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A Chinese military fighter jet performing an “unsafe maneuver” came dangerously close to a US Air Force reconnaissance plane flying in international waters in the South China Sea last week, CNN reports, raising alarm about increasing Chinese aggression in the region.

The RC-135 Rivet Joint with 30 crew aboard took evasive action to avoid a midair collision with the Chinese Navy J-11 on December 21st.  The J-11 flew close off the nose of the RC-135, according to the US military Indo-Pacific Command, forcing the RC-135 off its course.

Chinese aircraft have been taking aggressive action in the region, specifically relating to flights directed at Taiwanese airspace, hoping to provoke a reaction.  Actions such as this jet’s has caused collisions with American aircraft before:  in a 2001 incident, a Chinese jet collided with an American plane, killing the Chinese pilot and starting an international incident after the American spy plane landed intact on a Chinese island, giving Chinese access to US surveillance technology.

A Tampa police officer who was caught on a security camera dragging a detainee to the door of the jailhouse has been fired after a review by the police department of footage of the incident, which it called “unacceptable,” NBC News reports.

In November, Gregory Damon dragged the female detainee to the jailhouse door after the woman refused to get out of the patrol car and screamed, “I want you to drag me.”  Damon grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the jail door.  The woman had been arrested for trespassing at a women’s health clinic in the middle of the night after refusing to leave the property; she had an earlier, similar incident at the clinic.

Damon was not represented by his union, the Tampa Police Benevolent Association, in the matter, although the organization said it was aware of the matter.  Tampa Police Department cited multiple violations of its rules and regulations by Damon, items not challenged by the union at this time.

Is karma truly a bitch if it strikes back against a raging asshole?  I think not, but misogynist MAGAt MMA fighter and guy who thinks it’s cool to rage at a teenage environmental activist only to be epically slapped down by her may think otherwise.  Two days after Andrew Tate got burnt by Nobel Peace Prize nominee and climate change activist Greta Thunberg publically questioned his masculinity after boasting about the number of high-priced gas guzzler exotic cars he owns, Tate’s in a different world of trouble.

According to The Daily Beast, Tate was arrested by Romanian police on human trafficking and rape allegations Thursday along with his brother and two Romanian nationals.  A dual British-American citizens, Tate and his brother are accused of luring women via social media to a Romania villa, where the women were raped and forced into sex work as live video models.  The best part:  Tate did himself in.  Romanian police were able to locate him because he posted a photo of himself holding a pizza box from a Romanian pizzeria.

It appears Tate’s carbon footprint will be eliminated one way or another, ’cause you can’t drive when you’re locked up.

St Louis woman Katie Demko told CNN Thursday she’s unable to make it to attend a Friday wedding in Belize after Southwest Airlines canceled her flight to the Central American country. It’s a disappointment that would be bad enough if it weren’t just the money she spent for something nice to wear to the wedding and her accommodations, but made even worse by the fact that Demko is the fucking bride. Now the wedding is canceled because of these incompetent assholes.

Her fiancee, Michael, is already in Belize too, as are plenty of their family and friends. Demko told CNN the airline booked her for a flight on January 2nd, three days later, and not the day she and her fiancee spent thousands of dollars booking catering and a venue. Fucking pricks.

Here’s a clip of Republican Congressman-elect George Santos from March 2020 telling some dudes he had been successfully treated with radiation for a brain tumor. We’re not keeping track of every one of this asshole’s lies getting exposed anymore, otherwise we’d be 24/7 Santos. However this one definitely sticks out for its disrespect to people who have and are suffering from cancer.

Brazilian soccer star Pelé has died after a lengthy battle with cancer at age 82, the New York Times reports.  Widely credited for sparking an interest in soccer in the United States in the 1970s after coming out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos of the the North American Soccer League, Edson Arantes do Nascimento was a superstar in the sport, dubbed the greatest soccer player of all time by FIFA in a 2012 survey.

In a 21-year career from 1956 to 1977 during which he played for just two professional clubs–Santos in Brazil and the New York Cosmos–Pelé scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 professional matches.  As a member of the Brazilian national team he scored 77 goals in 92 international matches, having started to play for the national team at age 16.  He’s the only player to have played on three FIFA World Cup championship teams, in 1958, 1962 and 1970.

