Spotted in the audience sitting in the audience behind FBI Director Chris Wray in the Wednesday House Judiciary Committee hearing is Republican operative Ivan Raiklin who CNN described last year as a former US Army soldier and Mike Flynn acolyte who on December 22, 2020 tweeted a memo titled “Operation Pence Card,” the plan to push then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block the certification of the 2020 election which Trump retweeted the next day.

Raiklin apparently thinks he’s there to arrest Wray and has repeatedly tweeted at Jim Jordan begging to be “deputized” to help apprehend the FBI Director. Here’s hoping the bald weirdo makes a scene and screams at Jordan for not attempting to handcuff Wray and hold him hostage.

The Georgia State Election Board on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against MAGA douchebags Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips of “True the Vote” over their refusal to comply with a subpoena for any evidence whatsoever that would back up the batshit stupid 2020 election “ballot trafficking” conspiracy theory to rig it for Joe Biden presented in “2000 Mules,” their lame 2022 “documentary” produced with Dinesh D’Souza, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Engelbrecht, Phillips, and D’Souza’s movie used one surveillance clip of a ballot drop box and cell phone tracking data from the Atlanta area from the five weeks prior to the 2020 election that Phillips spent $2 million to acquire from brokers to support a really stupid and convoluted story that the “mules” were paid $10 to “traffic” ballots to drop boxes in violation of state law. They never alleged any tampering of the votes themselves, just that they should somehow have been disqualified because someone else dropped them off. The one “mule” D’Souza “caught” on camera was found by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to have been lawfully dropping off ballots for his family members and is currently suing the three jerkoffs for defamation on a federal court.

Now the Board wants its crack at Engelbrecht and Phillips too (but to D’Souza for whatever reason), suing because the MAGA freaks are impeding their mandate to investigate any and all allegations of voter and election fraud in the Peach State. Funny that how the people who made a “movie” that was supposed to get authorities to act to take down a horrific atrocity against democracy suddenly don’t want to help out when said authorities ask them for more information.

Stephen A Smith expresses no sympathy for Larry Nassar after stabbing: 'Death is too good for him' https://t.co/9zl92rJqXF

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 12, 2023

Weird how Fox News, by the very act of picking this story up, implicitly criticizes a perfectly normal reaction to Larry Nassar getting stabbed in prison when their own sister publication the New York Post notoriously mocked former Subway spokesman and similarly sick sexual abuser Jared Fogle facing violence at the hands of other inmates with the headline “ENJOY A FOOTLONG IN JAIL.”

Now it’s likely, maybe even probable, that it wasn’t really their intent to “rebuke” Smith – a guy who’s otherwise an obnoxious self-cocksucker – and sometimes it takes another set of eyes to anticipate that this kind of tedious filler content, making a story out of this assclown’s anodyne comments, might be perceived by some non-regular Fox audience members to be exactly what we characterized it as being in the headline. As if having “no sympathy” for a prolific child sexual abuser getting stabbed is indicative of a character flaw in an almost universally disliked sportscaster.

Hateful little man Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday told a far right Wisconsin podcaster he would never accept an offer to become disgraced former President Trump’s running mate because, “he’s not a number 2 guy,” NBC News reports, without noting that there’s no way Trump would ever actually offer it to him after months of constant shitposting between the two sides.

Wanted Capitol rioter Taylor Taranto had streamed from outside at least two elementary schools in Washington, DC last month prior to his arrest near former President Obama’s home in the Kalorama neighborhood, federal prosecutors wrote in a filing ahead of a detention hearing for the scumbag, making it pretty clear the MAGA terrorist had likely contemplated slaughtering children.

“The government’s detention memo discusses a video, posted on June 18, 2023, entitled ‘Piney Branch Elementary School J6th presentation (NOT for kids!)’ Investigators have been in contact with Public Facilities for Piney Branch School and have learned that Montgomery County issued a permit to a group called ‘Make America Safe Again’ for the use of Piney Branch School on June 18, 2023. After learning of the actions taken by that group inside of the school, Montgomery County learned that this group was in direct violation of the use agreement and has since suspended the group’s access to Montgomery County facilities,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Continued: “The government received additional information related to the defendant filming at another elementary school in Washington DC, which has now been identified as Payne Elementary. Review of the video clips shows that the defendant was filming children outside of the school who were participating in an evacuation drill. In the video, the defendant states the children are being evacuated because there is a ‘violent white supremacist out somewhere.'”

