In honor of Facebook’s reputation for being a place that people can “do their own research”, I’ve decided that I would act in the public interest, and present my evidence as to why Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp were down for hours earlier today. Naturally, readers may want to do additional research and decide for themselves what the truth really is, and it should be clear that I’m not really saying these things, this is just what I hear from all over social media sites, and if that’s what everyone’s saying then there’s got to be some truth to it right?

University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Ryan Owens dropped out of the state Attorney General Republican primary race on Monday after coming under fire from local MAGA Reich gauleiters for suspiciously deleting episodes of a podcast series he hosted, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. The episodes in question featured interviews with Never Trump Republicans such as radio host Charlie Sykes and GOP strategist Mike Murphy. Owens was already kind of fucked after his opponent, Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney – now the sole candidate on the GOP side to face current Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul in 2022 – called him out for the thoughtcrime of praising Dem Governor Tony Evers’s response to the pandemic in September.

Any hint of disloyalty to the Great Leader is met with swift punishment. His rule is not to be questioned. Those who stray from the Holy Orange One are condemned to eternal political death.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that a ship’s anchor may have been the cause of a massive oil leak off the coast of Huntington Beach, California that has already dumped 126,000 gallons of heavy crude into the ocean, the Associated Press reports.

The company that runs the pipeline and three oil platforms offshore, Amplify Energy, said that it hired divers to inspect more than 8,000 feet of pipeline to identify the location and the cause of the leak.  The leak is located at an area cargo ships transit going in and out of the ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Environmentalists are heartened by reports that wildlife seems to have been largely spared by the oil spill.  Only four birds have been found contaminated; three of them were cleaned but one as put down.  State officials say the popular beaches at Huntington Beach and Long Beach will be closed for weeks, possibly months, to facilitate cleaning.

Washington Post:   “The Biden administration on Monday revoked a Trump-era rule that became a flash point in the abortion wars by forbidding clinics that receive federal family planning aid from advising people about ending their pregnancies. The new rule for the half-century-old family planning program known as Title X will allow health centers to receive the federal funds even if they refer patients for abortions. It takes effect Nov. 8.”

“The rule reverses a move initiated in 2018 by former president Donald Trump to appeal to the social conservatives crucial to his political base, siding with them in a long-running battle with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and other family planning groups.  ‘Today more than ever, we are making clear that access to quality family planning care includes accurate information and referrals — based on a patient’s needs and direction,’ Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement accompanying the revision.”

“Federal health officials issued the rewrite as the nation’s abortion laws have been thrust into the forefront of legal and political debate. Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that cemented abortion rights in the United States, is under fresh attack as the high court’s composition has grown increasingly conservative.”

A Russian nuclear-powered Severodvinsk submarine fired an experimental Tsirkon (meaning “zircon”) hypersonic missile from beneath the surface of the Barents Sea north of Scandinavia Monday, CNN reports.

The Russian Defense Ministry stated the missile successfully hit its undisclosed target.  This is the second successful test of the Tsirkon missile; in July, it was fired from a surface warship.  “The test firing of the Tsirkon missile from a nuclear submarine was deemed successful,” the ministry said.

In February 2018, the Trump administration announced the US was withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, claiming Russia was in material breach of the agreement.  Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the development of the Tsirkon missile weeks later.

Screenshot from 4chan, one of the top “hot” posts on QAnon fan site GreatAwakening.win on Monday. “Been good to know y’all… see you on the other side when we come out of this. Bring it!” says the top reply, apparently by a Q enthusiast who believes this somehow augurs Trump’s return.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “The Cobb County Republican Party used to be a dominant force in Georgia. But lately it’s an example of the internal fighting that threatens to rip the state and national Republicans apart. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio headlined the first Senate runoff rally at Cobb HQ last November. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel trekked to the chapter a few weeks later to beg voters not to boycott the election. And when Brian Kemp launched his campaign for governor in 2017, he made a beeline to the Cobb GOP to deliver his opening address, a ‘Georgia First’ pitch modeled after Donald Trump’s mantra. Now Trump and Kemp are on the outs over the governor’s refusal to illegally overturn the former president’s defeat. And the pro-Trump faction that’s taken over the Cobb GOP is calling it quits with Kemp, too. The Cobb GOP’s county committee passed a resolution on Thursday censuring Kemp, ostensibly for failing to crack down on illegal immigration, party chair Salleigh Grubbs told the Marietta Daily Journal. ‘So the resolution portion of it says that Gov. Brian Kemp be censured for his failure to keep his campaign promises and meet his obligations to end illegal immigration in the state of Georgia,’ Grubbs said.”

