The Lord of Ice Cream on Friday issued an edict for his subjects at McDonald’s to unfuck the now years-long issues depriving customers of sugar-laden frozen dairy products, Fox Business reports.

More specifically the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the US Copyright Office requesting them to carve out an exemption in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow McDonald’s franchisees to use a wifi enabled device to diagnose issues with their ice cream mixers rather than call and wait for a repair tech from the company to come. That fight between franchisees and corporate McD’s is already the subject of a $900 million lawsuit and why continue with the boring details when we can just say Biden is fighting for your right to a McFlurry.

The father of slain University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, murdered last month by a Venezuelan migrant, told NBC in an interview aired Monday that he’d “rather her not be such a political, how you say – it started a storm in our country… and it’s incited a lot of people.”

Jason Riley says he’s a Trump supporter, but it was his ex-wife and Laken’s stepfather who had her photo signed by the fat bastard at a MAGA rally in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district recently. Jason mentions border policy but also that he’s not sure if it would’ve made a difference for Laken.

Not sure what else to write as no one should be ascribing any intent to a parent plainly suffering immensely in grief the way Jason is here. Still hard not to feel like he’s holding back, that if he ends up on camera again that he might be more vocal against the MAGA demagoguery.

Fan favorite villain from the first season of the Trump Show Paul Manafort is rumored to be making a comeback on the cast as the Washington Post reports that the disgraced former president is looking to re-hire the Russian asset to help with his 2024 effort at the Milwaukee convention.

It’s not clear yet what kind of polling data he’s going to be passing along to powerful Russian oligarchs or how many tens of millions he owes them this time around but it’s a safe bet that Paulie Smallnuts will be working for free again since Big Don would never turn down not paying someone.

Fat former President Trump’s lawyers on Monday informed Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron that they can’t come up with the $464 million bond to appeal the judgment against his corrupt business empire, asking Engoron to consider that as a reason to stay the execution of the judgment.

“In deciding whether to enter a stay, the Court may consider ‘any relevant factor, including the presumptive merits of the appeal and any exigency or hardship confronting any party.” Here, Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility.’ These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers. A bond requirement of this enormous magnitude – effectively requiring cash reserves approaching $1 billion – is unprecedented for a private company. Even when it comes to publicly traded companies, courts routinely waive or reduce the bond amount.”

“Enforcing an impossible bond requirement as a condition of appeal would inflict manifest irreparable injury on Defendants, and ‘defeat or impair [this Court’s] appellate jurisdiction.’ By contrast, waiving the bond requirement will impose no cognizable harm on the Attorney General. The case involves no actual victims and no award of restitution, and she is fully protected by Defendants’ real-estate holdings. This factor alone warrants a stay,” the lawyers wrote and lol he’s so fucked.

On Monday the US Supreme Court will hear arguments between the Biden Administration and a right wing cabal led by fake news site the Gateway Pundit over whether the federal government can communicate with social media companies about content moderation decisions. It would seem like a no brainer that the Justice Department could suggest to Facebook and YouTube that they block links on how to build a suicide bomb vest using shit you can buy at Home Depot, but here we are with this stupid case spurred by COVID vaccine disinformation and fucking Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The writing should’ve been on the wall for “Cowboys for Trump” asshole and former Otero County, New Mexico commissioner Couy Griffin when the Supreme Court specifically wrote that only Congress can bar federal officials from the ballot when deciding in favor of Griffin’s Orange Allah a few weeks ago, but on Monday the justices made it official by denying certiorari to Griffin’s case against the state Supreme Court for denying his challenge to the September 2022 determination that he engaged in insurrection on January 6th and removing him from office.

Voters in Wisconsin next month will be asked to vote up or down on a state constitutional amendment banning private funding for county clerks, a ballot measure cooked up by Republicans still butthurt that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated approximately $10 million to boost election administration in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Associated Press reports.

