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— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) September 24, 2021

“I can tell you tonight that there has been a document circulating all day today in Arizona journalism circles.  It is a document that purports to be a near-final draft of the Arizona audit report, the results of the Arizona so-called ‘audit’,” Rachel Maddow stated on her show Thursday night.  “Now, in addition to this circulating in Arizona journalism circles tonight, I have to tell you that we have reviewed it.  I have reviewed it.  It’s three whole volumes.

“Um… how best to put this… Other than to tell you that its purported conclusions are objectively hilarious, we are not going to report on the contents of that purported draft tonight, because even though multiple sources have told us that it is legit–we tracked down many sources today that all confirmed today that that is a close-to-final draft of what will be released tomorrow–we, frankly, despite that multiple source confirmation, we just do not trust anything, anything, anything that has come anywhere near this clown show process in Arizona.”

The voice cast of the upcoming and as yet-untitled animated “Super Mario” movie, which will probably called “Super Mario: The Movie” or something, was revealed at a Nintendo press event on Thursday, with fat dumbass-turned hunky leading man Chris Pratt voicing the diminutive, hallucinogenic-mushroom consuming plumber, Axios reported Thursday, continuing Hollywood’s troubled history with inappropriately casting roles mismatching the characters’ ethnicities.

Admittedly, having an Irish-ish guy like Pratt voice Mario isn’t nearly as problematic as having the Jewish-Danish Jake Gyllenhaal play an Iranian regent in that “Prince of Persia” movie everyone forgot existed or Johnny Depp as a Navajo in the shitty “Lone Ranger” pic, but whatever, it’s important to people who like to get offended by these sort of things. Mario himself doesn’t make a lot of sense come to think of it. Before he could actually speak in games, his canonical accent was that of an Italian American from Brooklyn – as first portrayed by an actual Italian American from the New York City area, the late great Captain Lou Albano, and then a British guy who convincingly pulled it off, the late great Bob Hoskins in the seminal 1993 classic, Super Mario Bros.

It wasn’t until 1996 when Super Mario 64 was released on a platform capable of playing in-game audio files that “It’s-a-me Mario!” in an Italian accent was first heard. From there, a character who was once a proud American and New Yorker became an Italian immigrant with a comically exaggerated inflection to everything he said. Did he hit his head or something? What the hell happened to Mario 25 years ago? You know what? Fuck it. I’m glad Chris Pratt is playing Mario. Who cares if he’s not Italian. It’s time an American retook the role. No more of this shit. Let’s-a-go!

“For the record, we really try our hardest not to put liars–people we know who lie for a living on television because it’s irresponsible.  Other channels do it every day.” –Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, September 23, 2021

“I guess I would ask myself, like, I mean, I lie if I’m cornered or something. I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV.”  —Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, September 14, 2021

Politico:  “The select panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is issuing subpoenas to four current and former top aides to President Donald Trump, including his most recent chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“The committee issued its first subpoenas on Thursday to Meadows; former Pentagon official and longtime House Intelligence Committee aide Kash Patel; former top White House adviser Steve Bannon; and longtime Trump social media chief Dan Scavino. It marks a turning point in the investigation as lawmakers begin homing in on Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

“The Jan. 6 committee’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), had foreshadowed Wednesday that the first subpoenas would go out imminently, as the panel kicks into high gear with the goal of finishing its work by next spring. The four Trump associates will be commanded to produce relevant documents by Oct. 7 and appear for depositions the following week.”

Republican Ohio Senate candidate and author J.D. Vance said in an interview Wednesday that women who are the victims of rape and incest should be forced to carry pregnancies to term because the circumstance of the pregnancy was just “inconvenient,” the Daily Beast reports.

In the interview with Curtis Jackson of Spectrum News 1 in Columbus, Vance said that he opposed abortion because it’s not a question of a woman’s right to control her own body, but the real question is if the zygote should have the right to live.

“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” said Vance. “The question to me is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”

When he debuted National Zero sixteen months ago, Spartan said he wanted to create a community where people could share thoughts on stories without the authoritarian oversight of a corporate website. I joined understanding that we would provide the fodder for discussion, with our readers given wide latitude in the comments section. We did not implement a true profanity filter on Disqus (though, as most of you are aware, the most serious and hateful racial and homophobic slurs are banned, as are a list of specific strings commonly used by spambots, which Spartan keeps updated here) and account suspensions or expulsions have been kept to a minimum.

