People living in the neighborhood surrounding Federal Prison Camp Bryan in the Texas town of the same name tell NBC News they’ve been seeing a lot more patrols around the penal facility for female white collar convicts – and one sex offender who normally would not have been eligible if not for a special deal – since the arrival of said sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

Daisy Perez, 42 has lived across the street for nine years and said she never had any real worries about the place, that the inmates had sometimes waved at her and her 78 year-old mom, and that Sunday visitation days had resembled picnics. Then last week she noticed armed guards checking cars, a lot more patrol vehicles circling the perimeter, new cameras mounted on utility poles, and opaque black mesh affixed to the single layer of chain-link fencing. Perez and other neighbors say they’d gotten used to media attention from other high-profile convicts arriving and staying at the joint, but it’s been a whole new level lately. “I say that’s crazy,” Perez said. “It’s creepy.”

Other neighbor Marina Boland was similarly less than pleased. “I don’t consider what she did a nonviolent offense,” Boland said of Maxwell, adding “It’s scary to think,” that some QAnon freaks could be headed for the town to rush the prison to get to Maxwell. “People could be out here to cause harm.” Local man Robert, who declined to give his last name, said the Epstein accomplice’s arrival at the Club Fed “makes me mad… The punishment does not match her crimes.”

This movie is what one might call padded. Sooooooo many sequences could be half as long as they are, like the fight between Kong and the two T-rexes. It’s insane to say a fight between a massive ape and two dinosaurs on an ancient lost jungle island is five minutes or so too long but here we are.

In that way it’s kind of like a National Zero essay, like you got the point but- ANYWAY, that doesn’t make Peter Jackson’s King Kong bad. What movie starring King Kong could ever be bad? Oh wait, shit… Godzilla vs Kong sucked. But King Kong himself is fucking awesome. He’s the original and this is a faithful reverent remake of the original, if a very bloated one.

An unidentified anti-vaxxer and a police officer are dead at the campus of Emory University in Atlanta on Friday after the MAGA freak fired at a building he apparently believed to be housing the adjacent Centers for Disease Control, CNN reports. More to come.

Florida MAGA Congressman Cory Mills – who looks and sounds like an incel but evidently dates attractive women in their 20s – had his lawyer tell the Orland Sentinel that it’s a messy situation with the whole sextortion and threats thing but, per the Sentinel, “the public hasn’t gotten the full context” of Mills telling beauty queen and GOP committee woman Lidnsey Langston he would murder any man who she slept with and also would release naked sex pics of her as revenge for her breaking it off in February after he beat up his other girlfriend who Langston didn’t know about.

“Our position is this is a breakup, a disintegration of a relationship that had lasted for years,” said lawyer Aaron Delgado. “Emotions are going to be high any time that happens… It’s just unfortunate that this is now in the public domain instead of being treated privately.” Interesting word “privately.”

For an example of how the defense in the court of public opinion is going, take some of the messages Mills sent to Langston: “Okay Linds. Get me his number and I can send him videos. Take care.” It’s not clear who “him” refers to, but it’s probably not George Santos. Then there’s “I’m sorry to see this is how you treat things. Good luck to you/ Thanks again for the videos” and “Let him put his actions behind his mouth/ I can send him a few videos of you as well/ Oh, I still have them.”

Not denying the messages were genuine Delgado instead said, and this guy’s actually fucking serious, that “You see the word ‘video,’ but you don’t see ‘sex’ or ‘nudity.’ There is no context given for the videos. My client had no intention of releasing any kind of explicit or intimate content.”

“Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Texas to formally pursue judicial declarations that 13 Texas House seats have been vacated due to continued unlawful absences by Democrat legislators who failed to meet the return deadline set by Speaker Dustin Burrows. ‘The rogue Democrat legislators who fled the state have abandoned their duties, leaving their seats vacant,’ said Attorney General Paxton. ‘These cowards deliberately sabotaged the constitutional process and violated the oath they swore to uphold. Their out-of-state rebellion cannot go unchecked, and the business of Texas must go on. I have asked the Texas Supreme Court to declare what has been clear from the beginning: that the runaway members have officially vacated their offices in the Texas House,'” says corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement.