“Never mind that ending illegal immigration is an impossible task for a state governor who has no say over U.S. border policy. Within hours of the censure, former Cobb GOP chair Jason Shepherd stepped down. A few days later, the Cobb Young Republicans also blasted the county organization’s decision to rebuke Kemp. ‘Cobb YRs feel that the decision to censure further divides the party at a critical time,’ the group said in a statement. Shepherd, who unsuccessfully ran for state party chair this year, took issue with both the process of the vote and the concept of censuring a GOP elected official. ‘How does the Cobb GOP work to re-elect Brian Kemp if the voters choose him to be the nominee when it has officially censured him?’ he asked. ‘This censure can now be used as campaign fodder in the primary by Kemp’s opponents.'”

UPI:  “On the opening day of its October term, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling Monday that said Washington, D.C., is not entitled to a voting representative in the U.S. House.  The high court affirmed a lower court decision that said Washington’s campaign for statehood and a voting member of the House should go through Congress, not the federal courts.  In its decision, the court pointed to a similar 2000 case in which justices made the same determination.

“Several Washington residents filed the suit in 2014 and there have been multiple unsuccessful attempts in Congress for voting representation and statehood, a separate but similar issue.   Residents in the district have argued that their lack of voting representation violates their right to equal protection.  ‘Residents of the District of Columbia are the only adult American citizens subject to federal income taxes who lack voting representation in Congress, except for felons in some states,’ attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote, according to CNN.

“Before the Supreme Court’s move on Monday, lower courts ruled against the plaintiffs last year. Their lawsuit pointed out that D.C. residents can vote in federal elections, even though they don’t live in a ‘state.’  Most Republican lawmakers have generally opposed representation for D.C. in the House. As reflected by its electorate, any voting member of the House from D.C. would almost certainly be a Democrat.”

Variety:  “The members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees have voted to approve a strike authorization, giving the union president the power to shut down film and TV production across the country.  The vote passed with 98.7 percent support, and 90 percent turnout — a resounding outcome that the union hopes will strengthen its bargaining position.

“Talks have stalled between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios. The unions have been negotiating since May on a new contract, and are seeking to address long-standing concerns, including long hours on set, streaming wage scales and residuals, and the stability of the pension and health funds.  ‘The members have spoken loud and clear,’ Matthew D. Loeb, the international president, said in a statement. ‘This vote is about the quality of life as well as the health and safety of those who work in the film and television industry. Our people have basic human needs like time for meal breaks, adequate sleep, and a weekend. For those at the bottom of the pay scale, they deserve nothing less than a living wage.’

“Loeb now has the authority to send 60,000 below-the-line workers to the picket lines. But first, the union is expected to seek further talks with the AMPTP. In the statement, Loeb said he had informed the AMPTP of the outcome on Monday morning.  ‘I hope that the studios will see and understand the resolve of our members,’ Loeb said. ‘The ball is in their court. If they want to avoid a strike, they will return to the bargaining table and make us a reasonable offer.’  The union believes that the authorization adds to its leverage in the negotiations. The timing of any further discussions remains unclear.”

“A divided New York appeals panel has rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to dismiss or stall a lawsuit brought by a former ‘Apprentice’ contestant who claims Trump sexually assaulted her a decade ago. The appellate panel voted 3-2 to deny Trump’s bid to head off the suit from Summer Zervos, who says Trump kissed her, groped her breast and pressed his genitals against her in a Los Angeles hotel in 2007. After Trump denied the claims during the 2016 presidential campaign, Zervos sued him for defamation.”

“Trump’s lawyers argued that allowing such a suit to proceed in a state court would interfere with his responsibilities as president under the Constitution, but a trial judge rejected that argument and on Thursday the majority of the appeals panel agreed. ‘Defendant’s interpretation conflicts with the fundamental principle that the United States has a ‘government of laws and not of men,’’ Justice Dianne Renwick wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Troy Webber and Cynthia Kern” – Politico.

Said Senator Lindsey Graham at some event in South Carolina “If you haven’t had the vaccine you ought to think about gettin’ it because if you’re my age-” [crowd boos and yells] “I didn’t tell you to get it, you ought to think about it” [crowd yells some more] “Well, I’m glad I got it. Ninety-two percent of people in hospitals in South Carolina are unvaccinated” and then all hell breaks loose, with some woman yelling “NOT TRUE!” without offering contrary statistics.

