Excerpt of a CNN article titled “Arizona Republican lawmakers join GOP efforts to target voting, with nearly two dozen restrictive voting measures“: “Rep. John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican who chairs the Government and Elections Committee that advanced [Republican Arizona State Senator Michelle] Ugenti-Rita’s measure on a party-line vote Wednesday, said GOP lawmakers are concerned about what happens to ballots automatically sent to people who have moved or have died. He acknowledged that the concerns about those ballots being cast fraudulently are ‘anecdotal, because obviously if nobody’s there and they throw it away, you wouldn’t know. And if nobody’s there and they vote it and do a good duplicate of the signature, you wouldn’t know.'”

“‘There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,’ Kavanagh said. ‘Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote – but everybody shouldn’t be voting.’ He pointed to Democrats’ emphasis on registering voters and pursuing those who have not returned ballots – tactics that Republicans have successfully implemented in other swing states – and said doing so means that ‘you can greatly influence the outcome of the election if one side pays people to actively and aggressively go out and retrieve those ballots.’ ‘Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,’ Kavanagh said. ‘Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.'”

“Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Thursday to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls or women’s sports teams. Mississippi is the first state this year to enact such a ban, after a federal court blocked an Idaho law last year. Mississippi’s Senate Bill 2536 is set to become law July 1, although a legal challenge is possible.”

“Three in four Americans approve of Congress passing the American Rescue Plan. Large majorities of Democrats and independents, along with nearly half of Republicans, approve of passage“ CBS News reports.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus on March 11, 2020:  “Bottom line:  It’s going to get worse.”

Fauci made this statement two weeks after Donald Trump told the media “within a few day… [the nation will be] down to close to zero [cases].”  The day after saying that, Trump said, “like a miracle, it’ll disappear.”

Daily Beast: “From a suspiciously timed lockdown lift to the recruitment of bizarre, extremist allies, Benjamin Netanyahu is sparing no effort to win Israel’s next election and establish what he calls ‘a full-on right-wing government.’ Meanwhile, he has consistently asserted that voters will reward him for the country’s unparalleled anti-COVID-19 vaccination drive, a saving grace for citizens after a long year of lockdowns and economic woes. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, the polls show otherwise, and many observers believe he is assiduously preparing to undermine the legitimacy of the March 23 vote if it does not bring him a clear victory. If the direst predictions do come true, and infections resurge around Election Day, the ensuing mayhem could help maintain his grip on power.”

“Even while aggressively courting Arab-Israeli voters – who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s electorate – the Likud continued to spread unfounded claims about Arab attempts to ‘steal the election.’ Netanyahu went so far as to send an emissary to the Palestinian Authority, a government he routinely refers to as a terrorist entity, warning them against voting for the Arab-majority Joint List party to better his chances at filling Israel’s parliament with his own allies. ‘Netanyahu has lost all shame,’ protested Gideon Saar, a former Likud minister now challenging Netanyahu as head of the New Hope party. ‘He is trying to involve the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] in elections within the State of Israel.’ Yoaz Hendel, Netanyahu’s former director of communications who is now with Saar, compared the move to the Ukraine scheme that provoked Donald Trump’s first impeachment. ‘Netanyahu does the same without even thinking twice,’ he said. A spate of polls show that after 12 years of Netanyahu’s rule, most Israelis want to see a change. Surveys published by major media outlets this week showed the Likud hovering at 28 or 29 out of 120 seats in the Knesset, with the centrist Yesh Atid rising to 20. Ben Caspit, author of The Netanyahu Years, is convinced that if Netanyahu loses, his inner circle would use the defeat as an opportunity to incite an insurrectionary event.”

“No matter how often pundits praise bipartisanship, it’s not weird or unusual in politics for parties to disagree, and for the out-party to oppose what the in-party proposes. The question, however, isn’t whether an oppose-everything strategy is unethical, but whether it gets the best outcomes. Surely, the top Republican preference was for the relief bill to collapse as it went through Congress. As it turned out, they were unable to make that happen. It seems likely after that, however, that their next-best preference was to have it pass without their votes because agreeing to a deal that would produce a smaller bill would still leave GOP legislators open to accusations that they were unwilling to fight. There’s not much scarier to them than being slapped with the dreaded RINO label.”