“House Democrats remain willfully absent from the State of Texas, choosing instead to engage in politically motivated grandstanding from out-of-state locations. Their conduct represents a flagrant abandonment of office and a betrayal of the voters who entrusted them with the duty to represent Texans in the legislative chamber. This initial lawsuit concentrates on 13 Democrat members who made incriminating public statements regarding their refusal to return, essentially confirming in their own words the very grounds for this legal action. Texas law provides the Attorney General with explicit authority to represent the State in quo warranto actions and to appear before the Texas Supreme Court in matters where the State has a direct interest,” the statement continued.

A few things: First, where are all the Fox News segments starring the Dem voters who elected these legislators screaming in outrage over the dereliction of duty? If they can’t find any then how about people who lost their homes and/or loved ones in last month’s deadly flooding in Kerr County?

Fat hillbilly former Congressman Billy Long, who was confirmed to lead the IRS just two months ago, is now out from the federal tax agency and being shuffled into some ambassadorship, the New York Times reports. Treasury Suckretary Scott Bessent will take over as acting commissioner.

Convicted felon President Trump’s regime is planning to issue an executive order clarifying that imports of gold bars are exempt from tariffs, Axios reports on the Orange God Emperor looking out for the little corrupt politician who would’ve gotten screwed and had to pay the government a percentage on gifts received from Gulf royals, West African military dictators, and similar characters.

FIRST ON FOX: Attorney General Bondi has authorized a special prosecutor, Ed Martin, to investigate allegations of mortgage fraud involving Sen. Adam Schiff and Letitia James, @pdoocy reports pic.twitter.com/EHYp8JEluR

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 8, 2025

“Sheriff Steven W Tompkins, who serves as the Sheriff for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, has been charged with extortion involving the purchase of an equity interest in a Boston-based cannabis company. Tompkins, 67, of Boston, Mass, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of Extortion Under Color of Official Right. He was taken into custody this morning in the Southern District of Florida and will have an initial appearance at 11:00 am He will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date,” says a Friday Justice Department press release.

The release goes on for quite some length with the details of the accusations and receipts of wire transfers, making it clear that the feds probably have a pretty good case against him. The questionable element to the charges surfaces in the Gateway Pundit’s coverage of the indictment, right in their clickbait-y headline “BREAKING: Boston’s Sanctuary Sheriff Arrested on Federal Extortion Charges” and its lede “Boston’s sanctuary Sheriff Steve Tompkins was arrested on federal extortion charges on Friday. Recall that Sheriff Tompkins kicked ICE out of his jails back in 2019.”

After that is when they finally let on that this has nothing to do with ICE cooperation or illegal immigration… At least as far as the charges go. The decision to go ahead and seek an indictment against him? There’s no reason whatsoever to believe the MAGA Reich is prosecuting Tompkins solely because he’s credibly alleged to have committed a major federal felony. The already told us this with Eric Adams. Let ICE do whatever they want and you can do whatever you want.

“Tariffs are having a huge positive impact on the Stock Market. Almost every day, new records are set. In addition, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars are pouring into our Country’s coffers. If a Radical Left Court ruled against us at this late date, in an attempt to bring down or disturb the largest amount of money, wealth creation and influence the USA has ever seen, it would be impossible to ever recover, or pay back, these massive sums of money and honor. It would be 1929 all over again, a GREAT DEPRESSION! If they were going to rule against the wealth, strength, and power of America, they should have done so LONG AGO, at the beginning of the case, where our entire Country, while never having a chance at this kind of GREATNESS again, would not have been put in 1929 style jeopardy. There is no way America could recover from such a judicial tragedy, but I know our Court System better than anyone, there is no one in history that has gone through the trials, tribulations and uncertainties such as I, and absolutely terrible, but also amazingly beautiful, things can happen. Our Country deserves SUCCESS AND GREATNESS, NOT TURMOIL, FAILURE, AND DISGRACE. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Friday, pretty obviously his pretext to defy a court ruling if and when one ends his taxation of all imported goods.

The Fayette County Record, a very obscure local Texas weekly whose marketing is apparently about on par with National Zero’s – meaning effectively non-existent – 29 days ago reported that Roland Beainy, the managing partner of the Trump Burger chain in the Houston area, was facing a litany of legal issues, including civil disputes with his partners over money and the landlord at one of the locations who has reportedly “commandeered” the business and rechristened it as “MAGA Burger.”