CBS’s Scott MacFarlane reports that federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they still don’t have charges ready yet for Taranto’s threats and, as he’s only been hit with misdemeanor counts for the Capitol riot, he could (in theory) be released on his own recognizance after the hearing. But yeah, that’s extremely unlikely to happen given the circumstances of the larger case against him.

UPDATE 7/12/2023: DC federal Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Taranto detained pending new federal firearms charges, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, while also noting that Taranto’s lawyers told Faruqui their client was assaulted by other January 6th inmates on Tuesday and had to be placed in protective custody by corrections staff at the “DC Gulag.”

On Tuesday FBI Director Chris Wray will face an unprecedented, totally unfair witch hunt from Stalinist loser Jim Jordan and his minions on the House Judiciary Committee about the deranged HOAX story about election interference in investigating Crooked Donald Trump. This kangaroo court has never happened before in the history of our country. It’s an attack on America, really.

Oh no! Oh my God this isn’t happening! No, j-j-just wait maybe there’s like some sort of secret inflation code or something that Biden used to cheat that can be exposed and and and tell the American people that they’re still being destroyed by his regime. This 3 percent increase year-over-year last month and only fucking 0.2 percent monthly CNBC reports on has to be a mistake.

It’s just not real. This is too important to allow Soros to manipulate it. Consumers are being lied to. They know this economy is a disaster and Biden hates them. They can’t be fooled by these fake numbers. They’re fake. This isn’t real. It isn’t happening. WHAT THE FUCK how is the Dow now up over 200 points? Investors are supposed to be smarter than this. No, just no. This isn’t fair.

National Zero will resume our regular coverage now that we’ve provided this balanced reaction to super-important economic news for our MAGA readers. We hope we properly captured their vibe.

“Go on, Congressman Greg Murphy! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell me about how them Biden boys is gonna get it when the whisteblows so loud every hound in the land gonna come runnin and barkin real loud at them and scarin them into takin a freight train outta here” bellowed imbecilic bindle stiff Maria Bartiromo.

Greg is used to her following him around even if she ain’t worth a damn, he still likes her. “We’re gonna have a cow, and some pigs, and we’re gonna have, maybe, maybe, a chicken. And it’s very reminiscent of what happened in the very early stages of Watergate, where there was one coverup over another coverup over another coverup. It’s gonna blow up. It’s gonna blow up at some point sooner or later,” Murphy said, consoling the distressed lunk he cares for so deeply.

Talk about embarrassing! Rajan Vasisht, who served as an aide to far right Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas between July 2019 and July 2021, must’ve felt really silly when some reporters from the Guardian found his public Venmo transaction page and asked him why lawyers such as Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action was unconstitutional, former West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin who argued in favor of this term’s ruling restricting the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gasses, and others with business before the court had sent Vasisht payments labeled “Thomas Christmas Party,” “CT Christmas Party,” or “CT Xmas party” for undisclosed amounts in November and December of 2019.

Vasisht’s face must’ve been redder than Rudolph’s nose after those sneaky little reporter elves found his naughty list! So red he made the Venmo profile private without commenting to them.

Right wing Emperor Rupert Murdoch has been ruminating furiously over the failures of his trainee Ron DeSantis to swiftly conquer the MAGA galaxy from the grips of deranged rival Donald Trump and now seeks a new apprentice in promising acolyte Glenn Youngkin, the New York Times reports.

“Mr Murdoch has privately told people that he would still like to see Gov Glenn Youngkin of Virginia enter the race, according to a person with knowledge of the remarks,” the Times writes, making it clear DeSantis is no longer a New Hope to see last remnants of the Old Republic swept away.

