Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday somehow managed to lament the “nastiness” of politics but also defend his Orange Caesar for ripping into Michael Haley for being deployed to the Horn of Africa while his wife is campaigning, saying people mocked Melania Trump for ghosting on Donald while she was caring for her mother who was dying of cancer. Of course Rubio did not also mention any specific instance of Nikki Haley being on of the ones who mocked Melania for ghosting.

Rubio also told Jake Tapper he has “zero concern” over Trump saying he’d let Russia attack NATO allies and said the Border Patrol union is wrong to support a bill that would make their job easier.

Pakistan’s national election commission on Sunday declared that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) have won a clear lead with 97 out of 265 seats in the National Assembly to the 76 pulled in by the Pakistan Muslim League led by Khan’s enemy, other former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, with the Pakistan People’s Party’s 54-seat third place finish eyed by both as the prize for a coalition partner to hit a 134-seat majority, Al-Jazeera reports.

Everyone’s really happy with the results and there hasn’t been any civil unrest… NOT! Lol. The PTI have been calling for fans to hit the streets and protest the results they say the government tampered with in a number of races. At least six PTI candidates are appealing results. “The fact that internet was blocked on day of election showed how the state tried to tamper with the results. We believe that state institutions are fully involved in this and this is deplorable. They should respect the votes by the people,” said one PTI supporter in Lahore as he headed out to Stop the Steal.

Pakistani politics geek Zaigham Khan tells Al-Jazeera PTI fans are not entirely wrong to worry as the party will probably get frozen out despite the plurality. “The most likely scenario is a coalition government that includes all political parties – minus [Imran] Khan’s PTI,” said Zaigham Khan. “The second scenario, less likely but technically possible, is the PPP joining hands with the PTI and forming a government.” It’s not clear how many were killed on election day Thursday.

A sentence I never imagined I would ever write:  Ozzy Osbourne sent a cease-and-desist letter to former presidential candidate Kanye West after the anti-Semitic rapper sampled a live performance of Black Sabbath’s song “Iron Man” despite Osbourne having explicitly banned its use, the Variety reports.

“@kanyewest asked permission to sample a section of a 1983 live performance of ‘Iron Man’ from the US festival without vocals and was refused permission because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many,” the Prince of Darkness posted on social media.  Ozzy’s wife, Sharon, put it more succinctly, telling TMZ, “Kanye fucked with the wrong Jew this time.”

West held a party to debut tracks of his new album “Vultures” at Chicago’s United Center on Thursday night, including the “Iron Man” sample, and word of the Black Sabbath’s song use apparently got back to Ozzy and Sharon.

After Donald Trump mockingly commented on her husband’s absence from the campaign trail at a Saturday rally, former Republican South Carolina Governor and perpetual second place finisher Nikki Haley defended her spouse who’s on deployment with the Army National Guard and recalled Trump’s persistent insults to veterans and people serving in the military.

USA Today reports Trump mocked Michael Haley’s absence at a rally in Haley’s home state.  “She comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago – ‘sir, I will never run against you’ … She brought her husband,” Trump said.  “Where’s your husband? … Oh, he’s away … He’s away … What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband?! Where is he?! … He’s gone! He knew! He knew!”

“If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being president of the United States,” Haley said at a campaign stop in Gilbert, SC, in preparation for the February 24th primary.  Trump has a well-known history of mocking those who died in uniform, were injured or taken prisoner calling those who served “suckers” and “losers.”  Trump himself received a questionable medical deferment for a likely falsified diagnosis of bone spurs when he was drafted during the Vietnam War.