Those are just the regular, day-to-day shitshows of the dregs of the service industry. The real problems for Beainy are a one-two from the Orange God Emperor himself, the president who Beainy told Fox Business News in January is a “gentleman that makes peace, even before he took office, he made peace in the Middle East already between Lebanon and Israel”: A cease-and-desist from the Trump Organization for trademark infringement and, per an ICE statement to the Houston Chronicle on Thursday, that “Despite false claims to the contrary, Roland Mehrez Beainy does not have any immigration benefits that prevented his arrest or removal from the United States. Beainy is a 28-year-old illegal alien from Lebanon who entered the United States in 2019 as a non-immigrant visitor, but he failed to depart by Feb 12, 2024, as required under the terms of his admission. ICE officers arrested him on May 16, 2025, and he was placed into immigration proceedings. On June 13, an immigration judge granted his request for bond while he undergoes his proceedings.”

A South African court on Friday ordered former Zambian President Edward Lungu shipped back home after months of legal wrangling with his successor Hakainde Hichilema, the BBC reports.

Lungu, 68, a longtime bitter rival of Hichilema, has been dead since early June and the last time National Zero checked in Hichilema’s administration had been close to an agreement with the departed autocrat’s family to have his remains repatriated and a state funeral held, an agreement that later collapsed for who the hell knows what reason. A useful analogy would be if John McCain had flown to Canada in his final days to get treatment for the brain tumor he’d been suffering from, was unsuccessful, instructed his family that convicted felon President Trump was on no uncertain terms unwelcome at his funeral, but Trump insisted that he preside over a state funeral anyway.

And then two months later a Canadian court decided they’d had enough of the drama and sent McCain’s body back home to let Trump do whatever he wanted as far as a funeral went.

The delta between MAGAmerica’s bloodlust for arrests of convicted felon President Trump’s enemies and his regime’s actual ability to fulfill the expectations they created is growing so large that even Politico has to acknowledge it – and connect it to “MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga,” writing that Thursday’s fap-fest over the FBI vaguely informing Texas Senator John Cornhole Cornyn that they were going to do something about the fugitive Dem state legislators currently holed up in Illinois to break quorum without saying what they can do.

“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said former Justice Department lawyer Gene Rossi about the latest empty promise. Former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb was even less charitable to the regime. “There isn’t really a plan and [Trump] doesn’t see, look for or care about a bigger picture. Courts will disrupt or halt many of these nascent efforts as they mature but that is fine with him too as it helps further discredit the courts in the eyes of his followers and weakens democracy even more. It is all such a waste.”

On Sunday some readers were, fairly understandably, skeptical of a certain assertion made toward the end of a very freaking long piece titled “The History of the Decline and Fall of the MAGA Conspiracy Empire.” The assertion in question, the somewhat nebulously supported idea that what I understood by an anonymous White House source to be an admission to a Rolling Stone reporter that the latest “Obamagate” offensive from the Trump Regime really is the desperate distraction op from the Epstein shitshow everyone already fucking knows it to be. And that the admission represented a pivotal moment signaling the inevitable end of the “MAGA conspiracy empire.”

JOHN SOLOMON: If we don't see action on the Russia collusion hoax, if we don't punish the behavior that we now know exists,

You are going to handicap the future of this country and destine it to be a banana republic because the Democrats got away with it.@jsolomonReports pic.twitter.com/awKXehkbTW

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) August 4, 2025

The truth is I had worked on the piece for the better part of five hours across two days and I was getting rushed out the door to go to a picnic in freaking Jersey City when I hit publish. Really could’ve used maybe another 30 minutes of work on refining and fortifying that main point.

Which I still stand by. If anything I actually feel even more confident in it two days after the New York Times, though backgrounded still without an actual direct quote from a source, printed this: “It is not clear whether Mr Trump, who is marking his first six months in office, would have pushed quite so forcefully for the [DOJ] to act against his perceived foes if the Epstein case was not still smoldering political fire. But it has certainly added to the urgency, administration officials said,” emphasis added on that last bit to emphasize that this is what their sources in the White House are telling them.