In her testimony to the House January 6th Select Committee, former Trump White House comms staffer and current View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin told investigators that suspected sex trafficker Matt Gaetz was probably the one person responsible for Trump’s tweets that former Republican Congressman and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough had murdered his intern in 2001.

“This is anecdotal, but it will kind of capture it for you. I remember, not relevant to January 6th, but I’d heard Jim Jordan was in the West Wing and Matt Gaetz was with him, and I still had a good relationship with Jim at that point, so I decided to go and say hi to him. And I’m waiting outside of the Outer Oval with Gaetz and Jordan, and Kayleigh McEnany was with me. And Jim and I are just shooting shooting the crap. He was an old boss of mine. And Gaetz has this folder,” Griffin said.

“And I said, you know, what is that? And he pulls it out. It’s conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough murdering his intern. And I said, Please do not bring that into the West Wing or to the Oval Office. We were literally outside of the Outer Oval. And just as I’m saying that I said, You cannot put that in front of the President, he he gets ushered in. And sure enough, within by the next morning, the former President is tweeting wild conspiracy theories about a cable news host, you know, allegedly murdering his intern,” she continued about the likely genesis of a particularly disgraceful and horrific Trump conspiracy theory tweet storm.

Trump had earlier brought it up in passing in a 2017 tweet, but it would appear that Gaetz stirred him to go hard on it in May 2020, right in the middle of the earlier stages of the pandemic, when thousands of Americans were getting sick and dying, this was where his mind was at.

The results of a mandatory recount Thursday have found that Dem Kris Mayes has defeated MAGA asshole Abe Hamadeh in the Arizona Attorney General election, KPNX’s Brahm Reznik reports.

Mayes had led Hamadeh by 511 votes after the initial results, the recount found her margin shrink to 280 in what is almost certainly by far the closest statewide election win of 2022. The loss for Hamadeh finalizes the stunning failure of the plot by Trump and his minions to have fanatically loyal fascists positioned in crucial swing state gubernatorial, attorney general, and secretary of state offices ahead of 2024 in order to fuck with the electoral college. Only Republican Nevada Governor-elect Joe Lombardo won, and he’s been relatively squishy on the whole MAGA thing.

Sumpter County, Florida Sheriff’s Deputies on Tuesday paid a visit to The Villages home of Trump golf cart parade power couple Mary and William Jaursch to investigate a domestic disturbance for the second time this year, just a week after Mary completed her court-ordered anger management course to dismiss her battery charge from a September 2022 incident, Villages-News.com reports.

Mary and William Jaursch keeping up appearances during the infamous June 2020 “White Power” Trump golf cart parade.

This time however it was William, 81, who found himself charged with battery, allegedly grabbing Mary, 79, by the hair and slapping her in the altercation, per an arrest report. In the September 11th attack, Mary drunkenly threw a shoe at William and then struck him with her feet and fists. Another incident in 2011 saw similarly intemperance-fueled Mary-on-William violence, wrought by William cutting Mary off after she had consumed “two and a half alcoholic drinks.”

Erie County, New York, which included the city of Buffalo, lifted its travel ban overnight, six days after officials instructed people to stay home because of a fierce winter storm that struck the region, NBC News reports.

With at least 76 people dead from the storm nationwide, with 37 of the death in Erie County, the storm dropped more than 20 inches of snow in and around Buffalo; the Buffalo airport recorded total snowfall of 52 inches.  County crews used more than 450 snow removal vehicles like plows and trucks to clear the roadways.

“It has been six days,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said Wednesday when announcing the planned overnight lifting of the ban. “Some people have not been able to restock groceries, to restock medications, to get to medical appointments, and being able to lift the travel ban safely now will allow people to do those important things.”

The House January 6th Select Committee on Thursday published yet another batch of testimony transcripts, including those from Don Jr, Kim Guilfoyle, Stephen Miller, Doug Mastriano, Ray Epps, Christina Bobb, Ruby Freeman, Stephanie Grisham, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, and more.

Far right asshole Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn back into power Thursday, his third stint at the job, this one coming while under criminal indictment for bribery, the AP reports.

