“Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will win enough seats in this 44th general election to form a government, the CBC News decision desk has projected. It’s still too early to say whether it will be a minority or majority government. It’s still a reversal of fortunes for Trudeau. He launched this campaign in mid-August with a sizeable lead in the polls – only to see his support crater days later as many voters expressed anger with his decision to prompt an election during the pandemic’s fourth wave. Two middling debate performances by Trudeau and renewed questions about past scandals also put a Liberal victory in question. But in the end, voters decided the Liberal team should continue to govern a country that, while battered and bruised by a health crisis, has also fared well on key pandemic metrics like death rates and vaccine coverage” – CBC.

Molly Jong-Fast, The Daily Beast: “Gabby Petito is one of the thousands of women who disappear each year, as nearly three women are murdered every day in America by their romantic partners, but unlike almost all of those women she has become front page news and, in her disappearance and possible death, a sort of human Rorschach test: a meme, a hashtag, a social media moment and movement. Gabby Petito’s hashtag was searched 268 million times on TikTok. In the same area that Gabby Petito disappeared, 710 indigenous people – mostly girls – disappeared between the years of 2011 and 2020 but their stories didn’t lead news cycles, internet sleuths didn’t clog Instagram and Twitter trying to solve the mystery of their disappearances.”

“Personally, I find it more than a little infuriating that those 710 people didn’t get the same attention as this white, model-thin 22-year-old who’d been documenting her travels through Utah’s national parks in a white van with her boyfriend on Instagram… While much remains unknown, many of us know what we feel. On Facebook a woman wrote, ‘We all know a Gabby Petito or we’ve been her. Stuck in an abusive relationship with a man who continues to make us feel crazy or look crazy.'”

“There are thousands of comments like that across social media – and at least as many internet sleuths trying to solve the case ahead of the FBI and other legal authorities. That doesn’t always end well, as we’ve seen again and again. However this story turns out, I hope that people following it begin to take ‘ordinary’ abuse of women seriously, and the disappearances of women that happen all too often. And that law enforcement and civilians alike stop and seriously consider how much more interest there is in solving crimes when they involve attractive white women.”

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice and adult dental braces wearer Michael Gableman, tasked with proving Trump won the state in the 2020 election warns in a video message that “the responsibility to demonstrate that our elections were conducted with fairness, inclusivity and accountability is on the government and on the private, for-profit interests that did work for the government… The burden is not on the people to show in advance of an investigation that public officials and their contractors behaved dishonestly” even though they already did when the election was certified by the Wisconsin Elections Commission on November 30th, 2020 and then certified again after a review on April 3rd, 2021. And the Trump campaign paid for a recount of two heavily Democratic counties which ended up netting Biden several dozen more votes.

Fox News host and vocalizing rutabaga Tucker Carlson claims the Department of Defense is requiring Navy SEALs to get vaccinated against the coronavirus in a nefarious plot to either (1) kill the SEALs or (2) get them out of the military.  Without evidence, Carlson claims that the military-wide vaccine mandate is targeting the Navy SEALs “especially hard.”

Two conservative supporters were charged by the Justice Department today with attempting to solicit a significant financial contribution from a Russian foreign national for an unspecified presidential candidate during the 2016 election cycle.

Jesse Benton, former campaign chair for Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, and Doug Wead, a conservative commentator who ran for Congress from Arizona in 1992, have been charged with soliciting illegal foreign money to a campaign in a scheme that would have funneled the illegal contribution through a US based company to hide the original source of the funds.

Benton also served as campaign chair for presidential runs by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and his father, perennial outsider candidate Ron Paul.  Benton is married to one of Ron Paul’s granddaughters, a niece of Rand Paul.  He had previously been convicted of filing false FEC reports for the campaigns of Ron Paul and given two years probation.  He received a pardon from Donald Trump in December 2020.

Actor and entrepreneur Matthew McConnaughey holds a nine percentage point lead over incumbent Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a way-too-early poll of the November 2022 election in the state.  McConnaughey, a non-partisan who as yet has not definitively announced a candidacy, is rumored to be considering a bid for office.

In another head-to-head matchup, Abbott leads former Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke 42-37 in a Dallas Morning News poll.