Republicans are particularly sore that the bulk of the money – $8.8 million – went to Wisconsin’s five largest cities, as in the ones that actually applied for the grants. Still left unsaid by the MAGA clowns in this now three years long meltdown over “Zuckerbucks” is how the fuck is it a problem if other public institutions regularly accept donations from private entities. People and businesses donate to schools, fire departments, police departments, parks, libraries, museums, and all sorts of other taxpayer-owned bureaus and facilities all the time. Why the fuck can’t county clerks accept money to boost capacity when they need it? More importantly why aren’t right wing billionaires stepping up to help redder precincts? Yeah that was rhetorical. We know why they aren’t trying to even the field.

Joe Biden’s new ‘boat anchor’ shoes meant for maximum ‘stability’ as president’s falls spark concern https://t.co/dPx2a7URNL pic.twitter.com/ZTdiSf278W

— New York Post (@nypost) March 18, 2024

The New York Post on Monday began a news cycle about President Joe Biden’s choice of footwear, one worth at least a few hours’ worth of televised segments and online articles at sister publication Fox News and a number of downstream right wing news outlets. The coverage will feature a great deal of speculation about the nature of the shoes/sneakers and, if they’re a brand commonly associated with senior citizens, will be heralded as another sign of his physical decline. Much of this news cycle’s ultimate longevity and the “concerns” hinges on that point.

“The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH, even though they fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry. The United Auto Workers, but not their leadership, fully understand what I mean. With the Electric Car Mandate being pushed by Biden, there soon won’t be any cars made in the USA – UNLESS I’M ELECTED PRESIDENT, IN WHICH CASE AUTO MANUFACTURING WILL THRIVE LIKE NEVER BEFORE!!!” posted fat former President Trump after nearly two days of silence on the matter.

What this whole “controversy” misses is that if you actually want to take the orange degenerate at his word that this was about actual policy then imagine what an 100 percent tariff on foreign auto components would do to the economy. Either way it’s actually pretty damaging for him and his fanboys to be doubling down on the “context” and thereby Streisand Effecting the policy part.

“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with. President Trump appointed strong Constitutionalist federal judges and Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and sent the decision back to the states, which others have tried to do for over 50 years. Joe Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress is on the record supporting radical on-demand abortion up until the moment of birth, and after birth, as well as using American tax dollars to fund the killing of the most vulnerable,” said Trump campaign spokesmoron Caroline Leavitt in a statement on February 16, responding to a “Fake News New York Times” report that Donald had settled on a 16 week national abortion ban as his policy proposal.

On Sunday one of the reporters on the byline, Jonathan Swan, tweeted that Trump had “effectively confirmed” that reporting when he did nothing to deny it when asked by Fox News’s Howard Kurtz.

“Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said that he will complain to the US authorities about insufficient security for the diplomatic mission during the Russian presidential elections. ‘On Monday we will send a corresponding note and, if necessary, we will express the most severe protest regarding the issue of ensuring the security of the Russian embassy,’ Antonov told reporters. As Antonov said, ‘The Secret Service allowed traitors to block the entrance to the Russian embassy and interfere with Russian citizens,'” says a Monday press release from Kremlin state media outlet RIA Novosti, translated by Google from those weird letters Russians use.

Also weird is how they didn’t add anything like “Our election was totally free and fair. President Putin won a free and fair election over his opponents and it’s insulting that anyone would question it.”

A new Politico/Ipsos survey finds 36 percent of independent voters saying they would be less likely to vote for disgraced former President Trump in the likely event he is convicted at trial in Manhattan for paying $130,000 to pornstar Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election to stay quiet about a roughly 45 second sexual encounter that had occurred a decade earlier.

Another 9 percent said they’d be more likely to support him, but that’s not like a net 25 percent because there’s zero chance those fuckers weren’t just going to vote for him anyway. Similarly 9 percent of Republicans said “less likely” though again you can probably assume that they’re either lying to themselves or the pollsters or they’re “RINOs” who weren’t going to vote for him anyway, just as you could say the opposite about the 34 percent of GOP voters who said “more likely.”

