“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 (October, November, and December), according to the second estimate released today by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 4.4 percent. The second report for the fourth quarter of 2025, originally scheduled for February 26, 2026, was rescheduled due to the October – November 2025 government shutdown. The contributors to the increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter were increases in consumer spending and investment.”

“These movements were partly offset by decreases in government spending and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased. Real GDP was revised down 0.7 percentage point from the advance estimate, reflecting downward revisions to exports, consumer spending, government spending, and investment. Imports decreased less than previously estimated,” says the revision report from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The Nancy Run Fire Company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on Thursday posted that at 11:25 am EDT they and other “Northampton County companies were notified to assist Lehigh County Sheriff’s Department with locating a male who fled from officers and entered the Lehigh River following a foot pursuit. Companies deployed divers and water rescue personnel to the scene to begin search operations for the individual. While the search was underway, Fire 14 was alerted to assist with establishing a rehab area for personnel operating on scene. Special Operations 1442 and Utility 1441 responded to Northampton Borough to assist with the incident and support operations.”

Then about six hours later the search for the unidentified warrant subject was called off and first responders departed the scene empty-handed, per WPVI, who do not spell out why in their very brief reporting. Thus it’s easy and fun to speculate that deputies concluded it’s not worth the hassle to arrest a waterlogged corpse snagged on a sunken branch at the bottom of a river when they can just wait a few weeks until the gases generated by natural decomposition provide the buoyancy necessary to float him up to the surface and downstream along the current’s eddies and flows.

Would be nice of the deputies to at least apologize in advance to whatever poor sap fishing for trout has his leisure time interrupted by the corpse’s unexpected arrival at his chosen angling spot. Then he’s stuck having to call police to report it, asked to sit on the hood of a squad car for 90 minutes so he can tell the same story three times, sign a sworn statement testifying to the discovery, and so on while the sun dips low and his downright lovely new Johnny Morris Platinum caster sits idle.

Sometimes the “Fat Hitler” in the headline, an unaffectionate nickname referring of course to you know who, might be fairly seen as kind of hyperbolic, overly dramatic, comically exaggerated, and so on because it’s not like he’s ordered a systemic genocide of 12 million innocent civilians.

Yet. Trump hasn’t done it yet. However Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler have far, far, far more in common than they don’t – including the fact that neither of their fathers were born in Germany.

Also their fathers never truly loved them. That’s a big one too. You can also add now amphetamine abuse psychosis-fueled delusions of total victory over belligerent nations as Axios reports the fat bastard told the leaders of the other G7 nations that Iran is “about to surrender” during a virtual meeting on Wednesday. He then immediately contradicted himself by boasting to the US allies that saince “nobody knows who is the leader, so there is no one that can announce surrender.”

“I got rid of a cancer that was threatening us all,” Trump told the other leaders on the call.

FAIR WARNING: President Trump signals the United States is “totally destroying” Iran "militarily" and "economically," claiming Iran’s navy and air force are “gone” and its missiles and drones are being “decimated.” pic.twitter.com/JNSN9UGdss

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 13, 2026

“At approximately 2 pm ET on March 12, a US KC-135 refueling aircraft went down in western Iraq. Four of six crew members on board the aircraft have been confirmed deceased as rescue efforts continue. The circumstances of the incident are under investigation. However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire. The identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified,” said a CENTCOM statement issued Friday.

The grand total of American service members killed for no reason at all this month now stands at 11.

Cops in Albuquerque, New Mexico are still trying to piece together what the hell happened to retired Air Force General William Neil McCasland after he was last seen leaving his home on foot the morning of February 27th, leaving behind his phone, smartwatch, and glasses, but reportedly taking a revolver with him into some not particularly vast or desolate wilderness crisscrossed by well-trafficked jogging, hiking, and biking trails that ring the state’s largest city, NewsNation reports.

McCasland, 68, retired in 2013 and there’s a lot of, um, chatter about certain aspects of his career, specifically alleged connections to military programs and installations linked to extraterrestrial encounters and technology. Put that together with the traceless disappearance in the one state that is to UFOs what Tennessee is to country music and Florida is to bath salts and you’ve got yourself a perfect recipe for a whole lot of good old fashioned just asking questions on the internet. The mystery would be just as vexing without all the maddeningly vague assertions of McCasland’s connections to UFO lore. And yet by far the most “what the fuck” aspect is wife Susan’s statement.