“The second problem for Republicans, however, is that they’ve finally lost their credibility when they claim to oppose deficits. For decades they had managed to persuade many pundits to erroneously believe that they favored small deficits when Democrats are president, when in fact the party, for all its ‘deficit’ talking points when Democrats are in the White House, was actually uninterested in actual federal budget deficits. At any rate, after Republican tax cuts widened the deficit under President Donald Trump, no one believes GOP deficit talk. That fact, along with some changes in Democratic policy preferences, helped produce the huge relief bill. At this point, only a very aggressive Republican effort to reach a deal might have had a chance to work, and everything Republicans believe and have done for the last 30 years pushed against making a serious effort. Which is one of the reasons that Biden will be signing a bill on Friday that deals Republicans a whole bunch of policy defeats” – Bloomberg.

WSJ Editorial Board: “Democrats on Wednesday passed their $1.9 trillion spending and welfare bill that would have been unimaginable even in the Obama years, and the big news is how easily they did it. The party is united behind the most left-wing agenda in decades, while Republicans are divided and in intellectual disarray. This is only the beginning of the progressive steamroller, and it’s worth understanding why. One lesson from the Covid non-fight is that there are no Democratic moderates in Congress. The party base has moved so sharply left that even swing-state Members are more liberal than many liberals in the Clinton years. Democrats lost not a single vote in the Senate and only one in the House. The fear of primary challenges from the left, which took out House war horses in 2018 and 2020, has concentrated incumbent minds.”

“A second lesson is that President Biden is no moderating political force. Democrats in the House and Senate are setting the agenda, and Mr. Biden is along for the ride. He’s the ideal political front-man for this agenda with his talk of “unity” and anti-Trump persona, but he isn’t shaping legislation. He is signing on to whatever chief of staff Ron Klain tells him he needs to support. For now at least, there also isn’t much of an opposition. With a few exceptions, the media are marching in lockstep support of whatever Democrats want. The substance of the Covid bill was barely covered outside of these pages. Opposition to H.R.1, the federal takeover of state election law, is literally reported as a revival of Jim Crow racism. The business community has also been co-opted, as it often is at the beginning of a Democratic Presidency. Industries are trying to protect their specific iron rice bowls, but one price is their accommodation with the larger progressive agenda. Small business opposes the $15 minimum wage, but bigger businesses don’t mind saddling smaller competitors with higher costs. Big Oil doesn’t mind selling out independent frackers on climate rules.”

“Kyle Rittenhouse’s much-awaited trial in the fatal shootings during protests in Kenosha last summer will wait a bit longer, as a judge on Wednesday set a new date of Nov. 1. Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, late on Aug. 25 during protests in Kenosha over the police shooting two days earlier of Jacob Blake, who was left paralyzed” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

“His lawyers say Rittenhouse acted in lawful self-defense, citing widely seen cellphone videos of the shootings. During a brief pretrial hearing via Zoom on Wednesday, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder granted the delay that both prosecutors and defense said was necessary in the case. They will meet again in May to see if that proposed schedule still works.”

Axios: “Wealthy nations – including the U.S., the U.K. and the EU – have vaccinated their citizens at a rate of one person per second over the last month, while most developing countries still haven’t administered a single shot, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance. As higher-income countries aim to achieve herd immunity in a matter of months, most of the world’s vulnerable people will remain unprotected. Experts say that mutations that may arise while the virus spreads could be a danger to us all, vaccinated or not. Even though more vaccines will arrive in developing nations soon, only 3% of people in those countries are likely to be vaccinated by mid-2021. At best, only a fifth of their population will be vaccinated by the end of the year, per the People’s Vaccine Alliance.”

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday released a new recording of then-president Donald Trump pressuring the head of investigations for the Georgia Secretary of State to find evidence to overturn the state’s November election results.

The six minute conversation of a call that took place in December had been previously reported by the Washington Post, but the recording again illustrates Trump’s desire to have state officials use any means possible, implicitly legal and illegal, to overturn election results.

The call to Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the Georgia Secretary of State, is unusual for a number of reasons, the least of which is not the fact that the President of the United States reached out to a person who is supposed to run an independent investigation.

Earlier this week, American Airlines sent 13,000 employees so-called Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices, a legal notification that they would be laid off at the date specified.  However, after Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act which included a continuation of the Payroll Support Program for airlines, the airline informed the employees to ignore them.