However to make those assumptions one would also need to take the whole thing seriously and we kind of don’t, as much as we want to welcome anything and everything that ends up eating into the fat fuck’s support. We can’t speak to the possibility of Trump being sentenced to prison for it or that he would somehow end up getting incarcerated before November other than to say it’s extremely remote. Even before that what the hell does this say about voters that they need a jury to conclude what’s already been known for years about the Orange Slob and his election interference?

Why would this suddenly be a game-changer but not January 6th and the goddamned COVID pandemic and the Dobbs decision and all the other plagues the Pharaoh hath wrought? Why should we think anything other than that these respondents are not serious voters and simply won’t turn out either way, irrespective of what 12 New Yorkers decide in two months or so?

“The Hill gets ratioed as they post a dumbass, misleading headline”

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 18, 2024

MAGA Twitter users on Sunday absolutely ratioed the shit out of a tweet linked to The Hill’s article about fat former President Trump’s promises of a “bloodbath” if he does not win the 2024 election, with the more than 10-to-1 reply-to-like ratio. It’s a stinging defeat for the DC-based news outlet unseen since some low budget news blog picked up the news of the Orange Slob posting a bizarre rant warning Taylor Swift not to endorse Joe Biden 53 minutes before The Hill did.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the wiener who endorsed fat former President Trump after Trump undorsed him for Speaker of The House, tells Axios that Joe Biden should never again be invited to give a State of The Union in the chamber should he be reelected in November because the last one was too “divisive” and “hyper-partisan” for him. “That was about the most divisive State of the Union – I wouldn’t extend him an invitation next year, if that’s what we’re going to get,” said Emmer.

“He’s not going to be there next year – it’ll be a different president. But I think you’ve got to rethink issuing invitations for a State of the Union if it’s not going to be a State of the Union, and that was not. That was a campaign speech,” Emmer continued bitching to the news outlet.

After the forces of the United States and South Korean military held joint exercises on the peninsula and offshore, petulant Trump pen pal Kim Jong-un ordered his military to fire some short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, NBC News reports.  US and South Korean forces conducted 48 joint field operations, more than twice as last year, as well as computer command post simulation as well, which the North Korea-state media claimed was preparation for the imminent invasion of the North by the capitalist pigs of the United States and the puppet government of the South.  In retaliation, the North Korean military fired a formidable… um… three short-range missiles into the sea.

When Vladimir Putin says, “Believe me or not,” you truly have but one option.  So when Putin ends his tale that in the days before Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died in a Siberia prison, his officials started to pursue a prisoner swap with Western government for Russians they were holding, you gotta believe him, right?

According to NBC News, Putin noted in a brief press appearance as he celebrated his fourth re-election as Russian President, that “several days before Mr. Navalny perished, I was told by some of my colleagues … that there is an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people in prison in Western countries,” adding, “Believe me or not, the person talking to me hardly finished their sentence when I said: ‘I agree.’ But unfortunately, the thing that happened happened.

PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! PEAK BLOOM! Did we say PEAK BLOOM?!
The blossoms are opening & putting on a splendid spring spectacle. See you soon.
🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸! https://t.co/h04Gu0ksc1 #CherryBlossom #BloomWatch #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/ElYKjPB3UH

— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) March 17, 2024

The cherry blossom trees along the Tidal Basin and the National Mall in Washington, DC are hitting peak bloom, three days before the Cherry Blossom Festival is supposed to begin and nearly two weeks before the expected date of bloom peak.  This marks the second earliest peak bloom recorded since 1921:  In 1990, blossoms peaked on March 15th.

With the region staying above freezing temperatures since February 26th, the blossoms started their emergence early again, continuing a long-term trend that shifted expected peaks from early April to late March, according to data collected by the EPA.  Besides ruining the Cherry Blossom Festival, which will run from March 20th to April 14th, early and unexpected blooms will take an economic toll on local businesses as tourists will cancel sightseeing trips.   Well done, climate change!