“While everyone knows the age-old question ‘is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?’ recently, thousands have started asking, ‘if tomatoes are a fruit, is ketchup a smoothie?’ Today, the global leader in ketchup, HEINZ, teams up with the world’s largest smoothie brand, Smoothie King, to go all in and settle the debate. Introducing: The HEINZ Tomato Ketchup Smoothie, the first-ever ketchup-based smoothie, which blends real fruits with HEINZ Simply Tomato Ketchup to create a delicious and refreshing summer sip. Launching during peak tomato harvest season, when HEINZ tomatoes are the ripest, the limited-edition smoothie is now available exclusively at select Smoothie King locations nationwide, while supplies last,” says a press release from Smoothie King on what sure feels like a sign of a decline of human civilization both irreversible and steadily accelerating.

No, a silly novelty product from a mall food court smoothie chain made with “sweet Acai sorbet, crisp apple juice, juicy strawberries, and tart raspberries with the unmistakable taste of HEINZ Simply Ketchup” isn’t in and of itself on the level of a genetically engineered virus that turns the infected into mindless cannibals or a massive, unexpected meteor shower but the meteors are slowing down as they enter Earth’s atmosphere as if they have reverse thrusters. Plus they all appear to be the same size and shape. And heading toward major cities and strategic military sites.

It’s nothing like that. The ketchup smoothie’s more of a vibe than a flashing klaxon. A sign that something’s really, seriously off even if one can’t fully elucidate it. Those disturbed by this collab may find a modicum of solace in the new Reese’s x Oreo mashups, hitting stores this month.

In what’s quite possibly an idea that was brainstormed at her Wednesday night White House crisis meeting with other top-ranking Trump Regime officials on finding ways out of the Jeffrey Epstein clusterfuck, dipshit Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday announced the Justice Department was doubling its reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Rewards are a useful incentive for law enforcement when nobody actually knows where a fugitive from justice or, for the military, a terrorist leader is hiding. Surely plenty of people in Afghanistan and elsewhere got paid and very well to inform on there whereabouts of top Al-Qaeda assholes. With Maduro it’s more like there are probably at least a few thousand people in the CIA who could walk into Bondi’s office, slap some colorfully-annotated satellite images of government buildings in Caracas on her desk and say “Here he is, go arrest him. Now give me my $50 million, you blonde idiot.” Nobody here or in Venezuela has been fucking holding out for her to double the bounty.

Now maybe there actually is a number that would be enough to get some of Maduro’s top military guys to turn on him, tie a sack on his head, and fly him to Puerto Rico. That number is almost certainly not $50 million. It might not even be $500 million. If Bondi were really serious she’d be working on some backchanneling through the State Department and CIA and so on to start those conversations, not doing a stupid video announcement as if Dog the Bounty Hunter or some asshole who thinks he’s the Mandalorian will go hot on Maduro’s trail and then get immediately gunned down by his security guards outside whatever bunker the Venezuelan dictator sleeps in.

“Dallas ranch realtor” and GOP donor Asher Watkins caught the business end of a Cape Buffalo’s horn on Sunday during a hunt in South Africa’s Limpopo province, the Dallas Express reports.

“It is with deep sadness and heavy hearts that we confirm the tragic death of our client and friend Asher Watkins,” wrote Afrikaner game guide Hans Vermaak of Coenraad Vermaak Safaris in a statement confirming that the 53 year-old hunter had become the hunted. “This is a devastating incident, and our hearts go out to his family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time… This is a deeply traumatic incident for all involved. The family and our team members who were present at the time are understandably shaken.” Well yeah, it must’ve been pretty freaking gruesome to see.

The Express writes “Watkins was reportedly on a hunting safari in South Africa’s northern Limpopo Province on August 3, with a professional hunter and a tracker from the company. Then, an ‘unwounded’ buffalo he had been tracking turned in a ‘sudden and unprovoked attack’ and gave him injuries that proved fatal. He was tracking a 1.3-ton Cape Buffalo, sometimes known as the ‘Black Death’ for its dangerous reputation,” but it’s unclear if “The Black Death” refers to the species as whole or the specific individual Cape Buffalo, like a beast from a Rudyard Kipling story or the lions from the 1998 Val Kilmer classic The Ghost and the Darkness. That movie’s fucking awesome.

Also unclear is whether it was quick or if Watkins had a few painful Snows of Kilimanjaro-type hours.