“Tear it up,” Doug Parker, the airline’s CEO, said in an Instagram message, noting that the employees will have job security until at least September 30th.  “There aren’t going to be any layoffs at American Airlines in April, and with the vaccinations on the rise, hopefully never again.”

The lower house of the Congress of Mexico voted to decriminalize use of marijuana for recreational, medical and scientific purposes, a move that could deal a major blow to the drug cartels in the country, Reuters reports.

The legalization of marijuana would make Mexico the largest legal market for pot in the world, opening opportunities for cannabis growers who currently fear both police and drug gangs.  The measure would defund a major source of income for the criminal cartels.

The bill passed the lower house 316-127, and it now must pass the Mexican Senate.  It is endorsed by the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.  It provides for five various types of licenses within the marijuana law:  cultivation, transformation, sale, research and export or import of marijuana.  Only people the age of 18 or over would be able to legally buy or possess marijuana. 

Pondering running for retiring @senrobportman seat in United States Senate. #GoBuckeyes

— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) March 10, 2021

“During Wednesday’s House session, Wisconsin Republican Glenn Grothman made a comment about the Black Lives Matter movement that drew an angry response. ‘I know the strength that Black Lives Matter had in this last election,’ he said. ‘I know it’s a group that doesn’t like the old-fashioned family. Disturbed that we have another program here in which we’re increasing the marriage penalty.’ ‘We have been able to keep our families alive for over 400 years,’ said Delegate Stacey Plaskett. ‘How dare you say that we are not interested in families in the Black community? That is outrageous. That should be stricken down'” – CBS Milwaukee.

“I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!” said the Fat Orange Bastard in a statement to the press on Wednesday.

As stated, we at National Zero won’t be covering every single one of these, just the ones that make him look particularly pathetic, dumb, and desperate for attention. Like this one.

You voted against it. https://t.co/AKEAXVacxD

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) March 10, 2021

“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday the $1.9 trillion economic relief legislation headed for President Joe Biden’s desk will be a ‘turning point’ that transforms U.S. politics by restoring the country’s faith in government. In an interview as the House voted on final passage, the New York Democrat said the bill was ‘certainly way up there’ among his proudest achievements, after he held all 50 senators in his ideologically diverse caucus to pass it. ‘It does so much good for so many people. And one of our missions is to show people that government can actually make their lives better. That’s very, very important because if they are not able to see that, they turned to demagogues, they turned to autocrats, they turned to bigotry – Donald Trump,’ he said. ‘This legislation has some things that are immediately going to show people that government made a difference – by having a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.'”

“Schumer said the Democrats – who rejected a Republican push to shrink the bill and passed it on a party-line basis – had learned their lesson after failing to deliver adequate relief in the 2009 financial crisis. He said it returns the party to the economic-populist roots it had under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. ‘The Republicans are making a huge mistake by opposing this,’ he said. Schumer’s remarks indicate that Democrats are eager to capitalize on the popularity of the legislation and use it to rally voters to their side to protect their slim majorities in Congress. The unanimous GOP opposition sharpens the political contrast between the two parties, as the bill includes provisions such as $1,400 stimulus payments and $300-a-week jobless benefits. The response from voters will test the new Democratic approach to going big against the Republican vision, honed in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, that government is typically a source of the country’s problems and not a solution to them” – NBC News.

https://youtu.be/y8z9kQopHXw

Showing her struttin’ like a wannabe supermodel in front of the Capitol with a guitar-heavy rock soundtrack, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) released a new ad which ominously features two gunshots from a rifle after a challenge to Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that the enhanced security measures currently restricting access to the Capitol are an overreaction given the current threat to the building.  “We’ve overdone it,” McConnell told reporters. “I’m extremely uncomfortable with the fact that my constituents can’t come to the Capitol. There’s all this razor wire around the complex. It reminds me of my last visit to Kabul.

McConnell’s remarks come one day after the Pentagon approved an extension to the Hill deployment of thousands of National Guard troops for two more months, at the request of the Capitol Police. More than 2,000 troops will remain in the area to guard the Capitol amid intelligence raising the specter of a forthcoming extremist attack.  The deployment of National Guard troops began after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud. In addition, the Capitol complex is now surrounded by a fence with razor wire, preventing the public from entering the grounds.  “Do we need some changes? We probably do,” McConnell said. But he added “it looks terrible to have the beacon of our democracy surrounded by razor wire.”