“A US District Judge has ordered Trump flack Jason Miller to pay Gizmodo nearly $42,000 to cover legal expenses from his failed $100 million defamation suit. The judge found Gizmodo accurately reported a court filing alleging Miller slipped an abortion pill into a woman’s smoothie” – Roger Sollenberger, Daily Beast.

“Police intelligence documents show that Washington’s Trump Hotel raised its rates “as a security tactic”, in the hope of deterring Trump-supporting Q-Anon supporters from staying there in early March, on a day which some believed would see Trump restored to office.” A report form The Guardian states that: “The information, which police gleaned from a Business Insider version of a story published in Forbes on 6 February, was confirmed in an 8 February intelligence briefing stolen by ransomware hackers from Washington’s Metropolitan police department (MPD).”

A volcano erupted just outside of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North Kivu province’s capital city of Goma on Saturday. There are conflicting reports on whether it’s the Nyamuragira or Nyiragongo volcano, but they’re right next to each other and both are on the outskirts of the city, so the question is largely moot. From the video above (footage stitched by @CallOutKenya) it would appear that basaltic lava is flowing into populated areas. A 2002 eruption of Nyiragongo killed 245 locals and covered over 13% of Goma in lava, displacing 120,000 residents.

A recent report from the Washington Post indicates that traffic to the former guy’s blog has cratered in recent weeks.  The Post reports that traffic to the site has fallen from a high of over 150,000 visits per day, to less than 15,000. The site has also seen a substantial drop in Facebook shares, leading many to wonder if the Russian GRU has pulled some of their botnet support from Trump.  Has the Kremlin decided that the former guy is just too far gone and needs to be packed up and shipped off to the home?  Did Kremlin military leaders decide that without Republicans controlling the Department of Justice it was just too risky to keep boosting Trump’s figures?

HuffPost: “CNN has terminated its contract with senior political commentator Rick Santorum after racist, inaccurate remarks he made about Native Americans, HuffPost has learned. Santorum, a former Republican senator and two-time failed GOP presidential candidate, sparked outrage last month after claiming there was ‘nothing’ in America before white colonizers arrived and that Native people haven’t contributed much to American culture, anyway.”

“‘We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,’ Santorum told students during remarks at a Young America’s Foundation event. ‘I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.'”

Taco Bell is now marketing new promotional merchandise that’s aimed squarely at the gentleman who has a closet full of white tank-tops, a collection of gold chains with crucifixes and who has seen the movie “The Godfather” at least twelve times.  The company’s new “Hot sauce packet jump suit” is available on their company website for $70.00.

Willamette Week: “In less than 24 hours, a landmark Oregon amusement park has gone from selling out tickets for its reopening to closing indefinitely. The reason: Some park patrons issued threats about unvaccinated people being required to wear masks. Enchanted Forest, the family-run amusement park located south of Salem, announced yesterday that it would reopen this Saturday. But this morning, the owners announced on social media that reopening will now be delayed indefinitely due to ‘comments and threats’ the business received for its masks policy. ‘Until we are confident we can do so safely, we will not be able to reopen,’ reads the announcement. ‘Our commitment to being a place where families can spend time together free of unnecessary hate and conflict simply outweighs our strong desire to reopen our business.'”

“Following state guidelines, the park had announced that visitors would be required to wear masks, unless they chose to show their vaccine card and ID. The business then received a deluge of social media comments and phone calls from people who disagreed with the mask mandate and the need to show a vaccine card in order to be exempt. ‘Half of the people were thrilled,’ owner Susan Vaslev tells WW. ‘A huge portion of the people were very angry. Angry is very mild—they were outraged.’ Vaslev declined to share the specifics of the threats her business received, only that they were severe enough that the struggling business decided to stay shuttered. ‘We’re desperate to reopen because we’re just hanging by a thread,’ she says. ‘[The threats] were extensive enough that we made the decision not to open.’ Built by Vaslev’s father, Roger Tofte, in 1964, the Enchanted Forest has been closed for the better part of the past year. Last fall, the park launched a crowdfunding campaign with a $500,000 goal to keep the park afloat until spring. Now, Vaslev is unsure when Enchanted Forest will reopen.”

My statement on my termination from The Associated Press. pic.twitter.com/kf4NCkDJXx

— emily wilder (@vv1lder) May 22, 2021

Context: Emily Wilder was an Associated Press reporter for a little over two weeks when the service fired her after a MAGA cancel culture campaign of intimidation against her for pro-Palestinian activism in college (and allegedly more recent tweets). Read more here.

