“Republican officials around the country are testing a creative mechanism to build loyalty with unvaccinated Americans while undermining Biden administration mandates: unemployment benefits. Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have changed their unemployment insurance rules to allow workers who are fired or quit over vaccine mandates to receive benefits. Extending unemployment benefits to the unvaccinated is just the latest in a series of proposals aligning the GOP with people who won’t get a COVID shot” – Axios

Washington Post: “A year after local and state election officials came under immense pressure from Trump to subvert the results of the 2020 White House race, he and his supporters are pushing an ambitious plan to place Trump loyalists in key positions across the administration of U.S. elections. The effort goes far beyond the former president’s public broadsides against well-known Republican state officials who certified President Biden’s victory, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Citing the need to make elections more secure, Trump allies are also seeking to replace officials across the nation, including volunteer poll watchers, paid precinct judges, elected county clerks and state attorneys general, according to state and local officials, as well as rally speeches, social media posts and campaign appearances by those seeking the positions.”

“If they succeed, Trump and his allies could pull down some of the guardrails that prevented him from overturning Biden’s win by creating openings to challenge the results next time, election officials and watchdog groups say. ‘The attacks right now are no longer about 2020,’ said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D). ‘They’re about 2022 and 2024. It’s about chipping away at confidence and chipping away at the reality of safe and secure elections. And the next time there’s a close election, it will be easier to achieve their goals. That’s what this is all about.'”

More than 60 Brits have been trapped by a sudden snowstorm at a pub/inn on a hill in Yorkshire, England since Friday night’s set for the Oasis cover band Noasis, the New York Times reports. All roads to The Tan Hill Inn, purported to be the highest pub in all of England, have been shut by police since the blizzard, though several who needed to get home to young children were rescued by locals with ATVs and snowmobiles. The rest were consigned to sipping pints while singing karaoke and participating in trivia night while officials worked on clearing a downed power line.

CNN: “Prosecutors in the case against former President Donald Trump’s ex-adviser Steve Bannon have accused him of attempting to try his criminal case through the media instead of in court, saying his tactics could affect witnesses against him, according to a new filing in DC District Court. Bannon is trying to convince a judge not to bar him and his lawyers from sharing documents he receives from the Justice Department with the public before his trial. The DOJ prosecutors said in the filing Sunday some of those records must stay private while the case is pending, because they include internal communications between congressional staffers and notes of FBI interviews with witnesses who could testify against Bannon at trial.”

“Portuguese health authorities on Monday identified 13 cases of omicron, the new coronavirus variant spreading fast globally, among members of a top soccer club and were investigating whether it was one of the first reported cases of local transmission of the virus outside of southern Africa. The Ricardo Jorge National Health Institute said that one of those who tested positive was a player from the Lisbon-based Belenenses SAD soccer club who had recently traveled to South Africa, where the omicron variant was first identified. The others, however, had not traveled to South Africa. Those who have been in contact with the positive cases have been ordered to isolate, regardless of their vaccination status or their exposure to possible contagion, and will be regularly tested for COVID-19, the institute said. Portugal’s health general director, Graça Freitas, told the local TSF radio that the players of Lisbon’s biggest team, Benfica, which played Belenenses SAD on Saturday, will also be tested for the virus” – AP.

Former Trump Administration Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense, alleging that “Significant text is being improperly withheld from publication in Secretary Esper’s manuscript under the guise of classification,” and “The withheld text is crucial to telling important stories discussed in the manuscript” about his time serving in the post under the maniacal 45th president, reports the New York Times. Esper was fired and replaced with acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller in November 2020, shortly after Trump lost reelection and starting planning a desperate coup to remain in power. Possibly a war with Iran too.

Associated Press:  “Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, blasted Sen. Ted Cruz for suggesting that Fauci be investigated for statements he made about COVID-19 and said the criticism by the Texas Republican was an attack on science. ‘I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, senator?’ Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’ It was a reference to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump that was stoked as Cruz helped lead GOP objections to Congress’ certifying the 2020 election results.

“‘I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives, and they’re going to be lying,’ Fauci said. Some Republicans, including Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health funded “gain of function” research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world — at a virology lab in Wuhan, China. Cruz has urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci’s statements.

“Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the GOP criticism nonsense. ‘Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this,’ he said. Cruz and Paul say an October letter from NIH to Congress contradicts Fauci. But no clear evidence or scientific consensus exists that ‘gain of function’ research was funded by NIH, and there is no link of U.S.-funded research to the emergence of COVID-19. NIH has repeatedly maintained that its funding did not go to such research involving boosting the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen.”

There is a tendency in American society to ignore the ugliest parts of our history, and to imagine that the legacy of racism and Jim Crow is long behind us. It is not. Kyle Rittenhouse went to BLM protests in Kenosha Wisconsin because he saw himself as an agent of white supremacy. He saw BLM protests as an insult to his notions of white supremacy, and he was apparently supported in that belief by his mother, who drove him to the site of the protest, knowing that he would be circulating in public with an illegal firearm. Rittenhouse’s trial apparently suffered from a police department that was either comically inept, or willfully negligent in providing support to the District Attorney’s office, and the judge in the case refused to permit adequate cross-examination of Rittenhouse to determine his true motives.