Fat former President Trump will take the stage in Klanston or Methville or whatever the town is called in South Carolina shortly, just minutes after posting a demand that Senate Republicans cut off aid to Israel, writing “FROM THIS POINT FORWARD, ARE YOU LISTENING US SENATE(?), NO MONEY IN THE FORM OF FOREIGN AID SHOULD BE GIVEN TO ANY COUNTRY UNLESS IT IS DONE AS A LOAN, NOT JUST A GIVEAWAY. IT CAN BE LOANED ON EXTRAORDINARILY GOOD TERMS, LIKE NO INTEREST AND AN UNLIMITED LIFE, BUT A LOAN NEVERTHELESS. THE DEAL SHOULD BE (CONTINGENT!) THAT THE US IS HELPING YOU, AS A NATION, BUT IF THE COUNTRY WE ARE HELPING EVER TURNS AGAINST US, OR STRIKES IT RICH SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE, THE LOAN WILL BE PAID OFF AND THE MONEY RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES. WE SHOULD NEVER GIVE MONEY ANYMORE WITHOUT THE HOPE OF A PAYBACK, OR WITHOUT ‘STRINGS’ ATTACHED. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SHOULD BE ‘STUPID’ NO LONGER!”

Republican Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, a 38-ish Marine veteran who just a year ago was being recruited to run against incumbent Dem Senator Tammy Baldwin before he turned it down, tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he will not seek reelection this year, just days after taking a ton of shit from MAGA for voting against impeaching DHS Secretary Alex Mayorkas.

By our count Gallagher is the 19th House Republican to fuck off from Congress – by either retiring outright, running for office back home, or in a Senate primary they have no realistic chance of winning – the exodus now clearly outpacing Democrats, 14 of whom are doing the same.

Hungary’s president is NOT Viktor Orban. He’s the Prime Minister. Just getting that out of the way first, as awesome as it would be to see that piece of shit go down. The asshole who resigned on Saturday is President Katalin Novak, a member of Orban’s party who was elected in 2022.

The Associated Press reports Novak announced she was calling it quits after a weeklong shitshow that started when it was revealed that she had pardoned the former deputy director of a state-run children’s home who had been convicted of covering the director’s abuses. The scumbag, convicted in 2018, already served his three-year bid so it’s not like it was a commutation, but that he had pressured the victims to retract their valid accusations against the director – who was sentenced to eight years in the clink – is definitely not the type of offender that should ever be pardoned.

So furious was the public outrage that Orban, without naming names, on Thursday called for a constitutional amendment barring presidential pardons for sex offenders or their abettors.

There’s been a lot of chatter in the media these days about how President Joe Biden is old and how he’s going to be 82 by the time he’s inaugurated if reelected and how his hair is really silvery-white and how he’s old, putting him at a clear disadvantage to his 77 year-old opponent former President Donald Trump in November. It’s time for Democrats, in the one chamber that they do control, to flex their legislative muscles and flip the script by passing a resolution declaring Biden is not old.

It’s such a no-brainer, even a politician should be able to figure it out. Have a Biden ally like Chris Coons draw up a resolution reading simply “Expressing the sense of the United States Senate that President Joseph R Biden Jr is not old and media reports suggesting otherwise are false. Resolved, that it is the sense of the United States Senate that President Joseph R Biden Jr is not old and media reports suggesting otherwise are false.” Just those two sentences would do wonders to turn the tide of public perception of an elderly doddering president vulnerable to defeat.

Even better, the entire mainstream media would be forced to collectively reckon with their repeated failures to put the situation in proper context of that, even if Joe Biden maybe misspeaks more often than other prominent politicians, it doesn’t come close to outweighing his steady leadership and impressive record of legislative accomplishments. The opportunity for Senate Democrats to make a bold move and put the media in the position of reacting is right in front of them, right now.

Throw a wrench in the news cycle. Tell them Biden is not old and then dare them to question it.

National Zero will resume our regular coverage now that we’ve given Senate Dems an awesome plan for how to shape perceptions by sheer legislative will, though we confess we kind of plagiarized it.

Matt Gaetz will “have a hard time being a member of Congress with staying out of jail, too,” former House Speaker and vengeful bitch Kevin McCarthy said according to the Washington Examiner, which also reported that McCarthy was at party in Nevada celebrating Donald Trump’s victory in a largely-uncontested state party caucus.

Gaetz led the charge to push McCarthy out of the Speakership after McCarthy dared to work with Democrats to pass a stopgap funding measure. Reportedly, Gaetz sought revenge against McCarthy for the House Ethics Committee reopening an investigation into allegations that Matt Gaetz is a pervert and creep who needs to pay for sex with underage girls.