Now, however, that wide latitude has gone off the rails. Commenters have started to use the forum to insult and intentionally belittle others. In some way, we the editors are responsible for that in that we write with an edge to disparage those on the other side of the political spectrum (with dark humor and liberal application of profanity for emphasis, often coupled with crude insults and sophomoric nicknames), and that can encourage commenters to escalate.

The Alpha Delta Pi sorority at Methodist University has been suspended after a viral social media post in which a sorority sister is seen in front of Powerpoint presentation depicting four Black university football players with comments like “large nostrils” or “big lips.”

The Fayetteville Observer reports that the photo was part of a presentation done by the sorority rating the attractiveness of the men on the Monarch’s football team.  The basis for the ratings deducted points for features common among Black athletes like dreadlocked hair.

One of the football players featured in the presentation stated that he received a text message from the woman giving the presentation apologizing for the spectacle.  “I will accept with full responsibility the punishment that is decided with this matter with the school,” the girl, identified as “Taylor Marie,” wrote.  “Again, I am truly sorry and did not mean for this to hurt anybody and it was not targeted at African Americans in any way. I can promise that.”

In what will surely be the lead story on Fox News primetime shows tonight (big /s), the number of migrants massing at camps along the Mexico border in Texas has dropped dramatically as the Biden Administration’s immigration policy is enforced, the Associated Press reports.

In Del Rio, where as many as 15,000 migrants were encamped last weekend, the estimated number of people remaining has dropped to 4,000.  More than 1,400 Haitian migrants were flown back to Haiti on 13 flights this week, while another 3,200 were taken into US custody for processing.  Additionally, thousands returned to the Mexican side where they took up residence in local hotels or in private homes of sponsors in towns along the border.

Migrants reportedly surged crossings across the southern border as false rumors circulated that the Biden Administration was soon to offer amnesty to people on American ground.  As word of deportations spread, migrants opted to return to Mexico in hope of making the crossing again later.

CNN: “Buckhead wants to cut out of the Black Mecca. According to a September analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about 54% of the residents surveyed ‘strongly or somewhat support’ seceding from Georgia’s capital, ostensibly spurred by fears of recent spikes in crime across the city. Racial demographics complicate the data. Well-to-do Buckhead is a majority-White neighborhood; Atlanta, majority Black. Some observers worry that cityhood for Buckhead could be devastating, removing revenue from a critical tax base and even deepening racial tensions.”

“The combustible, decades-long debate over Buckhead shines a light on a broader racial reality in the US. ‘Today, you really have two kinds of racial residential segregation,’ Stephen Menendian, the assistant director and director of research at UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute and the lead author of a June report on racial residential segregation in the 21st century, told CNN. ‘Within large cities, you have racially identifiable neighborhoods and schools. You also have suburbs that are White and affluent, and then suburbs that are heavily non-White and much poorer.’ As Sheryll Cashin, a professor at Georgetown Law, explains it, the consequences of residential caste are vast. ‘The successful have seceded from the struggling. Highly educated and affluent people tend to live in their own neighborhoods and support policies like exclusionary zoning and neighborhood school assignments that lock others out and concentrate advantage,’ she writes in her essential new book, ‘White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality.'”

Tweeted and deleted by former Trump White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday morning. In the afternoon she tweeted the same article again, but changed her comment to “From the White House podium in August 2020, I warned Defund would result in rising crime. Sadly, I was right. Biden you enabled this. Defund, Democrat mayors, you own this!” because all of a sudden Presidents can’t own rising violent crime after she owned herself.

“Florida’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to be a major focus during the 2022 Legislative Session for Sen. Manny Diaz, the top Republican shaping health care policy in the upper chamber. His work could include revisiting existing vaccine requirements long in place in schools, a response to the debate about whether COVID-19 vaccines should also be required. Diaz, who came down with COVID-19 last winter, said he wants to review the state’s vaccination efforts as well as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ work on getting monoclonal antibody treatments to those who test positive for COVID-19. The Senator, who acknowledges he hasn’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, says he’s firmly against vaccine mandates. At the urging of the Governor, the Legislature earlier this year passed a bill that would prevent private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination from their customers. But the bill did not ban employers from requiring their employees to be vaccinated.”