Trying to win them back over, Lindsey then said “I’m with you on opposing mandating. I’m with you because it’s probably unconstitutional. But I am not going to legitimize what I don’t think is the truth. The truth is that unvaccinated people-” before being interrupted by some screaming Fox News junkie “I’M GONNA LOSE MY JOB IN SIXTY DAYS! YOU GOTTA STOP IT NOW!” Lindsey asks who he works for and the man says the Navy. The man then screams “No sir! You [inaudible]!” the man shouts, adding “I’m a veteran!” to which Lindsey says “I’m a veteran too, so I’m with you.”

Lindsey then tries “How many of you have taken measles shots?” to which the crowd erupts, with one woman screaming “IT’S NOT THE SAME THING!” Before Lindsey finally tries to side with them over making “the right decision” and mumbles some shit about needing to retake Congress to force any change on federal vaccine mandates. The Navy guy screams again he has sixty days and Lindsey says “I don’t know what’s going” to happen and then the clip ends. And that my friends is a picture of a Republican politician getting what he deserves for catering to the MAGA cult.

Brian Klaas: “A lot of my academic research has involved traveling to places where political violence has led to the breakdown of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. And a dynamic I’m not sure is fully appreciated in the US is how small numbers of people can create tipping points. I’ve interviewed coup plotters who organized a few dozen soldiers to take over a government. Some militias that grow into rebel movements start as tiny amateur outfits. But with the right timing, or the right turn of events, democracy can still die at the hands of small groups. This matters because the post January 6th dynamic in the US is one in which a small group of diehard extremists is planning to destroy democracy in 2022/2024. Some aren’t taking them seriously because a somewhat small percentage of Americans support them. It’s a huge mistake.”

“People like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, etc. have a big platform among these extremists and those violent extremists are taking cues on how to behave. Some will take even comparatively minor calls to action as an incitement to serious violence. That’s extremely dangerous. Simultaneously, there’s an organized effort to fill key, lower profile election jobs with people who will only certify elections that Republicans win. They’re proponents of the Big Lie – a debunked authoritarian conspiracy theory – and they’re trying to run our elections. This combination – of hundreds of thousands or even a few million Flynn-style extremists, along with authoritarians in key election jobs — means that significant political violence and official attempts to subvert democracy will likely arise at every US national election. January 6th didn’t involve that many people. It still shook the foundations of American democracy. What happens when a more organized effort takes place in 2022, with more direct support from people in formal political power? The answer isn’t comforting. That’s why Democrats need to focus their attention, resources, and political power on passing reforms that protect US democratic institutions from the obvious onslaught that is clearly coming. Because you don’t need anything close to 50% of the population to destroy democracy.”

“Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are offline.  The websites and apps for all of the services were responding with server errors. Reports on DownDetector.com showed the outages appear to be widespread, but it’s unclear if it impacts all users or just some locations. It’s not currently known what’s causing the outage.  All three platforms stopped working shortly before noon ET.

“’We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,’ a spokesperson said. ‘We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.’

“In 2019, a similar outage lasted about an hour. Facebook said that outage was caused by a technical issue. Major websites can also sometimes go down if content delivery networks, or CDNs, go offline. That happened in June, when one such CDN, Fastly, was down due to technical issues. That caused major websites including Amazon, Reddit and The New York Times to go down.”

Iconic Star Trek actor William Shatner will join the crew of the next Blue Origin spaceflight launch, scheduled for Tuesday, October 12th, the Associated Press reports. While we can’t say definitively, this is probably the first time ever that an actor who has portrayed a spaceman actually becomes a spaceman. National Zero humbly suggests that Jeff Bezos put Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver in consideration for upcoming launches.

The First Lady of Florida, Casey DeSantis, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, an announcement from the governor’s office announced Monday, News 4 Jacksonville reported.

“I am saddened to report that Florida’s esteemed First Lady and my beloved wife has been diagnosed with breast cancer,” DeSantis said in a statement released by his office. “As the mother of three young children, Casey is the centerpiece of our family and has made an impact on the lives of countless Floridians through her initiatives as First Lady. As she faces the most difficult test of her life, she will have not only have my unwavering support but the support of our entire family, as well as the prayers and well wishes from Floridians across our state. Casey is a true fighter, and she will never, never, never give up.”

A former television host, the 41-year-old Casey DeSantis was a reporter for the Golf Channel and emceed a local talk show in Jacksonville prior to becoming Florida’s first lady.

“Biden’s FBI is using its unlimited power to prosecute me on a bogus charge! Unlike Swamp Creature Nancy Pelosi, I’m a principled conservative who has NEVER abused my seat in Congress to get wealthy. And right now I’m facing the Deep State’s bottomless pockets. So, please chip in a generous gift today to help me win this major fight!” says the page for Congressman Jeff Fortenberry’s deleted legal defense crowdfund page, archived by Axios, who got the scoop on an apparently deadly serious federal investigation into the asshole.