“I think people see now how far Matt Gaetz will go and the fear he has of what’s in the ethics complaint,” McCarthy said.  “He’s trying to protect himself,” McCarthy said, “and that harms our caucus, that harms our majority,” adding “In the end, people will see why Gaetz would want to do that. And I think in the end, Gaetz would have a hard time being a member of Congress with staying out of jail too.”

“I have been attacked because what I want to do is secure out elections,” packaged shredded foam salesman Mike Lindell says from his home studio.  “This just happened one hour ago; I had to pull over here on the road.  Our merchant server just canceled the Lindell Recovery Network… So now, I get a call from them. ‘Yeah, we’e cancelling you.’  I said why.  He says, well, your website and stuff, they get attacked and we don’t want to be associated with your name and with Mike Lindell.”

Another example of a person who would have had a happy, peaceful life if not for falling into the MAGA Cult.  An addict himself, Lindell was making a sincere effort to help others impacted by drug dependence, but as with everything in Trump world, Lindell has become so toxic even his web hosts are dropping him.

Florida Republican Congressman and volunteer prom chaperone Matt Gaetz was detained briefly at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport this week after a TSA agent found a Taser in Gaetz’s carry-on baggage, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Gaetz told a reporter that the TSA agent who spotted the Taser in his bag joked with the accused child sex trafficker, giving him a terrorist fist bump and encouraging him to “secure the border.”  Calls to Gaetz office inquiring about whether he enjoyed employing the device in trysts with trafficked underage sex workers were unmade.

Tasers are legal to carry in Florida and Texas, but not in carry-on luggage on commercial aircraft.  How Gaetz, who flew into Texas, got the Taser is unknown, and how he got it to Texas is also unknown.

• Nothing exemplified House GOP incompetence more than the folly of the Mayorkas impeachment vote.  The craven opportunism to need to do it when a single Dem was supposed to be absent.  And the inability to literally count says a lot about MTG’s leadership of the effort.
• Prediction:  When the Dow hits 40,000, Biden’s job approval goes up five percentage points within two weeks.
• Republicans are having conniptions over an intentionally overly-descriptive account of Biden’s deposition relating to events over a 40-year period in a report written by a Republican Special Counsel, missing the big point of the report that there were no grounds to charge Biden.  But Donald Trump forgot what his first AND second wife looked like in a videotaped deposition for a (so-far) $85 million defamation lawsuit that sprung from Trump sexually assaulting a woman–a woman he continues to claim he never met although there are multiple photos of them together.
• The DC Circuit ruling on Trump’s non-immunity is comprehensive and compelling.  The only thing that would delay SCOTUS upholding the decision is if Kavanaugh’s lips get tired while reading it.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLIX”

Republican Ohio Senator JD Vance tells Fox “News”–and the network earned those quote marks in 787.5 million ways–host Jesse Watters that the difference in mental acuity between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is clear.

We believe he’s right, as the evidence shows. To illustrate, we include two clips from earlier that same day:  Biden noting that Republicans in Congress are blocking vital aid to Ukraine, which is needed to hold off the Russian invasion. Also earlier that day, Donald Trump baselessly claiming Democrats want to change the name of Pennsylvania.  So yes, the mental stability of each is clear.

After failing to approve funding for border security, Republicans in the House intend to bring a new vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday after an earlier effort failed because Republicans can’t count, NBC News reports.

The first effort failed when three conscience-following Republicans joined all Democrats to vote down the effort, which corrupt Republicans scheduled because they thought Texas Democrat Al Green would be absent due to surgery.  Green, however, left the hospital and was brought to the floor of the House, casting the vote that shot down the GOP performance art.

Because Republicans need to find a scapegoat for their incompetence, the House GOP will bring a new resolution to impeach Mayorkas to the floor next Tuesday, when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is supposed to return to work after cancer treatment.