Happy Hanukkah! pic.twitter.com/JVnmBKVyMR

— GOP (@GOP) November 28, 2021

“As people travel to visit loved ones for the holiday season, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is warning that unruly passengers on flights will not be tolerated and may face prosecution. ‘Passengers who assault, intimidate or threaten violence against flight crews and flight attendants do more than harm those employees; they prevent the performance of critical duties that help ensure safe air travel,’ the Attorney General wrote in a memo to U.S. Attorneys on Wednesday. ‘Similarly, when passengers commit violent acts against other passengers in the close confines of a commercial aircraft, the conduct endangers everyone aboard.’ He urged all 52 US attorney’s offices to prioritize the prosecution of federal crimes [against violent MAGA thugs]” reports ABC News.

“Airline crews have reported incidents in which visibly drunk passengers verbally abused them, shoved them, threw trash at them, kicked seats, defiled restrooms and, in some cases, even punched them in the face.” These responses to flight crews often occur as a result of passengers refusing to wear a mask on their flight, or because some young MAGA adherent decides he wants to emulate the former guy by groping women on the flight.

“Symptoms linked to the omicron coronavirus variant have been mild so far, according to a Covid-19 adviser to the South Africa government and the Pretoria doctor who first sounded the alarm about the new strain. While South Africa, which first identified the new variant, currently has 3,220 people with the coronavirus infection overall, there’s been no real uptick in hospitalizations, Barry Schoub, chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines, told Sky News on Sunday.”

“‘The cases that have occurred so far have all been mild cases, mild-to-moderate cases, and that’s a good sign,’ said Schoub, adding that it was still early days and nothing was certain yet. South Africa has been hit with a number of travel bans from the U.K. and other nations, after its scientists found the mutated variant last week. Since then, a growing number of European countries, along with Australia, have also identified people infected with the variant” – Bloomberg.

The World Health Organization intentionally skipped the Greek alphabet letters “Nu” and “Xi” when coming up with a name for the newest variant of the COVID-19 virus, the New York Times reports. The WHO didn’t initially elaborate why it skipped from “Mu”, a variant found in Colombia with low transmission rates, but then later a spokesman followed up with “‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name”, per the Times.

If the WHO is this scared of the Chinese Communist Party, how can they be trusted to call them out the next time they're trying to cover up a catastrophic global pandemic? https://t.co/wURdLcdqw2

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 26, 2021

Ted Cruz wasn’t having it however, and it’s not terribly hard to disagree with him despite him being a detestable worm who’s wrong about pretty much everything else in all of creation. The WHO is right about “Nu” (written as “N”, lowercase “v” in Greek), it would be a pain in the ass to discern “nu variant” and “new variant” in spoken conversation. “Xi” (written as “Ξ”, lowercase “ξ” in Greek ) is a different story. The name of the letter is spoken “zye” in English, while the Chinese dictator’s name is pronounced “she”. His corrupt and inept leadership started this whole shitshow, and if the written English transliteration of a name of a Greek letter assigned to the name of a deadly virus is the same as the written English transliteration of his name then too fucking bad. The WHO should not have rolled over like that, even worse was doing so preemptively.

Video by Twitter user Jan Bobrowicz of a call between MAGA lawyer Lin Wood and disgraced traitor Mike Flynn, that Wood posted on his Telegram Channel on Saturday. “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign… I find it total nonsense, And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left” Flynn says to Wood on the call, which we guess means the CIA and “the left” worked together on coming up with shit about JFK Jr and robots and all sorts of other nonsense that we’ve covered here fairly extensively on National Zero.

The thing that’s funny here is that some of the very earliest reports on QAnon back in 2017 and 2018 when it first came on the media’s radar were full of speculation that it was actually simply a left-wing troll or troll’s prank, as some of the “intel” indicated that then-Russia scandal Special Counsel Robert Mueller was one of the “good guys” in the Q mythos and secretly working with Trump to defeat the satanic pizza dungeon cabal. Regardless of whether or not there’s any truth to that (and even if there was, QAnon culture has taken on far too much of a life of its own over the last four years to still be directed by a lib troll or trolls), it’s unlikely Flynn is now or ever was aware of that theory. Either way, as recently as eleven months ago Flynn was selling t-shirts with his name and the QAnon slogan “Where We Go One, We Go All” (abbreviated to “WWG1WGA”) and also headlined a QAnon event in Dallas in May, but being the goddamned traitorous weasel he is of course he’s flip-flopping now. It could be that this recent change of heart stems from QAnon fans accusing the disgraced general of Satanism last month after he led a Nebraska MAGAchurch congregation in prayer, an incantation that the cultists believed contained some suspect phrases.

