Scattered reports indicate the there will be another Republican presidential primary debate this week, held at an unknown location and time. The sale of participants is also unclear, though we should assume that, at minimum, heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley will be there, while fat former President Trump will not.

Montana Republican Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy, running in the 2024 primary against popular Dem incumbent Jon Tester, was caught on tape speaking to donors in August about privatizing the American healthcare system, Semafor reports on a big no-no these days as fat former President Trump has been handing Biden enough rope on the same issue with his Obamacare tantrums.

“Our hospitals have been built around federal healthcare subsidies. In my opinion we need to return healthcare to pure privatization,” Sheehy said in his rant that was also supposed to remain private. “I mean, healthcare worked before health insurance existed. Each town had a doctor that would drive to your house, take care of you and you’d pay him. And guess what? It worked. It worked when you actually paid a doctor for services provided. And then we started getting into this HMO, insurance, mega-conglomerate structure,” Sheehy continued, apparently pining for the days when people regularly suffered and died horribly from things like pneumonia and blood poisoning.

“The NRCC is launching a digital ad campaign featuring artificial intelligence-created images of national parks ‘overrun with illegal immigrants.’ The GOP messaging takes aim at a number of vulnerable House Democrats who voted against a Republican resolution last week that would bar federal agencies from using funds to house migrants,” Punchbowl News reported in their Monday AM newsletter which, the way they describe it, makes it sound as though the ad photorealistically and deceptively depicted said “illegal immigrants” overrunning the parks as if it were happening now.

Which sounds troubling – until you watch the ad itself. “Using AI in this manner – even in political ads – is a controversial tactic,” Punchbowl writes like it were some ultra-sophisticated deepfake and not this montage of mediocre painting-styled images of trashed, overcrowded campgrounds that you wouldn’t even know contained illegal immigrants if the introductory text didn’t say it.

All of this is just fucking bizarre. Stupid too. It really raises the question of whether Punchbowl’s staff even watched the 40-odd second ad before they wrote that description. They didn’t say one way or the other about the nature of the imagery, but “controversial” carries a heavy implication that it was meant to deceive beyond the moronic and cheap scaremongering about national parks being “overrun with illegal immigrants.” We’ve been ragging on Punchbowl lately for carrying the House GOP’s water with the “impeachment momentum” bullshit (and don’t worry, they made room for that this morning too) to the point where it feels like they’re just writing Elise Stefanik’s press releases, though this is on a whole different level in terms of simping to the MAGA party’s whims.

“Between 24 February 2022 and November 2023, official Russian MoD forces likely suffered between 180,000 and 240,000 personnel wounded and approximately 50,000 killed. Wagner Group mercenaries likely suffered approximately 40,000 wounded and 20,000 killed,” says Monday’s UK Ministry of Defence intel update on the war in Ukraine, adding “Therefore, overall, the Russian side has likely suffered around 220,000-280,000 wounded and approximately 70,000 killed.”

“Even amongst Russian officials there is likely a low level of understanding about total casualty figures because of a long-established culture of dishonest reporting within the military,” the analysts concluded. They didn’t get into what data they used to make this assessment. We’d also like to see them elaborate on what “wounded” means in terms of fighting capacity thereafter. It’s perfectly possible for a soldier to get shot, spend a few days in a field hospital, and then return to the front.

And then there are the guys who get their limbs blown off or shot in the spine and paralyzed and all sorts of other horrible shit and do not see action again, ever. Both would count as “wounded” in the broadest definition of the word, but only the latter is meaningful in the raw numbers.

“I know this is a hot take but I think the only person that can beat Suozzi since the Dems are misogynistic asses and won’t let Anna Kaplan be their nominee would be @MikeSapraicone! He’s a former cop. A business leader. And has the fundraising and infrastructure to go head to head with Suozzi and show the whole country NY-3 is a GOP stronghold.💪🏽 I fully endorse and support Mike on taking over the seat that was robbed from me and the people of NY-3 without due process! Let the race being [sic]” tweeted Republican now-former Long Island Congressman George Santos on Sunday, completely fucking over would-be successor Mike Sapraicone.

Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler on Saturday told his minions in an email that he’s not leaving after being accused of rape by a girlfriend he and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, had been in a three-way relationship with, the Associated Press reports.

“We have a country to save and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up,” Ziegler wrote, not addressing that he had told detectives in Sarasota that he had sex with the woman but claimed it was consensual on the night in question. “My family is rock solid. My wife is behind me 150 percent and we have methods in place to protect our (three) children, just as we have with all previous attacks that we have faced.”