The Bulwark’s Christian Vanderbrouk got a hold of a memo by MAGA lawyer John Eastman’s plan for Pence (or Chuck Grassley) to overturn the 2020 election in Congress:

“A lawsuit that could test the constitutionality of the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban was filed in Texas Monday against a doctor who admitted to performing an abortion considered illegal under the new law. The details of the civil suit against Alan Braid, a physician in San Antonio, are as unusual as the law itself, which empowers private citizens to enforce the ban on abortion once cardiac activity has been detected – often as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Braid stepped forward last week to say that he provided an abortion to a woman who was in the early stages of pregnancy, but beyond the state’s limit. Despite the risks, Braid said he acted because of his duty as a doctor and ‘because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.'”

‘I fully understood that there could be legal consequences – but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested,’ he wrote in a column in The Washington Post. On Monday, an Arkansas man said he decided to file a lawsuit to test the constitutionality of the Texas measure after reading a news report about Braid’s declaration. Oscar Stilley, a former lawyer convicted of tax fraud in 2010, said he is not personally opposed to abortion, but believes that the measure should be subject to judicial review. ‘If the law is no good, why should we have to go through a long, drawn-out process to find out if it’s garbage?’ Stilley said in an interview after filing the complaint in state court in Bexar County, Tex., which includes San Antonio” – Washington Post.

Turns out Republican Michigan State Rep. Steve Marino and Democratic State Rep. Mari Manoogian did in fact date for four months and Marino was threatening her after the relationship ended, as had been speculated by National Zero staff and readers on Thursday, The Detroit News confirmed Monday after obtaining a copy of Manoogian’s petition for a restraining order against Marino.

Per the petition, Marino told Manoogian he would make it his “life mission to destroy” Manoogian, he hoped her “car explodes on the way in”, and told her to “hide on the House floor” when he’s in the chamber, among other over-the-top stalker bullshit an entitled MAGA asshole would say after a woman way out of his league realizes her mistake and moves on like Manoogian did in early 2020.

The part where Marino told Manoogian: “You’re truly the worst human being I’ve ever met. I mean that with the utmost sincerity. Just a parasite” might’ve just been more of a political thing however, since – as you may have heard – Democrats and Republicans don’t really get along these days.

The Newberg Graphic: “A staff member at Mabel Rush Elementary School in Newberg showed up to work in Blackface on Friday, calling herself Rosa Parks and doing so in protest of a vaccine mandate for all school district staff. A fellow staff member at the school who provided initial information on the incident said Lauren Pefferle ‘a special education assistant who the school district said it would not name due to it being a personnel matter’ darkened her face with iodine. The concerned staff member, who requested anonymity for this story, said Pefferle explained her reasoning: that she intended to look like Rosa Parks and have her actions serve as a protest of a vaccine mandate.”

“Pefferle was soon removed from school grounds and placed on administrative leave, according to a district statement. ‘Last Friday, one of our employees reported for work in Blackface,’ district’s statement said. ‘The employee was removed from the location and (human resources) has placed the employee on administrative leave. The administration of Newberg Public Schools condemns all expressions of racism. It is important to remember how Blackface has been used to misrepresent Black communities and do harm. We acknowledge the violence this represents and the trauma it evokes regardless of intention.’ The Blackface incident comes after a Newberg HS student was recently connected to a racist ‘slave trade’ Snapchat group, a protest occurred in solidarity with Newberg’s Black students by a visiting girls soccer team, and the school board’s controversial attempt to ban Black Lives Matter and Pride displays among other perceived ‘political’ symbols.”

“Three-time Yukon Quest sled dog race champion Brent Sass says he shot an aggressive black bear while moose hunting alone near his kennel in Interior Alaska. Sass said the young bear began showing up in his hunting camp near Eureka. It once chewed up a pair of boots and, another time, climbed a tree where Sass was in a stand looking for a moose. ‘It got real close and I had to kick him down.’ Sass said he did not have bear spray and shot the animal when it later showed up outside his tent in the dark. ‘Literally unzipped the tent door and he was like 5 feet.'”

“‘His eyes were staring me in the face,’ said Sass. ‘And I yelled, ‘Hey, get out of here! Hey bear!’ And he didn’t move. I grabbed my gun and he was still just staring at me. And I was like at point-blank range. He was definitely checking me out and he was not scared,’ said Sass. ‘The look in his eye was like, ‘I’m not backing down.” Sass said he is now processing the bear meat into sausage and jerky, then he plans to get back to moose hunting” – Alaska Public Media.

