote that text on January 6th, and when Laura did, and when Brian did, and when Don Junior did.” Geraldo Rivera implores Fox News host and potential defendant in upcoming trials Sean Hannity.  “Remember the concern you had. Remember the, the frustration you had at our, our beloved 45th President. Where was he? How can he be doing this?–”

“Yeah, because I, because I wanted a riot to end!” Hannity interjects, although he claimed at the time that all the Trump supporters were “peaceful.”

A domestic terrorist and QAnon fanatic–who arrived late to the party in Washington, DC on January 6th, so he decided to carry out his own plot to assassinate both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democratic DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser on January 7th, and called his family back in Colorado to tell them the plot, and they called the FBI–was sentenced to 28 months in prison, he Washington Post reports.

Fifty-three year old Cleveland G. Meredith Jr. texted his family from DC that he was acting on the orders of Donald Trump, even though this was hours after Trump’s delayed video tell followers to go home; “he wants HEADS and I’m gonna deliver,” Meredith texted a relative.  Later, he texted two relatives telling them he was considering “putting a bullet in her [Pelosi’s] noggin on live TV.”

Tonight I will lay waste to the January 6th addict Liz Cheney & her feeble-minded propaganda elves in the media. Tune in 10pET @FoxNews

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) December 15, 2021

Side note: “Heads up – Conversations like this can be intense. Don’t forget the human behind the screen” says a warning label below the tweet, the first of its kind spotted by National Zero.

New York City Mayor-Elect Eric Adams has tapped Nassau County Police Department Chief of Detectives Keechant Sewell to be the first ever woman (and only the third Black law enforcement officer) to lead the city’s police department, the New York Post reports. It is unknown if this leadership change means anything for certain website editors’ outstanding $25 public consumption of alcohol tickets from 2015, but maybe that should be taken care of just in case.

“The January 6th Committee has become the American version of a Soviet sssshhhhow trial,” says Fox News host (and sole Fox News primetime host glad he never used text messages to communicate with Mark Meadows).  Except the committee has no judicial power to convict people.  And “Soviet show trials” typical had evidence made up, not provided by the witnesses themselves.

But on the plus side, Soviet show trials usually ended in convictions.

The City of Las Vegas honored long-time Democratic Nevada Senator Harry Reid by renaming the municipal airport after him, debuting the Harry Reid International Airport, the Associated Press reports.

The airport, formerly known as McCarran, received a boost from Reid’s support, including funds to build a new terminal to update the airport’s functions.

The top Democrat in the Senate for a dozen years, neither the 82-year-old Reid nor his wife attended the ceremony to announce the name change.  Their son, a former Clark County commissioner, said they are very careful during the pandemic, given that they are both cancer survivors.

“Mr. Meadows received a text [on January 6th],” Democratic Virginia Congresswoman Elaine Luria announces during the House session to vote to send Mark Meadows’ contempt of Congress referral to the Department of Justice, “one of several from one lawmaker, in the days leading up to the attack, saying ‘Check your signal.’  The Signal messages are encrypted.  Only Mr. Meadows can tell us what they say, so we’d like to ask him about that.”

Any official communications Meadows had dealing with Administration business should have been turned over to the National Archives prior to Donald Trump leaving office.  Using the Signal app, which encrypts all messages, may prevent officials’ messages from being properly archived.

Two months ago, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis went on the conservative propaganda circuit to boast how he was the Tough Man Against Masks by withholding state funds from school districts mandating students to wear masks during the pandemic.

Well, according to CNN, now DeSantis has caved and returned every dollar of the money withheld to the eight school districts that defied him:  Alachua County, Brevard County, Broward County, Miami-Dade, Duval County, Leon County, Orange County and Palm Beach County.

The money wasn’t withheld from students, but instead was the state’s portion of local school board and administrators’ salaries.  The total amount remitted to the school districts:  $877,851.  The transfers were done two weeks ago on November 29th, and the state made no announcement about its policy reversal.

Four Trump minions who organized the January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally which immediately preceded the Capitol riot filed a lawsuit against Verizon on Monday to block the release of their phone records to the January 6th Select Committee. Ex-Bob Dole funeral planner Tim Unes, former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s niece Maggie Mulvaney, Justin Caporale, and Megan Powers claim in their complaint that “if Congress wanted to know anything more about the Plaintiffs’ brief involvement with the events it is allegedly investigating, it needed only have asked.”

They then immediately contradict that assertion by saying Verizon would be complying with a subpoena that was “not issued by a validly constituted committee” the records are “not pertinent to the matter Congress is purporting to investigate; does not pursue a legislative purpose; violates the Plaintiffs’ First and Fourth Amendment rights; and violates the Stored Communications Act. The Plaintiffs seek a judgment declaring that the Subpoena is invalid and enjoining Defendant, Verizon Wireless, from producing their data to the Select Committee”

UPDATE 12/14/21 7:07 PM EST: On Tuesday Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported that MAGA coup memo lawyer and complete cocksucker John Eastman also sued Verizon in a separate complaint.

On Tuesday DC Circuit Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, dismissed Trump’s lawsuit to block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns, also ruling that Congress has the power to publish Trump’s tax returns if they so decide.

An unnamed Republican member of the Indiana House delegation couldn’t speak for himself because, presumably, he was in shock, put there by a perceived insult he heard from Democratic Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer.  Hoyer pointed out that the “gentleman from Indiana” voted to block certification of the November 2020 election and will vote against the contempt of Congress charge pending against former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Donald Bender, the accountant for Mazar’s who prepared Donald Trump’s tax returns and financial statements used to attract financial support for his endeavors, testified recently before the Manhattan grand jury investigating alleged Trump ploys to manipulate the value of his assets to defraud lenders and underpay his taxes, the Washington Post reports.

Rosemary Vrablic, the managing director for Deutsche Bank who oversaw Trump’s business relationship with the bank and approved hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, also testified to the same grand jury recently.  Vrablic unexpectedly resigned from her job at the company a year ago amid an internal probe into a loan she made to a company partially owned by Jared Kushner.

The testimony from the two financial professionals is expected to shed light on the millions of pages of documentation Mazar’s and Deutsche Bank provided the grand jury.  Trump is accused of lowering the stated values of his businesses and properties to reduce his tax burden, and then inflating the values to justify loans and business dealings.