“Bill does not have any special knowledge about the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patterson, though at this point, with absolutely no sign of them, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed them up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported,” the possibly widowed woman said.

How come we’re not getting funny Jim Jordan in this interview?

“US Central Command is aware of the loss of a US KC-135 refueling aircraft. The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely. This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire. More information will be made available as the situation develops. We ask for continued patience to gather additional details and provide clarity for the families of service members,” says CENTCOM in a press release on Thursday.

Not having sampled the pieces of fried and sauced chicken flesh from Tennessee chain Wing Guru it’s impossible to speak to the quality of the product, however that founder Billy Richmond Jr was able to expand from one location opened in Memphis 2016 to three in the Volunteer State plus a fourth in Metro Atlanta is a fairly solid indicator of estimable talent at preparing the beloved staple.

One can easily imagine the love, care, and precision that Richmond puts into formulating new sauce combinations, tirelessly perfecting the balance of sweet, sour, spicy, umami, and so on again and again and again from shelves full of different ingredients until the sauce meets his exacting standards for quality – and that’s before BEFORE he even dips it in both bleu cheese and ranch. If neither dressing works then it’s back to the kitchen for more tasting, testing, and stirring.

For whom could claim the honorific of “guru” and truly own it without waking years given to study and practice? Surrender to the wing to become one with it. Then one’s aura becomes the sauce.

Such ramekins of wisdom sadly cannot be filled and dipped from when the subject turns to Richmond’s mastery of tax evasion. In fact he kind of fucking sucks at it, pleading no contest Thursday in a Memphis court to two counts of falsifying state tax revenue and one on theft of property greater than $250,000, per WREG. Other than that quarter million floor and Richmond posting on Facebook that he let things get out of hand from 2018 to 2022, there isn’t really much on the scope of his crimes. But one not need taste the failure to transcend the petty cumbrances of this plane to understand he’s no tax evasion guru. He’s an inertion. A brittle husk. A void of the art.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down only 740 points, which isn’t that bad then you think about it and, at 46,672 it’s only 3,328 points short of where Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Epstein files don’t matter anymore. Certainly much closer that than zero, libs.

AND at $96.18, oil isn’t at $100 a barrel yet! That’s below a major psychological mark!

“Where is the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, today? He should be dropping Interest Rates, IMMEDIATELY, not waiting for the next meeting!” posted the Greatest Economy President America has ever had, nobody knows the economy like he does so where the fuck is Jerome Powell and why isn’t he fixing all the damage he’s done to the stock market IMMEDIATELY?

Cops surrounded Temple Israel and its adjoining school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Thursday in response to a report of an unknown assailant(s) who crashed a car, exited the vehicle, and began firing a weapon, CNN reports. Very few further details were available, but either pray or curse or both because fuck this shit. Fuck this man-boy or man-boys, fuck him whether he’s a Muslim or a MAGA Nazi or a white leftist keffiyeh kid. May he be laid flat before he harms an innocent soul.

UPDATE 3/12/2026 2:45 PM EDT: The son of a bitch was laid flat and, aside from a security guard who was struck by the vehicle but reportedly not too seriously injured, the asshole’s demise came before he could harm an innocent soul. Explosives were found in the trunk of the vehicle.

I’ve been on the phone with some of the top America First Conservative leaders.

We are all in agreement.

The admin and Republican Party is going in the wrong direction on key issues, like the war, Epstein, and especially domestic issues, and has been completely hijacked by the…

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) March 12, 2026

“…and has been completely hijacked by the Lindsey Grahams, Mark Levin, and the neocon establishment Republicans we all voted against. The future of America belongs to us, the younger generations, not the boomers in charge and their boomer donors. I, and others, have been doing our part to call out the wrongs and fight back, and a large percentage of Americans agree. But I can’t impart on you all enough that the power to make change is on the outside. After 5 years of trying while in congress, I can tell you firsthand it’s completely broken and controlled. An entire generation of elected leaders, their donors, and controlling interests have to be removed. And it’s both sides.”

Could really go either way, right? Like it sounds as though she’s going to start a YouTube show where she and like-minded guests rail against the betrayals and every 15 minutes she encourages listeners to visit LibertyFirstArsenal.com and use promo code “MTG” to get 10 percent off an AR-15 with a vinyl US Constitution-pattern skin OR she’s warning of something akin to the 1934 “Business Plot” in which a cabal of oligarchs came MUCH closer than you think to recruiting an army of mercenaries to invade DC, decapitate the federal government, and install a right wing dictatorship.