Heels-wearing Florida Gov Ron DeSantis on Friday called on Ziegler – who hasn’t been charged with a crime yet – to pack it in after the accusation surfaced during an already shitty week for DeSantis.

“Crazy Liz Cheney, who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome at a level rarely seen before, writes in her boring new book that Keven McCarthy said he came to Mar-a-Lago after the RIGGED election because, ‘the former president was depressed and not eating.’ That statement is not true.”

“I was not depressed, I WAS ANGRY, and it was not that I was not eating, it was that I was eating too much. But that’s not why Keven McCarthy was there. He was at Mar-a-Lago to get my support, and to bring the Republican Party together – Only good intentions. Liz Cheney, on the other hand, went on to lose her seat in Congress by the largest margin for a sitting Congressperson in the history of the US. She then worked with others on the J6 Committee to delete and destroy the evidence and findings of the committee,” lies fat former President Trump on Truth Social.

As part of a long-running counterintelligence program, Manuel Rocha, a 73-year-old former US ambassador to Bolivia, was arrested in Miami on Friday and charged with being an unregistered agent for Cuba, the Associated Press reports, promoting Cuban interests without properly registering with the federal government. Y’know, like New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (who should resign).

But if you read the story at Fox News–which incidentally, is sourced from the very same AP story this National Zero story is–you’d think Rocha was the personal spy of Fidel Castro.  And you wouldn’t know he was a 25-year State Department employee, entering the diplomatic service during the Reagan Administration.  Nor would you know he left the federal government in 2002.

Texas homeowners will see homeowners insurance rates skyrocket 22% as the costs of climate change come home after the state saw more billion-dollar natural disasters last year than ever in its history, according to the Texas Tribune.  But that’s nothing compared to some of the increases in Florida, where one 24-unit condo saw its insurance cost increase more than 550%.

The Daytona Beach Shores condominium on the Atlantic Ocean had never made a claim on its insurance policy even though the complex had its seawall and pool damaged as it got hit by two hurricanes last year; its policy did not cover seawall damage or subsequent claims because those are exempt from Florida policies.  After questions arose about building inspections after the Surfside Condo collapse in 2021, some insurance companies backed out of the market for fear of inaccurate regulation enforcement.

Still, the Marbella Condo Association didn’t expect its annual $40,500 insurance bill to blast to more than $268,000, an increase of 563%, reports the Daytona Beach News-Journal.  Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed socializing some property claims by setting up a state-managed insurance fund after he made it harder to sue insurance companies to demand they cover claims.

A microcosm of a significantly larger problem in the state, colleges and universities in Florida are experiencing a significant increase in faculty turnover due to the ongoing campaign of hate and intolerance led by Republican Florida Governor and man in need of a stepladder Ron DeSantis, the New York Times reports.

Between DeSantis targeting academics, the LGBTQ community and non-white citizens with edicts banning the discussion of race, gender, sexuality and other topics in classrooms to protect the frail egos of conservative white (primarily) men; and various detrimental economic conditions plaguing the state like unaffordable housing and unaffordable insurance; and using children’s education as a political cudgel to set people against each other, the pool of potential replacements for those leaving academic positions is shallow, both in numbers and in academic reputation.

Professors are leaving highly-sought-after tenured positions because they believe they will either be targetted for their areas of academic expertise by conservative Karens looking to censor teaching subjects that they don’t like or because they are (or they support) LGBTQ or people of color who fear the oppressive regime in Tallahassee.

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer on Sunday told batshit idiot Maria Bartiromo that, because all of the House GOP “moderates” went home for Thanksgiving break and heard from constituents at Walmart about the Bidens, he now thinks he has the votes to formalize the impeachment inquiry that now former Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally declared was in effect two months ago.

We remain skeptical while allowing the possibility that forcing the issue and thus pressuring holdouts will get them to the 218 or 219 votes needed. Again though, it seems like they’re just talking a bunch of shit and hoping it all somehow works out. It’s not like anything’s changed in the last two months besides the Speaker. Everything else is the same, down to Mike Johnson making the same panicked desperation move to stave off the deranged MAGA shitheads that McCarthy did.

Fun fact: James Comer was one of the 105 House Republicans to vote yes on expelling George Santos on Friday, meaning he made his “job” of trying to impeach Biden more difficult.

The Pentagon on Sunday issued a statement saying the USS Carney as well as multiple commercial vessels in the Red Sea came under fire from an unspecified direction, the Associated Press reports.

“We’re aware of reports regarding attacks on the USS Carney and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and will provide information as it becomes available,” the statement said.