If you pay attention to FOX News, you’re probably under the impression that gasoline is nearing $6 per gallon, stores are completely sold out of toilet-paper again, and milk prices are at record highs, and you would be wrong. A brief examination of historic price data for a number of key items reveals that Republican propaganda about inflation is ridiculously overblown, and American media outlets are failing to do their job by taking that propaganda at face value, rather than looking at actual price data.

CNN reported in early November that a family that buys 12 gallons of milk per week was being bankrupted by milk prices. The article falsely claimed that milk prices were recently only $1.99 per gallon, and the family was now paying $2.79 per gallon. A report published by the USDA on milk prices in a number of American cities published by the USDA reports no such change in milk prices has occurred. The report, which takes an average of prices from three retailers in any given market shows that while there are some areas that have seen a bump in price, overall milk prices are comparable to what they were in January of 2021.

Associated Press:  “A radio station serving U.S. President Warren G. Harding’s Ohio hometown says a reward offered by one of its listeners is providing new hope of finding a long lost dog collar stolen from his historic home.

“Scott Spears, host of a morning radio show on WWGH-FM in Marion, near the 29th president’s birthplace, said the donor of the $1,000 reward asked to remain anonymous. Spears told listeners of the offer on ‘Now With Scott Spears’ last week. He said the station has deposited the money in a local bank and will act as an intermediary on any tips offered to solve the mystery.

“The antique collar belonged to Harding’s Airedale terrier. It was the only thing stolen from his home on a Tuesday in 2012. A groundskeeper found a ladder propped against a second-story window. That prompted speculation that the thief had visited the home before and knew where to look for the collar. Made in 1923, the collar has the dog’s name, ‘Laddie Boy,’ engraved on it in raised letters surrounded by hearts.”

“You don’t hear about these policies, y’know?”  Junior enthusiastically says as he throws in the undercoating to Fox News host and chronic carpetbagger Dan Bongino.  “You don’t hear what’s going on, as it relates to the riots in Europe on a daily basis now against the vaccine mandates because our media wants to block that out.  They’re gonna make sure you never hear about it because they don’t want you to be getting these kind of ideas that freedom may actually still exist in some parts of the world.  I mean, Europe is pushing back and America is sitting there like sheep.  ‘Ah, y’know, this is great.  We’ll just go along with … [breaks out of silly voice]’… y’know, these guys who have gotten nothing right in the last two years, tell us.  It’s absolute insanity.”

USA Today:  “An American Airlines flight from Guatemala to Miami Saturday was revealed to have one additional passenger on board: A man who had stowed away in the plane’s landing gear. A video posted on Instagram by Miami local social news site Only in Dade showed airport crewmembers apparently discovering the passenger after the plane arrived at the gate.

“The man, who came off of American Airlines flight 1182, which landed about 10 a.m. ET Saturday, was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital. The maintenance worker who recorded the video declined to speak on the record for fear that he would lose his job. American Airlines said in a statement the flight ‘was met by law enforcement due to a security issue. We are working with law enforcement in their investigation.'”

NBC News:  “Traffic at retail stores on Black Friday dropped 28.3 percent compared with 2019 levels, as shoppers shifted more of their spending online and kicked off their shopping earlier in the year, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions.

“Traffic was up 47.5 percent compared with year-ago levels, Sensormatic said.  This time in 2020, many shoppers stayed at home due to fears around the coronavirus pandemic and as retailers operated on somewhat reduced hours.

“’It’s clear shoppers are shopping earlier this season, just as they did last season,’ said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting at Sensormatic. He added that the two main reasons shoppers are spreading out their holiday purchases are ongoing concerns about Covid and worries about the supply chain.  The peak time for Black Friday shopping in stores was 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., similar to trends in past years, Sensormatic said. Black Friday is still predicted to be the busiest in-store shopping day of the season, according to Sensormatic.”

Saying he can’t afford to spend half a million dollars on a legal fight, January 6th rally organizer who has rarely been seen since the attack on the Capitol, Ali Alexander released a video stating that he will be deposed with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack.

“So for this un-select committee, I will actually be privately deposed in December,” Alexander announced.  “I’ve asked to make it a public hearing, a public testimony.  They won’t cooperate with that request.”

“White Supremacist youth and mass shooter Kyle Rittenhouse…[said MAGA lawyer Lin Wood] was ‘insane’ and had ‘taken advantage’ of him. That prompted right-wing Trump allies — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, alt-right activist Jack Posobiec and former Trump White House aide Sebastian Gorka — to come out against Wood,” reports Rolling Stone. Wood has responded with a litany of wild and increasingly paranoid claims that make him sound like it’s time for him to be put in the special jacket with the sleeves that go all the way around the back and shipped off to the home. Following are some examples of the heaping helping of crazy that Wood dished out:

“After doing the research and connecting the dots, I have reached the conclusion that the Stop the Steal organization is a Deep State organization to raise money for purposes other than to FIX 2020… WATCH OUT for anyone affiliated with Stop the Steal. Every lie will be revealed,” Lin posted to his Telegram account.