Maybe both. Podcasts are a good springboard for violent insurrections. Plus she’d have the email addresses of all the fans who bought Constitution-skin AR-15s. Gotta sign them up somehow.

Markets reacted tepidly to the new Ayatollah’s inaugural address on Thursday as investors gave a thumbs down to the signals coming out of Tehran, with the Dow Jones down 570 points, the S&P 81 points, and the NASDAQ shedding 336 as of midday, CNBC reports on a total goose egg for traders.

Expectations for the Ayatollah to be responsive to regular Iranians afraid to look at how their 401Ks are doing weren’t particularly high but important bear market-moving news tends to give leaders the jitters no matter what, so it’s not clear what Tehran’s next play is. No meetings are scheduled between the Ayatollah and rock star CEOs like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang or OpenAI whiz Sam Altman just yet, though Tehran’s economic leadership team is still getting settled in. That’s when analysts should want to start recommending buys for stocks expected to grow under the new administration.

For now however, investors are in a holding-with-a-lot-of-selling pattern to see whether policymakers in Tehran will be fully in tune with the rhythm and pulse of Wall Street.

In a victory over the woke socialists who occupied several buildings at Columbia University buildings over the past few years, Israel’s military on Thursday dropped the charges against five troops who in July 2024 recorded themselves sexually abusing and sodomizing a male prisoner of war from Gaza who was detained at the Sde Teiman prison facility, the Associated Press reports.

Not sure what else to add here. Certainly do not want to reprint a description of the injuries the man suffered. The headline already did that job and it’d seem a little tone deaf to then try to bring it around to why Michigan Muslims trusted Trump over Kamala Harris to bring an end to such horrors.

Then again there’s only so much grim humor can do to help when it’s darker than pitch black.

.@SecretaryWright slams the Biden administration for abusing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices for a midterm election, lays out the Trump Administration's plan to take oil from the SPR, and replenish it responsibly, with even more oil than currently sits. pic.twitter.com/uryl81QILB

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 12, 2026

Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Thursday absolutely BLASTED former President Joe Biden for tapping into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve ahead of the 2022 Midterm elections, calling it a nakedly political play to ease voter frustrations over the price of gasoline amid disruptions caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special military operation to seize control of the clandestine bioweapons labs in Ukraine that Kremlin officials said posed a major threat to global security.

Wright then explained how Biden’s decision depleted the reserve and left the current Administration with fewer options for a legitimate exercise of policy needed to ease voter frustrations over the price of gasoline caused by US President Trump’s special military excursion to seize control of nuclear weapons labs in Iran that White House officials said posed a major threat to global security.

In conclusion, both the Biden and Trump Administrations have faced major energy policy challenges requiring a keen sense of political timing and messaging jiu-jitsu to divert voters’ anger away from the White House. Premium subscribers to the Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza podcast “Beltway Buds Bantering (Co-starring Coffee!!!🙂)” can get a full three hour breakdown of the similarities between the two respective situations and the bare-knuckle politics involved. Start your free trial today!

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage after this neutral, objective, and – most importantly – accessible analysis of the White House messaging playbook on Iran and gas prices.

New Ayatollah George W Khamenei, or whatever the hell his name is, addressed the Iranian people in a video statement on Thursday vowing to expand on the previous administration’s national energy policy of blowing up the energy supplies of importers relying on shipments passing too close to his property. Principally this means the Strait of Hormuz, a local waterway popular among the oil transportation boating community and instant geopolitical experts, will see fewer oil vessels and quite likely considerably fewer yachts full of attractive ladies in full-body hijab swimsuits playfully splashing in the hot tub while an Emir ignores them and throws $100s at American rapper Nelly.

Remember Nelly? No, no, not Nelly Furtado, just Nelly… “Midwest Swing”? “Sweat/Suit”?

He’s from St Louis… Anyway, according to CBS News Dubyatollah said “I assure everyone that we will not refrain from avenging the blood of your martyrs. The retaliation we have in mind is not limited only to the martyrdom of the great leader of the Revolution; rather, every member of the nation who is martyred by the enemy constitutes a separate case in the file of revenge,” the language kind of stilted and bureaucratic for what’s supposed to be a fiery declaration of holy war. Like just breaths away from saying “Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Comptroller Corps extremist accounts receivable department will be seeking interest and penalties on the unpaid invoice of blood spilled by the infidels. Quicken Enterprise Suite 2003 Government Adminstrative Edition-hu akbar!!!”

“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Thursday.