The NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans reached an important milestone in the 2022-23 season on Wednesday: Zero reported break-ins or thefts of vehicles parked around the team’s Smoothie King Center arena in the city’s central business district for the first time in weeks, 4WWL reports.

That’s right. For one night at least Pelicans fans were treated to a stellar defense from the guards outside the paint and this would require more research of pro basketball coverage tropes to really be a slam dunk satire-ish real news article. On a related note, fuck Bill Simmons.

The United States Coast Guard has been tracking the movements of a suspected Russian spy ship meandering off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands, CNN reports, in an area used by international cargo ships sailing through.

The ship, said to be designed to look like a commercial vessel, has been in the US Economic Exclusive Zone, an area where foreign ships, including foreign navy vessels, freely move.  This ship, however, is drawing more attention.  “In recent weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard has continued to monitor a Russian vessel, believed to be an intelligence gathering ship, off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands,” the Coast Guard announced in a press release.

In 2017, the US forced the SSV Viktor Leonov to move on after lingering off the East Coast of the United States, sailing from Connecticut to Florida before heading to Cuba.  The Coast Guard repeatedly cited the ship for unsafe maneuvering because the Leonov would operate in poor weather and at night without its running lights.

The National Republican Congressional Committee on Thursday deleted their website’s profile page for Congressman George “Kitara” Santos in a development that we’re not sure of the implications of but does not sound like good news at all for the lying piece of shit and proud House GOP member.

Separately, both of the denials that Santos issued Thursday morning over recent reporting on him were just hours later contradicted by further evidence emerging. On the “Kitara” side of things, the New York Post obtained video of Santos dancing in a drag parade in Brazil in 2005. On the stealing $3,000 from a GoFundMe Santos set up for a disabled New Jersey veteran whose dog was dying of cancer in 2016 side, the crowdfunding company confirmed to CBS News that they had that year suspended the account associated with that particular drive. Inspiring!

Three staff members at a Salt Lake City-area plastic surgery practice and a friend of one of the staff members were indicted this week on charges they secretly injected as many as 2,000 children with saline solution instead of the COVID-19 vaccine, issued falsified vaccination cards for adults, and took $50 payments over Venmo and PayPal to fill out the fake vax cards, Ars Technica reports.

The indictment alleges Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah owner Dr Michael Kirk Moore Jr, his office manager, and a staffer dumped the 2,000 or so vax doses down the drain and replaced the vials with harmless saline solution. Separately, with the help of Moore’s neighbor, they distributed fake vax cards in exchange for a $50 “charity donation” via the payment apps, a case that was difficult for the feds to crack as the assholes would only do it if for a person if they had been referred by another previous recipient of a fake vaccination card from the practice.

Most acts of criminal right wing batshittery fall into one of two categories: You have the people that say and do certain stupid, evil things out of cynical ambition – like the Republicans who knew Trump lost but voted to object to it anyway – and the others that do it strictly out of true belief in their moronic cause – like the Capitol rioters. This case is pretty fascinating because it has both elements. These scumbags actually believed they were saving children by faking their COVID vaccinations AND they were making a few extra bucks by selling bogus vaccination cards to adults.

The conservative fancon organization helmed by a man who grabs other men’s penises without consent announced Thursday that a man who grabs women’s genitals without consent will deliver the keynote address to all the penis and female genitalia grabbing fans in the audience in March.

They will let him deliver the keynote address because he’s a star. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, even grab penises and female genitalia without consent.

Ya gotta love hypocrites.  They’re just so… obvious.  Meet North Dakota Republican state senator David Clemens, and please note the imprecise part in the hair, the defined line in his ‘do, and the mismatched hues of his follicles, telltale signs of a non-original, temporary cranial pilosity.  Clemens, ya see, introduced a bill that would require everyone use the pronouns God gave ya at birth, because there is no changing what God gave ya, no matter how uncomfortable you are with your appearance. And Clemens–again, he of rug-wearing infamy (and I say this as a follically-challenged individual myself, so it’s completely okay to mock a bald man in denial)–wants to fine any individual who works for an entity that receives state funding up to $1,500 if they refer to an individual with pronouns that do not reflect the sex they were assigned at birth.

So while Clemens can try to hide the genetics he was blessed with by God, so people will refer to him as haired and hirsute while laughing at his hairpiece behind his back, he wants to require everyone else to suffer by forcing them to be confronted with their unpreferred image daily, unlike him.

In what we will take as an unexplicit admission by the court that a conservative was responsible but they just won’t say it, the Supreme Court has released a short statement saying essentially, “Well, we tried,” announcing that after an internal investigation, they have not identified who leaked the Dobbs decision overturning the right to bodily autonomy and revoking the Roe decision acknowledging the right to an abortion.

At the time, conservatives hyped the leak as some liberal plot to get the justices to reverse course on their votes, thereby protecting  a patient’s right to seek reproductive care, despite the fact that the release of the decision as a 6-3 vote would commit the justices to their positions early in the opinion writing process.  A conservative justice would not be able to switch their decision–as Roberts reportedly was because he disagreed with the harsh language and sweeping ruling of the Samuel Alito-written opinion–without experiencing the backlash of conservatives, who are prone to exhibit their displeasure with bullets and anti-government violence.