Netanyahu’s newest coalition includes some seriously bad hombres, such as members of a “Religious Zionist” party named literally that, hardcore anti-LGBT scumbags, and proponents of aggressive expansion of settlements in the Palestinian West Bank – a sure recipe for bloodshed.

Kabosu, the Shibo Inu that became an early internet meme and was used as the literal face of the fake cryptocurrency Dogecoin, is terminally ill with liver disease and cancer, the dog’s owner announced, CBS News reports.

Atsuko Sato, Kabosu’s owner, chronicled in a series of Instagram posts over the past week that the dog is in “very serious condition” with an enlarged liver and chronic lymphoma leukemia.  After not eating or drinking on Christmas Eve, Sato posted that the 17-year-old dog has eaten and drank water in the meantime.

Kabosu became one of the first viral memes when a photo of him was lifted from Sato’s personal blog.  The photo, which showed the dog apparently smirking at the camera, became popular with people who added two-word, virtually always misspelled, phrases representing what the dog is supposed to be thinking.

Eighteen of the 20 worst cities in the United States in a recent WalletHub survey relating to the health and welfare of their residents come from traditionally Republican-led states, with all five of the cities ranking lowest in health insurance coverage coming from Texas.

In the 2022 Neediest Cities survey, WalletHub polled four leaders in the research of public administration, public health and social work to determine what cities had the populations with the greatest needs and the most difficult pathways to overcome those needs, either through obtaining available government subsidies or through private benefactors.  While the overall ranks of “Neediest Cities” was split evenly between jurisdictions in Red and Blue states, when looking at the specific health and welfare of residents, cities in Republican-run states rated worst in general.

Five Texas cities–Brownsville, Laredo, Garland, Houston and Dallas–ranked dead last in health insurance coverage.  A person in Brownsville is 17 times more likely to be uninsured compared to a resident of South Burlington, Vermont, the city with the best health insurance coverage.  Brownsville was also ranked second-worst for food insecurity.

Republican New York Congressman-elect George Santos, exposed as a liar for lying about his professional history, his education, his ethnicity and even about his sexual identity is reportedly under federal investigation by the Eastern District of New York.

Both CNN and CBS News report federal investigators are concentrating on reports that Santos loaned his campaign $700,000 from his personal accounts.  How Santos earned that money has come into question given that his only known business relationship is as a partner with a Florida-registered company called Devolder Organization, which lost its corporate charter from Florida earlier this year for failing to file required paperwork.

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022

As of 7:53 p.m. ET, access to Twitter via desktop browsers has been cut off, with accounts signed out apparently automatically.  Access to the social media app via iOS on an iPhone works for this reporter.  The error was reported by Aaron Rupar first around 7:35 p.m. ET.  Perhaps Elon Musk needs to find and rehire the engineer responsible for maintaining the desktop interface, who he probably fired four weeks ago because he wouldn’t go “hardcore” for the company.

UPDATE:  Ah, the power of the press!  Mere minutes after posting this story, power was turned back on to Twitter desktop, with the social media site working at 7:59 p.m. ET.  And yes, NatZero will be taking credit for it.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness extended states of emergency in certain provinces around the island Wednesday, allowing police to ignore certain civil rights as the country attempts to curb violent crime, Reuters reports.

In mid-November, Holness declared a state of emergency for certain designated areas that allow police to search premises and arrest individuals suspected in gang activity without warrants. Police Commissioner Antony Anderson said that since the policies went into place, officials have seen a decline in murders.

In 2021, Jamaica–a nation of three million people–had 1,463 murders, of which more than 70% were gang related.  In September 2022, the island nation was experiencing an average of five murders per day as gang violence exploded.  However, Anderson said gun control measures and the states of emergency have led to a sharp drop in the number of violent crimes reported.

Fearing violence from Bolsanaro fanboys, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice and top elections official Alexandre de Moraes on Wednesday ordered firearms banned from the capital city of Brasilia for the next four days until after returning President Luiz Lula’s inauguration, Reuters reports.

It’s certainly a good call even if the threat might be overstated given that Bolsonaro himself will be out of town, sulking at Mar-a-Lago with fellow deposed autocrat Donald Trump rather than inciting his minions into a violent disruption of Lula’s swearing-in ceremony. But better safe than sorry.