HBO Films has optioned the rights to develop a film adaptation of author Mark Chiusano’s recently published The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos to premiere on the network whenever they can bang it out, Deadline reports.

Of all the good television HBO puts out, their based on a true story movies are probably the most underrated product. Recount, Too Big To Fail, Paterno, and The Wizard of Lies are classics that didn’t get nearly as much fanfare as the big name series like Game of Thrones, The Leftovers, Succession, and others. Which is to say it’s hard to see them somehow fucking this up.

A not-too-subtle subtext of a New York Times piece (shared via gift article) on the petty political divide that threatened to tear apart a Colorado town portrays Fox “News”–and the network earned those quotation marks in 787.5 million ways–as the gas-throwers on a local ember of discord.

Silverton, a town of around 800 people that triples in size with tourists, was in the midst of a common problem in rural towns:  the influx of people moving there from “the outside” and making their personal marks on their new hometowns.  That, of course, leads to conflict with the long-standing residents regarding growth and the traditions that locals practice–like riding ATVs down the streets of the town, which only had one paved road.

After a local resident sent Fox “News” a video of a protest at a town council meeting showing residents definitely reciting the Pledge of Allegiance after the town mayor suspended saying it at council meetings because of death threats sent to one person who refrained from participating, Fox producers jumped at the chance to make the sleepy town the center of one of its fomented “culture wars,” sending a crew out there to hold a live shot in which local conservatives trashed the “carpetbagger” mayor, a Colorado native who had moved back to the state after attending college and working in New York.

Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy agreement, signed to protect the wealth of the Sackler family who have otherwise been shunned from society for enriching themselves as millions died due to addictions to opioids they marketed, will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, CBS News reports.

While rumors started here point to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito looking to loosen the reins on the billionaire family because they need new roofs on their multiple homes, the case focuses around the lawsuit of Ellen Isaacs, a mother whose son died of an Oxycontin overdose.  Isaacs has been running an international campaign to remove protections previously given to the Sackler family and to erase the Sackler name from prominent philanthropic mentions.

Isaacs does not feel the Sacklers have sufficiently compensated the families of those who died because the Sackler’s company knowing misrepresented the dangers of opioid addiction.  “It’s really important to me that these people get held accountable for all the people that they’ve murdered,” she told CBS News. “They’re criminals and they needed to be treated as such.”

Days after appointing her CEO, Republican Florida Governor and Danny DeVito stand-in Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down PAC fired its newly appointed leader, Kristin Davison, Saturday, the New York Times reports.  The Times reports Davison was not the only person fired, although the exact number is not known.

Davison took the position after former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt quit the job.  Laxalt quit just two days after DeSantis’s failing appearance in the Fox-hosted debate against Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom in which DeSantis looked completely outclassed in demeanor, knowledge and policy.  And Laxalt took over after Chris Jankowski quit at the PAC’s head just two weeks ago.  Davison will be replaced by long-time DeSantis friend and ally Scott Wagner, with the over/under on his time in office at three Scaramuccis.

“Scott Wagner will now serve as chairman of the board and interim C.E.O. of Never Back Down,” said Jess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for the PAC who apparently has not yet been fired. “Never Back Down has the most organized, advanced caucus operation of anyone in the 2024 primary field, and we look forward to continuing that great work to help elect Gov. DeSantis the next president of the United States.”

Addressing the important things for members of their Party, Texas Republicans removed language from a pro-Israel resolution that would ban its members from associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers, the Texas Tribune reports, because even Texas Republicans need friends.

By a 32-29 votes–so they almost grew a spine–the move knocks down a provision that would have barred Republican leaders and candidates from associating with people “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”  The measure was proposed because many state Party officials were concerned after self-proclaimed Hitler fan Nick Fuentes was photographed by reporters coming out of the offices of a key Republican campaign advisory firm.

“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it was a “regrettable day” when the chamber expelled lying grifter George Santos because it makes governing the chamber more difficult now that he’s down to just a three-vote majority, Politico reports.

“We allowed [House Republicans] to have a vote of conscience,” Johnson boasted in a Fox News interview, demonstrating that the leadership of the GOP–who uniformly voted to keep Santos in the House–have weaker consciences than its membership.  Per Forbes, Johnson also said that he believes he has enough votes to open up an impeachment probe of Joe Biden even though no GOP-led House committee has produced any information implicating Biden in any unethical or illegal scheme.

We’re joining late so we missed Trump saying he’s “waging an all out war on American democracy” so this is probably going to be a good one – in terms of embarrassing for his fanboys.