Lawyers for mother-daughter 2020 election worker duo Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss on Tuesday moved for “severe sanctions” in their federal defamation lawsuit against drunken shitbrain Rudy Giuliani over his false accusations that the two were actors in a vast plot to steal the win from disgraced former President Trump, arguing that the alcoholic former New York City mayor failed to produce key evidence for discovery in the case and “effectively conceded that he has not taken even the most basic steps to preserve evidence that might be relevant to this litigation.”

Among them is a December 7th, 2020 text thread surfaced by the House January 6th Committee in which Trump legal scumbag Boris Epshteyn wrote “Team – Urgent POTUS request need best examples of ‘election fraud’ that we’ve alleged that’s super easy to explain. Doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, but does need to be easy to understand Is there any sort of ‘greatest hits’ clearinghouse that anyone has for best example?” to which Rudy responded “The security camera in Atlanta alone captures theft of a minimum of 30,000 votes which alone would change result in Georgia Remember it will live in history as the theft of a state if it is not corrected by State Legislature.” Naturally the dumbass did not hand this over to Freeman and Moss’s lawyers, even though he had plenty of chances to do so after it was made public in the committee’s reporting.

Senator Joe Manchin is headed to New Hampshire to headline the stupid “No Labels” sandbagger event next week, the Daily Mail reports on the “third party” effort to get Trump reelected.

Geologists believe that we’ve entered a period marked by the dominance of humankind on the planet, which they’ve dubbed the Anthropocene Epoch, and they’ve chosen the one spot on Earth that characterizes the time, CNN reports.

The 25 geologists on the Anthropocene Working Group chose Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada as the location that reflects the impact of humans on the planet’s geology because the composition of the sediment of the six-acre lake, nearly 80 feet deep, best marks the beginning of the era, which the AWG previously determined started in 1950.  Crawford Lake was chosen after a number of rounds of voting starting with nine locations, culled down from a list of a dozen.

The start of the epoch is not without controversy in the geological movement.  Many within the discipline feel the start of the epoch was earlier; others say they can’t be certain it’s started yet because geological time is really long.

From voter access advocate Mark Elias:  Tufts University political science professor Eitan Hersh ran a test using data from Texas and running it through the verification steps required for compliance with the state’s new SB1 voter suppression law, finding that even when voters filled out all paperwork correctly and submitted them properly, the system would immediately reject nearly 25% of all mail ballot requests statewide.

Hersh took data required to match across two different state systems:  one from the voter registration database; the other from identification databases for personal IDs and driver’s licenses in the state’s Department of Public Safety.  Under SB1, information from the two databases must match up to verify the voter’s various identification numbers:  Social Security Number, driver’s license, or other available information.

Hersh found that even when voters filled out all the forms correctly, because of errors and inconsistencies across the various systems and databases, 2.6 million ballot forms would have been rejected.  For comparison, in the 2020 presidential election, 11 million ballots were cast in Texas, with 1.2 million mail ballot requests received around the state.

Tuesday was the end of the tale of one of our “favorite” Capitol rioters as DC federal Judge Carl Nichols sentenced North Carolina MAGA asshole Matthew Beddingfield to 38 months in the big house for a single felony count of assaulting officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon during the insurrection – while he was out on bond for attempted murder, NBC News reports.

In 2019 at age 17, Beddingfield was charged with attempted murder after shooting another teenager in the head in Walmart parking lot during a dispute over an unspecified matter which we would feel comfortable betting was drugs because what the hell else would they be doing in a Walmart parking lot. The other teen apparently survived and it was probably a graze wound given that Beddingfield’s bond, initially set at $1 million, was bumped down to $100,000, and he was allowed to plead down to an unspecified lesser charge in August 2021. This of course was seven months after the MAGA insurrection, at which Beddingfield was caught on video outside the Capitol assaulting police, and then identified by Huffington Post reporters just three months later. For whatever reason this never came to the attention of the court in North Carolina prior to Beddingfield’s conviction for which he was only sentenced to probation. It took until February 2022 for the FBI to catch up to him.