Harry Enten, CNN: “The events of January 6 and its aftermath can be difficult to fathom. A number of Republicans don’t seem to comprehend them at all. They have fallen back on the lies that the riots we all saw on television and online that day were not an insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump. Dangerously, the base’s reaction to January 6 are part of a larger worldview about the 2020 election and its aftermath, all steeped in mistruths in an effort to protect Trump’s legacy. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from late March found that an astounding 55% of Republicans agreed that the January 6 riots were led by left-wing protesters trying to make the former President look bad. Just 30% of Republicans disagreed with this statement.”

“What arguably makes this stat even worse is that people don’t believe or are choosing to ignore their own eyes. There is video literally showing rioters pumping up Trump and denouncing now President Joe Biden and Democrats. There is no real proof that liberals were behind the insurrection. It’s a lie by some conservatives that was made up to excuse the violent actions of Trump supporters that day. Republicans are also trying to perform some mind jujitsu by trying to separate out the insurrection from the larger January 6 protests. While it is true that some January 6 protesters were not rioters, many of them were. Yet 51% of Republicans believe that the protesters were mostly peaceful and law-abiding. Put it together, a majority of Republicans think that the protesters were mostly peaceful, and a majority think those who rioted at the US Capitol were put up to it by left-wing agitators. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that many Republicans are able to believe two things that seem to be in paradox with each other. Republicans have believed unbelievable things about the election and its aftermath for more than half a year now.”

Comments from The Hill article “More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials have flagged just 27 as possible frauds” – something National Zero would’ve reported if its publisher hadn’t been stuck in traffic on Eastern Parkway at the time The Hill had gotten to this story, but the pained reactions from the Trump fanboys there is entertaining enough to merit its own article here:

DancingOnABurningRoof • 14 minutes ago
Cool. Let an independent audit look at the votes and see if they come up.with anything different. If you got nothing to hide, what’s the problem?
Sat, 5/22/2021 11:12 AM on ‘More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials flagged just 27 as possible frauds’

Wassup • 15 minutes ago
Dems fight like hell to block audits of election fraud
Sat, 5/22/2021 11:11 AM on ‘More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials flagged just 27 as possible frauds’

I’m for freedom • 28 minutes ago
Trump proven right again !
Sat, 5/22/2021 11:00 AM on ‘More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials flagged just 27 as possible frauds’

Thecementmixer • 30 minutes ago
So there is an entirely second side to this story. It is up to you to research the fraud in WI and to determine what is true for yourself. I’m just here to communicate that there is another version of this story in the world.
Sat, 5/22/2021 10:58 AM on ‘More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials flagged just 27 as possible frauds’

Derp State • 37 minutes ago
They see the freight train of real audits coming and they are trying to get ahead of it. It won’t work. With GA finding 21% of the sample ballots fraudulent and a judge ordering a forensic audit of 145,000 ballots. There’s nothing the left can do to stop it. The fraud is being exposed and all the paid minions in the world on comment boards will have to try as hard as they can to lie all day because they have no other skills in life and would starve to death without their $5 an hour.
Sat, 5/22/2021 10:57 AM on ‘More than 3M ballots were cast in Wisconsin – officials flagged just 27 as possible frauds’

“Many people have asked about the beautiful Boeing 757 that became so iconic during the Trump rallies. It was effectively kept in storage in Upstate New York in that I was not allowed to use it during my presidency. It is now being fully restored and updated and will be put back into service sometime prior to the end of the year. It will soon be brought to a Louisiana service facility for the completion of work, inspection and updating of Rolls-Royce engines, and a brand new paint job. When completed, it will be better than ever, and again used at upcoming rallies!” writes the Former Guy on his blog, months after CNN reported the plane was rotting in a warehouse in New York.

“The Maricopa County Attorney’s office sent Arizona Senate leaders and vendors of the GOP’s controversial “audit” of the 2020 election a ‘hold’ letter Friday evening, instructing them to retain all documents and audit communications. The request is the first official sign that Maricopa County leaders are considering post-audit legal action” – Business Insider.

JustTheNews: “California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert ‘forgot’ to cast a proxy vote on behalf of Texas Republican Rep. John Carter that would have sunk the $1.9 billion post-Jan. 6 supplemental security spending bill, Just the News has learned. Carter’s letter granting authority to cast his vote by proxy to California Rep. Ken Calvert was submitted to the House clerk and accepted. Carter successfully voted by proxy Thursday on ‘the motion to recommit’ that preceded the final vote on the supplemental security bill. Carter’s spokesperson told Just the News that he would have voted against the bill if his proxy vote was counted. ‘The congressman included a statement in the record that he would’ve voted no,’ said Carter’s spokesperson. Calvert’s spokesperson told Just the News why Carter’s proxy wasn’t counted during the vote on final passage the $1.9 billion bill.”