Feels like it’s been a while since the right wing propaganda industrial complex freaked the fuck out so uniformly (with one minor exception right below) over some shit that came out of their dear leader’s mouth. Funny how the actual policy stuff – abortion, tariffs, etc – that he spews out doesn’t ever seem to worry the vox populi of the MAGA web as much as this “bloodbath” comment did:

“I watched a clip of the comments in question, and I don’t think Trump was ‘looking for’ anything. He was speaking spontaneously, talking about Chinese inroads into the auto industry and about China building plants in Mexico, and – as he often does – he used a flamboyant term – ‘bloodbath’ – to describe chaos in the auto industry and the economy in general if Biden wins in November. He was not threatening violence, he was not shouting and angry like Biden, and he was not bathed in menacing red light” – The current top comment on the PJ Media article titled “Trump Warns of a ‘Bloodbath’ if He’s Not Elected. The Reaction Is Exactly What Trump Was Looking For.” The PJ Media writer, Rick Moran, seems to have kind of zigged when he was supposed to zag in when he wrote glowingly that “Donald Trump pulled his ‘Charlie Brown and Lucy Disappearing Football Trick’ at a rally in Ohio on Saturday. And like Charlie Brown, Joe Biden and the media fell for it again.”

“And remember, they convinced half of the electorate that it was Sarah Palin and not Tina Fey that said, ‘I can see Russia from my house'” – Top comment on an Instapundit post about the headlines.

“There is no bottom to how low the Democrats will go to win in November. This is mild compared to what is to come from them” – Top comment on Red State’s article, titled “They Have No Conscience: Pelosi Spreads New Hoax Against Trump.” Lol at the headline and inshallah to the commenter.

“Unfortunately, way too many Americans STILL take what the media puts out, as gospel” – The top comment on the Right Scoop’s article. Nailed it. News consumers have to be more skeptical these days… unless it’s from any one of the outlets linked in this article. They’re not “the media,” lol.

“But they have no problem with Biden threatening to use F 16s against American citizens, more than once… Their faux outrage is hilarious” – Top comment on Gateway Pundit’s article. No idea what the fuck this moron is talking about with using F-16 fighter jets on Americans. It’s not like any of the replies expressed any skepticism or even a “Huh, I never heard about that. Where’d you read it?”

Russian President Vladimir Putin was reelected to an historic fifth term on Sunday, another triumph over the opposition in the world’s geographically largest country and a defeat for western critics who have alleged Putin ordered an illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and incarcerated scandal-tarred liberal activist Alexei Navalny, who mysteriously died in prison last month.

The win further extends a remarkable period of political stability for Russia not seen since 1921 through 1989, when it was governed as a society with guaranteed equality and people’s basic needs were mostly provided for through government subsidies. It was during this time when Putin began his career in politics by working for an important government foreign policy agency and was tasked with helping to prevent a resurgence of Nazi ideology in eastern Germany. From there Putin rose through the ranks and through a combination of what some observers have called “savvy” and “genius” he consolidated his power over the post-Soviet Russian state to become its leader.

Putin’s agenda next term calls for increases in military spending and recruitment, securing the border with Ukraine, and stirring up a sense of patriotism and duty among average Russians.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve objectively reported on President Vladimir Putin’s popularity as reflected by his huge margins in the 2024 election.

After his usual bullshit rant about the 2020 election being stolen, fat former President Trump told Fox News media reporter Howie Kurtz that the network “may want to cut that one out.” Kurtz instead interrupted the broadcast of the pre-taped interview with a disclaimer saying “there is no independent evidence of widespread fraud.” Trump did not mention Dominion or Smartmatic specifically but we guess the top right wing propaganda network feels better safe than sorry on this.

On that note, it’s worth asking if Mark Zuckerberg and/or Facebook might have an actual malice claim against the fat fuck for his rants about them, which again surfaced in this interview, as did Trump defending his 2022 call to “terminate” the constitution so he could be reinstated, and repeated that deranged story about Obama and Biden “spying” on his 2016 campaign. The Orange God Emperor also said nothing to walk back on his threats to defund Medicare and Social Security or “moderate” on abortion. All of it after a lot of shit about Ukraine and Putin.