Beddingfield laid low enough under pretrial conditions this time, except for that one Saturday night outing at Buffalo Wild Wings with his mom back last May. He won’t have her company in prison, but he’ll probably have better food at least. Pruno’s going to be pricier than the Miller Lite though.

Biden just came out against merit-based promotions in the military, preferring to continue using race as a factor.

China and Russia aren’t using DEI to choose their military leaders.

I’m sure they’re very glad we are.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 12, 2023

Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s “little bitch” Lauren Boebert doen’t understand that promotion to leadership in the Russian Navy is based on your loyalty to Putin over everything, or that China is a virtually-monoethnic society (92% Han) where outsiders are shunned from leadership roles and highly repressed.

And she will be boiling mad that the faulty recent Supreme Court ruling striking down racial considerations in college admissions specifically exempted the US military academies in order to ensure diversity in military leadership.  She’s going to be pissed and confused.  Or just confused.

Yeah the headline was clickbaity. When asked by Kaitlan Collins why he didn’t come out “in mid December and publicly” concede the election, Pence’s answer was to mumble some shit about “respecting the process” before essentially admitting that he waited until the very last possible moment, when he was put on the spot by Trump to try to force an overturn of the election during the electoral college vote count, to say enough with the “Stop the Steal” bullshit, and not a second earlier. Then he told Collins he was excited because a woman in Iowa said she would consider voting for him after they spoke at a town hall about what happened on January 6th.

The Studio 8 Hair Lab in Traverse City, Michigan posted on Facebook this week it would no longer serve members of the LGBTQ community, citing assumed “free speech” rights supported by a recent Supreme Court ruling that doesn’t actually say what they think it says, according to the Detroit News.

If a human identifies as anything other than a man/woman please seek services at a local pet groomer.  You are not welcome at this salon. Period.

Should you request to have a particular pronoun used please note we may simply refer to you as “hey you”. Regardless of MI HB 4744. 💋 my ASS Governor Witchmere 😜

This is America; free speech. This small business has the right to refuse services. We are not bound to any oaths as realtors are regarding discrimination. My recent airport experience validates this.

Not happy about coming off as a complete bigot, the owner of the salon removed the post but replaced it with one where she complained about a bad review and then showed her less bigoted side:  “The review was left in response to a Fakebook post where | stated that this salon is not LGTBQ+ friendly. LGB are more than welcome however the rest of it is not something/support.”  Both posts have been removed.

Faced with fawning English import who’s taking the job from an ‘Murican-born conservative propagandist whitewashed history of Donald Trump’s record, GOP presidential candidate and guy from Jersey Chris Christie did not hold back.  And this is a response that should be memorized and cut-and-pasted whenever a MAGAt says Trump ruled in foreign affairs–not the kind with Czech models, I mean:

Look, I don’t think that by calling Kim Jong-un “a great guy” he stopped him from developing missile technology that now allows those missiles to get to the United States.  That happened on Donald Trump’s watch.  And Putin continued to build up his military and build forces onto the border, and he doesn’t answer for that either.  And he doesn’t answer for holding back military aid from Ukraine to try to get dirt on Joe Biden.  All those things are not things that send confidence to foreign leaders or fear in the heart of despots.

Reportedly angry that Republican Iowa Governor and Melania-esque (if you squint) wax figurine Kim Reynolds drew the ire of indicted national security risk Donald Trump because she paid compliments to his opponents, particularly Ron DeSantis, leading Trump to skip an upcoming Iowa forum for GOP presidential candidates, the New York Times reports.

Trump will not attend the Family Leadership Summit, a conservative Christian conference that would be the first major gathering for GOP candidates.  Candidates Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy are all scheduled to attend.  Chris Christie is the only other Republican candidate not scheduled to attend.

And Trump’s absence is already been seen as a slap in the face to Iowa voters, a view his opponents are capitalizing on in fundraising appeals. “With Trump’s personality, I feel he thinks he owns Iowa,” said Steve Boender, a board member for the Family Leader, “and I’m not sure he does. … I think Trump’s negativity is hurting things a little bit.”