“‘Rep. Calvert had been voting by proxy for Rep. Carter throughout the week,’ the spokesman said. ‘Rep. Calvert made a mistake and simply forgot to cast Rep. Carter’s vote.’ House members now have the option to vote by proxy in lieu of in-person voting due to rule changes that the House passed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the House, a tied vote can sink a bill, so a no vote from one or two of the GOP members who didn’t vote would have blocked the bill from passing. Florida Republican Rep. Daniel Webster was against the measure, but he’s opposed to using proxy voting and was unable to vote in-person on the bill. ‘Rep. Webster missed votes because he was unavoidably detained in the district and wasn’t able to make it to D.C. in time to make the votes,’ a spokesperson for Webster told Just the News on Friday. ‘He likely would have opposed the bill — he didn’t proxy vote on principle as he is on the record opposing proxy-voting and was part of the original lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.'”

.@AOC you’re responsible for attacks on Jewish people bc of your hate-Israel stance against Israel’s right to defend itself from from terrorists Hamas, calling Israel an apartheid state, & supporting terrorists groups.

Aligning yourself with terrorists means your a terrorist. https://t.co/UJi6uGopx2 pic.twitter.com/scbL9cKuGD

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 22, 2021

“When Republicans talk about whether Donald Trump will run for president again in 2024, many hasten to add it may depend on what is now a big unknown: His legal troubles. Can an indicted ex-president still lead a political party? No one knows for sure, but some Republicans are increasingly discussing the possibility. Criminal charges would, at the very least, create political problems for Trump, but allies and analysts said they would not necessarily prevent him from campaigning for Republicans in 2022 and even pursuing another presidential campaign in 2024.”

“‘None of this matters,’ pollster Frank Luntz said. ‘It doesn’t matter for his decision making or for anyone who votes for him.’ He added: ‘It’s just so irrelevant.’ If anything, indictments over past business practices might trigger Trump to mount another campaign if only to spite his enemies, some Republicans who spoke to USA TODAY said. The ex-president and his supporters would claim that indictments are the products of a Democratic plot to derail him and his agenda. Trump himself suggested as much after the Attorney General’s office in New York state announced that its investigation of certain financial dealings had moved from a ‘civil’ matter to a ‘criminal’ one. In a lengthy written statement referring to himself in the third person, Trump said state prosecutors are ‘possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J. Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him'” – USA Today.

AP: “The two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday. The prison workers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein the night he took his own life in August 2019. They were charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on the financier before he was found in his cell. New York City’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.”

“As part of the deal with prosecutors, they will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and will serve no time behind bars, according to a letter from federal prosecutors that was filed in court papers Friday. Noel and Thomas would instead be subjected to supervised release, would be required to complete 100 hours of community service and would be required to fully cooperate with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general, it says. The two have ‘admitted that they ‘willfully and knowingly completed materially false count and round slips regarding required counts and rounds’’ in the housing unit where Epstein was being held, the letter says. The deal would need to be approved by a judge, which could happen as soon as next week. Attorneys for the guards did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.”

• Happy 70th Birthday to Al Franken, who made his mark (positively) in two industries:  comedy/entertainment and politics.  
• Biden Administration efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza were behind-the-scenes, quiet and professional.  Contrast this to what Trump would’ve done:  posting a tweet declaring “I told Bebe that I ordered a seizefire NOW!  No more misiles.  MUST listen to Trump!”
• Republicans are more interested in the security of Israel than the security of the US Capitol.
• Why anyone would want to attend a rally featuring Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene baffles me.  They’re not intelligent.  They’re not insightful.  They’re not inspiring.  They’re cheap performance artists.  Their field is politics and their product is outrage.  And they don’t even do that well.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XX”

See the NatZero story from yesterday:  “’Don’t tell me what to do!’ conservatives scream as CDC recommends against kissing, snuggling chickens”

First, Tucker has a “rat wrangler” as a guest; now it’s a “poultry enthusiast.”

“Drones in swarms (especially large swarms) generally rely on a centralized controller to keep them organized and from crashing into each other. But as swarms get larger and do more stuff, that’s something that you can’t always rely on, so folks at EPFL are working on a localized inter-drone communication system that can accomplish the same thing,” reports IEEE Spectrum.

The new technology allows drones to navigate around buildings and structures, so someone won’t be able to escape the drones by running through a structure with a lot of vertical pillars, like a parking garage.  Researchers claim the algorithms for this control are “surprisingly simple”, and derived from studying the movements of flocks of birds, and schools of fish.

A six-year-old child was shot and killed in a road rage incident on Route 55 Freeway in Orange, California Friday as he sat in the back seat of his mother’s car, KTLA reports.

The mother was driving northbound on 55 when, a witness said,  bullet entered the left side of the trunk and went through the boy’s booster seat into his back.  His mother was uninjured.  The child was taken to Children’s Hospital Orange County where he died.

The mother told police that a car carrying a man and a woman cut her off as she exited the carpool lane.  She made a gesture to the driver.  When she changed lanes, the gunfire erupted.