Joel Greenberg, the corrupt Florida local government official, pimp, and friend of creepy Congressman Matt Gaetz, cooperated in the House Ethics Committee’s investigation in the allegation of child sex trafficking by the Florida Republican, the New York Times reports, turning over documentation to support accusations of child sex trafficking against Gaetz.

Greenberg’s lawyer confirmed to the Times that he turned over documents relating to Gaetz arranging to have sex with a girl he knew to be 17-years-old.  Greenberg is serving an 11-year sentence for a variety of offenses including human trafficking, a sentence that was reduced after he cooperated with federal investigators who ultimately chose not to prosecute Gaetz.

However, the House Ethics Committee opted to reopen its investigation into the Congressman’s conduct after the Justice Department closed its probe, and the burden of proof to spur Congressional action is lower than that needed for criminal prosecution.

In a video shot by passing motorist JoboRobinson on Twitter, the remains of a private jet that crashed onto an interstate highway in Florida remains engulfed in flames as the car it smashed into sits in the median. The Bombardier Challenger 600 jet traveling from Ohio to land in Naples came down on I-75 on its approach to the airport, killing two and injuring three.

In a breakthrough experiment, European scientists used 0.21 milligrams of fuel in a nuclear fusion reaction to generate enough clean energy to power an American home for more than a day–roughly equivalent to 0.001% of the amount of fossil fuel needed to produce the same amount of electricity, according to the Guardian.

Working at the Joint European Torus in England in December, scientists fused a fuel comprised of a pair of hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, at exceptionally high temperatures in a plasma stream, a reaction that creates helium and enormous amounts of energy much as nuclear fusion does in stars.  The test produced a 5-second burst of 69 megajoules of energy, the most produced by the facility; an average American home uses 50 megajoules of energy daily.

At an industrial scale, researchers believe a commercial nuclear fusion power plant could use one kilogram of the isotope fuel to produce as much energy as 10 million pounds of coal, natural gas or oil without releasing any greenhouse gases.  To further research, the 45-year-old JET facility will cease operations, with scientists moving to a site capable of safely containing higher energy experiments.

A preliminary magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck just off the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island at 10:05 AM HST Friday morning, just about 25 minutes ago at the time of this printing, per the US Geological Survey. There’s no tsunami danger, though apart from the magnitude higher than usual for the region, the quake is noteworthy because of its epicenter’s proximity to Kilauea, the angry volcano that’s been stirring again in recent weeks. Which means the fucker could mean business.

“I LOVE MONTANA! Tim Sheehy is an American Hero and highly successful Businessman from the Great State of Montana. He is strongly supported by our incredible Chairman of the NRSC, Steve Daines, and many other patriotic Senators and Republicans who have endorsed our Campaign to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! I also respect Matt Rosendale, and was very happy to Endorse him in the past – and will Endorse him again in the future should he decide to change course and run for his Congressional Seat. But in this instance, Tim is the candidate who is currently best-positioned to DEFEAT Lazy Jon Tester, and Regain the Republican Majority in the United States Senate.”

“Tim is a Political Outsider, Strong on the Border, the Military/Vets, and our constantly under siege Second Amendment. He will stand tall in the fight against the Radical Left Democrats, who are Destroying our Country. Also, he is far more likely to Defeat Lazy Jon. America First Patriot Tim Sheehy has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” posted fat former President Trump on Truth Social on Friday, maybe or maybe not ending the Montana Senate primary. He didn’t come close to trashing Rosendale in that post, so we would tend to think there’s still going to be a fight there.

North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Mike Whatley, heir apparent to take over the RNC after failed chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney departs later this month, has been busy cleaning up his social media history to make himself more MAGA-friendly, specifically by deleting a January 6, 2021 tweet that said “The actions of these violent protestors is completely unjustified and unacceptable. There is no rationale to excuse this assault on the foundations of our Democracy,” CNN reports.

Whatley can’t however delete video of an interview the next month where he said “I was a member of the Electoral College, and I proudly cast my vote for President Trump. But the Electoral college voted. And a majority was for Joe Biden and he is the President of the United States.”