Detroit Free Press: “During a Sunday dinner with the Detroit NAACP, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed four election bills, the first of dozens expected to land on her desk following the contentious 2020 presidential election and the flurry of legislative activity it has prompted to overhaul voting rules across the country. The measures would have codified current election practices, required election challengers to undergo training and expanded the types of places that could serve as polling locations. Whitmer said that the legislation ‘would have perpetuated the ‘Big Lie’ or made it harder for Michiganders to vote.’ The NAACP Detroit Chapter President, Rev. Dr. Wendell Anthony, applauded Whitmer’s weekend vetoes: ‘She is the governor wherever she is from her desk in Lansing to a dinner at the NAACP. She is still Big Gretch and has the pen to prove it!'”

“All four bills passed with bipartisan support in the Michigan House and some received enough Democratic support to secure the votes needed for a veto override. But Democratic support for the legislation was not as robust in the upper chamber. Sen. Paul Wojno, D-Warren, was the lone Democratic lawmaker in the Michigan Senate to support the measures. He is the the sole Democratic lawmaker who sits on the Senate Elections Committee. Whitmer wrote in a letter stating her objections that legislation that would have banned voting equipment from being connected to the internet was unnecessary and misleading. Electronic pollbooks and tabulators are not connected to the internet when voters and ballots are processed during an election. Another bill would have specified who could access the state’s voter files. A representative from the Secretary of State’s office told a House panel in May that the GOP-introduced bill was based on misinformation that third parties currently have access to the voter files.”

Former Trump adviser that he hired to work in the White House because she was a contestant on his game show for one season in 2003, Omarosa Manigault Newman’s arbitration win against the Orange God Emperor could set a precedent that effectively voids all non-disclosure agreements ever signed by Trump campaign employees, the Daily Beast reports. Worse yet, per the Beast, the campaign NDA was basically mad-libbed from the Trump Organization’s agreement – also later copied again for the Trump White House, but were null and void from the start as public employees cannot be subject to private NDAs, much to the chagrin of the Orange Pharaoh’s fanboys.

“Lines of cars snake from gasoline stations. Fights break out among angry motorists trying to get fuel. Grocery staples are out of stock on store shelves. A charity warns that doubling heating bills will force a million households to rely on extra blankets to stay warm. This was supposed to be the year the U.K. broke free of the European Union and forged ahead as a buccaneering free trader, delivering the benefits of a new, confident ‘Global Britain’ to workers and companies at home. Instead, that picture of Brexit utopia is looking more like a dystopia. As Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party gathers at its annual conference this week, the promise of self-determination has given way to a foreboding sense of economic isolation” Bloomberg reports.

“A confluence of crises has forced the government to deploy soldiers to drive fuel trucks, energy suppliers to go out of business and panicked households to try and fill cupboards – all while Covid-19 is still rife. The pound, meanwhile, has been trading like an emerging-market currency rather than from a steady Group of Seven country. The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, even quipped whether a plague of locusts would be next to beset the U.K. He now has the task of figuring out how to raise interest rates to subdue inflation without choking the economy.”

New York Times: “Former Vice President Mike Pence turned up in Hungary last month to speak to a conference on conservative social values hosted by the far-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, was another recent visitor. Tucker Carlson did his Fox News show from Hungary for a week this summer. The American Conservative Union is planning a version of its CPAC gathering in Budapest early next year. Those are among the more visible recent fruits of a well-funded campaign by Orban in the United States that stretches back a decade and now stands as a case study in how governments around the world seek to shape policies and debates in Washington, sometimes raising concerns about improper foreign influence in U.S. politics. Carried out by a network of government offices, Washington lobbyists, Hungarian diaspora groups, educational institutions and government-funded foundations, the effort’s main impact has been to bolster Orban’s image as a conservative leader on the world stage – and to counter his reputation as an authoritarian nationalist who is cozying up to Russia and China.”

“It has also notched some tangible, if fleeting, policy victories for Orban, including the withdrawal during the Trump administration of a State Department grant to nurture independent news media in Hungary and the securing of a long-coveted Oval Office meeting for Orban in 2019 with President Donald J. Trump. Much of what the Hungarian network has done is legal and standard operating procedure in Washington. But some of its activities touch on gray areas, including transparency requirements for those acting on behalf of foreign interests, concerns arising from overseas efforts to sway presidential campaigns, and the ethics of think tanks accepting money from governments or their proxies.”