KCUR: “Missouri’s chief disciplinary counsel is asking the Missouri Supreme Court to suspend the law licenses of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis last year. In filings with the court, the chief disciplinary counsel, Alan D. Pratzel, cited the couple’s guilty pleas to misdemeanors stemming from the incident.”

“Mark McCloskey, who is running for the U.S. Senate, pleaded guilty on June 17 to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was ordered to pay a fine of $750. Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty on the same date to misdemeanor harassment and was ordered to pay a fine of $2,000. Pratzel said both crimes showed ‘indifference to public safety’ and involved ‘moral turpitude,’ warranting discipline of the pair. Pratzel cited a host of other Missouri cases in which lawyers were disciplined for crimes involving moral turpitude. He recommended that the Supreme Court indefinitely suspend the McCloskeys’ licenses with no leave to reapply for reinstatement for six months. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson pardoned both McCloskeys on July 30. But in his motion, Pratzel said that while a pardon erases a person’s conviction, ‘the person’s guilt remains.’ The McCloskeys did not respond to a request for comment.”

“In 2019, while on a trip to Washington to answer questions from Congress about his digital currency, [Peter] Thiel joined [Mark] Zuckerberg, Jared Kushner, Trump, and their spouses at the White House. The specifics of the discussion were secret – but, as I report in my book, Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg came to an understanding with Kushner during the meal. Facebook, he promised, would avoid fact-checking po­litical speech – thus allowing the Trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. In return the Trump administra­tion would lay off on any heavy-handed regulations. Facebook had long seen itself as a government unto itself; now, thanks to the understanding brokered by Thiel, the site would push what the Thiel confidant called ‘state-sanctioned conservatism'” – Excerpt from Max Chafkin’s new book The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, published in New York Magazine.

MAGA podcaster and media personality Dan Bongino told his audience that “leftists will celebrate” if he dies of a Coronavirus infection on his Monday show, adding “Play this clip! They will celebrate my death because I am a Conservative!” Personally I’m a bit skeptical about that and I encourage Bongino to test out his theory on leftists. He should put his money – or better yet the bathroom door handle of a rural Arkansas hospital ICU where his mouth is if he wants to prove it.

Daily Beast: “Emergency call-outs to a hospital and a burglarized store were left unattended to because two police officers were busy… having sex. Sergeant Molly Edwards and Police Chief Richard Paton resigned from Surrey police last month after a disciplinary panel heard of their extracurricular activities, resulting in four allegations of gross misconduct. After noticing suspicious behavior between the two, supervisors bugged their patrol car to investigate. Paton, 39, allegedly suggested the two ‘just get naked’ despite receiving a radio request for help from an electrical store that was being burglarized. A hospital needed help with two assault victims, but the pair were 15 minutes away having sex, says the disciplinary panel, calling the matter a ‘serious dereliction of duty.’ The officers are both married to other people and have children.”

https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1439936861951168513

“Attorney for indicted Trump Org executive tells court he expects more people to be charged in criminal probe. ‘We have strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming,’ said Bryan C. Skarlatos, attorney for Allen Weisselberg, said in court” reports CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

Non-Correction: The current version of this article misspelled Alan Weisselberg’s last name as ‘Weaselberg’ in the headline. National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.

“Foreign nationals flying to the U.S. will be required to be fully vaccinated and must show proof of vaccination before boarding an airplane to the U.S.” reports CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe.

Politico: “Republicans said Florida’s contentious new election law was needed to bolster security of future elections and downplayed any talk that they were pushing it to gain a partisan advantage. But that’s not the full story. A raft of emails and text messages show that Florida’s new law was drafted with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer – and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election.”

“Yet in one remarkable text exchange obtained by Politico, state Sen. Joe Gruters and lead House sponsor state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) went back-and-forth over proposals to shorten how long mail-in ballot requests are valid. Gruters defended a Senate proposal to cancel all existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that it would be ‘devastating’ for Republicans to keep them valid heading into the 2022 election when DeSantis and other state GOP officials are up for re-election. Warning – More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters during the 2020 election where Trump easily won Florida. Part of that was due to the ongoing pandemic, as Democrats strongly encouraged voters to change their habits nationwide. ‘We cannot make up ground. Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead,’ Gruters wrote to Ingoglia, who had been chairman of the Republican Party of Florida before Gruters.”