“Unlike some of his Republican colleagues, Diaz said he does not endorse blocking private employers from requiring vaccines. It ‘gets more complicated,’ Diaz said of striking the balance between individuals’ and employers’ rights. Republicans opposed to so-called ‘vaccine passports’ have faced criticism, particularly as it relates to schools where current law already requires a bevy of vaccinations. Under current law, only parents who cite religious or health reasons can have their children exempted from the vaccination requirements. Diaz said it may be time to ‘review’ those mandates, in place for such illnesses as mumps and measles. But he said there was a difference between long-tested vaccines and the new COVID-19 vaccine” – Florida Politics.

After claiming that Fox News “teams on the ground” reported that immigration officials are releasing “pretty much all” family units and women “who say that they are pregnant,” Peter Doocy insinuates that the women are lying because “nobody actually has to take a pregnancy test” and then falls flat in supporting the premise of his question when challenged by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.  “Are you suggesting you don’t believe when women say they’re pregnant?” Psaki counters.  “Is that a big issue, you think, at the border?”

“I am not in charge of keeping the border secure,” Doocy retorts.  “You guys are.”

“You think pregnant women are posing a big threat to the border, to the border communities?  Is that a big issue?” Psaki asks again.  “I’m not aware of pregnant women being a big issue at the border.”  Psaki then launches into another lesson that undermines the premise of Doocy’s question and demonstrates that the false fear raised by him is addressed in US law.

Washington Post: “The White House is leaning toward releasing information to Congress about what Donald Trump and his aides were doing during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol despite the former president’s objections – a decision that could have significant political and legal ramifications. Trump has said he will cite ‘executive privilege’ to block information requests from the House select committee investigating the events of that day, banking on a legal theory that has successfully allowed presidents and their aides to avoid or delay congressional scrutiny for decades, including during the Trump administration. But President Biden’s White House plans to err on the side of disclosure given the gravity of the events of Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.”

A US district judge ordered MAGA media asshole Dan Bongino to pay the Daily Beast $31,835 in court fees on Wednesday after Bongino’s defamation suit over the Beast’s story on the demise of NRA TV (on which Bongino was a host) was dismissed in 2020. Read the court order here.

The website for “New Wave Shrimp“, which isn’t actually shrimp but a composite of plant products engineered to taste like the crustaceans, states the “product is made from sustainably sourced ingredients with its delicious taste and texture coming from our proprietary blend of seaweed, plant protein and other plant-based ingredients” including “sustainably sourced seaweed” which “gives New Wave Shrimp the texture and bite of shrimp” but then adds “mung bean is the core, clean source of plant protein” whatever the fuck ming bean is, National Zero found Thursday.

This is bullshit. How the hell can it be plant-based “seafood” if there’s barely anything from the sea in it? You might as well be calling Ben and Jerry’s ice cream “seafood” since seaweed-derived carrageenan is an ingredient. Even more disturbing to obsessive pedants is the fact that the brand name calls it “shrimp” without some silly minor deviation in spelling like “chickn”. It’s not friggin shrimp. Shrimp are insect-like animals that live in the ocean until they die of predation by humans or other animals. They’re not seaweed flavored lumps of mung bean or whatever the hell it is.

Brandon Prenzlin, a grassroots coordinator for the conservative/libertarian FreedomWorks astroturfing group, has been charged by federal prosecutors for his participation in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.

Prenzlin faces misdemeanor charges of illegally entering the Capitol building with a group of insurrectionists.  He stayed in the Capitol for approximately four minutes before exiting with a group following the stretcher carrying rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a Capitol Police officer after attempted to breach a barricaded door to enter the Speaker’s Lobby.

Prenzlin was identified through numerous photos he and others took during the attack, as well as security camera footage.  He was wearing a distinctive pair of blue and brown shoes, which he is seen wearing in other photos he posted on social media. 

“Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell believes the Republican Party is moving away from Trumpism and views the former president as a weight on his chances of reclaiming the majority next year. That’s according to ‘Peril,’ the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The book quotes McConnell calling former President Donald Trump, ‘a fading brand. Retired. OTTB as they say in Kentucky – off-the-track Thoroughbred'” – Lexington Herald-Leader.