Over the last week disgraced former President Trump and his fans have been claiming that President Biden’s Obama-era classified documents fuckup is worse than the Mar-a-Lago situation because, as Vice President at the time, Biden never had the authority to declassify such documents. That Trump and his lawyers still have yet to publicly produce literally any evidence whatsoever that the fat bastard had actually declassified the documents the FBI found he had stolen from the White House – let alone assert it before a judge – hasn’t been mentioned in this new line, but it’s not like they have a lot to work with. The fanboys just take it as an article of faith that Trump declassified the docs and also that the FBI planted them to frame him – depending on which day of the week it is.

Anyway it turns out this theoretical quantum superposition is even more meaningless than it was previously, as Politifact have identified Executive Order 13526, signed on December 29th, 2009 by President Obama, specifically authorizing the Vice President of the United States to classify and declassify government documents at will. Neither Trump nor Biden have rescinded EO 13526 or superseded it with a subsequent executive order, thus it remains in effect to this day.

No, it does not appear that Biden ever took steps to declassify the documents that ended up in his home and office in 2017, but that he was not able to at the time was supposed to be the huge difference between he and the Orange God Emperor. Well now he was. Thanks Obama!

A devastating cyberattack struck critical KFC and Taco Bell infrastructure in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, forcing parent company Yum Brands to halt all extra crispy, gravy-smothered, fiesta-style, crunch-tastic, extra spicy supreme commerce at as many as 300 UK stores, the AP reports.

The stores were reopened on Thursday and no further attacks have been reported. It’s not clear if the company negotiated with unknown cyber-extremists to end the ransomware attack or what their demands even were. Or if the terrorists are even still alive. Maybe Colonel Sanders is not just a marketing character but also the name of some ruthless ex-black ops mercenary leading a highly skilled team on call to eliminate threats to the company with extreme prejudice – and they went into action. If they’re not going to tell us what happened then we just have to use our imaginations.

“I want you to have a choice,” Republican Florida Governor and albino Oompa Loompa with a thyroid condition Ron DeSantis announced at a definitely-not-a-campaign rally Thursday morning.  But alas, his declaration is not about reproductive health, or marriage partners, or even books available at a school library.  DeSantis is referring to gas stoves, something only 8% of households in Florida have, in an effort to stoke outrage about a non-existent Biden policy the GOP wants to leverage.

The Santa Fe, New Mexico-area district attorney investigating movie star Alec Baldwin over the 2022 accidental shooting death of a cinematographer on a western film set will announce Thursday that Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The charges will be celebrated by Trump fanboys as some sort of karmic vindication of Baldwin’s outspoken liberal politics and in particular his regular stints portraying their Orange God Emperor on Saturday Night Live. However Spartan’s official editorial stance is that Baldwin has always been a douchebag both privately and publicly irrespective of his politics, so fuck him either way.

The reports that I would let a dog die is shocking & insane. My work in animal advocacy was the labor of love & hard work. Over the past 24hr I have received pictures of dogs I helped rescue throughout the years along with supportive messages.

These distractions won’t stop me!

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) January 19, 2023

The United States officially hit the debt limit on Thursday, a major achievement in government spending. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen celebrated the news by shuffling things around with “emergency measures” to buy more time before the House GOP deliberately causes a default.

Famous Brazilian-American drag queen Kitara (aka Congressman George Santos) had once aspired to be crowned “Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro,” a prestigious honor accorded only to the most fabulous, most flamboyant of story hour performers in Rio, a source formerly close to Kitara told Reuters.

Kitara denied having those dreams in a tweet on Thursday, calling the story “categorically false” in a tweet, but Kitara has been known to play fast and loose with the truth on a wide array of subjects such as the Holocaust and 9/11 attacks. “The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results, I will not be distracted nor fazed by this,” Kitara added.

Far-right Colleyville, Texas Mayor Bobby Lindamood, locally famous for his QAnon memes and January 6th conspiracy theories, has been ordered to pay $199,750 in fees seven years after losing a defamation suit over accusations he molested his stepsister decades ago, sent photos of his cock to co-workers at a family business, and boned a prostitute in Las Vegas, the Texas Observer reports.

The long and complex case began in 2015, when Lindamood was first running for a seat on the city council, challenging incumbent Mike Taylor. A sheet detailing the lurid allegations about Lindamood’s personal MAGA lifestyle habits was placed anonymously in residential mailboxes across the city by parties unknown just days before the election. Lindamood lost that race and accused Taylor and other Colleyville residents of the hit in a defamation lawsuit just days later. The case was dismissed in 2018, but along the way the defendants got a hold of a 2011 deposition from a separate case against his stepmother in which Lindamood had admitted to fondling his drunk stepsister while he was married (and while the stepsister was allegedly a minor), to being been in a room with a hooker in Vegas, and that his dad had accused him of sending pics of his junk to coworkers at the family business. And still this guy got elected to city council in 2016 and then mayor later.

An unidentified US citizen has been charged with espionage in Russia, German state media Deutsche Welle reports, citing an FSB press release. It’s unclear if the person has actually been arrested (even though the DW headline says “detained,” the text of the article says otherwise).

“The American is suspected of collecting intelligence on biological topics directed against the security of the Russian Federation,” the FSB press release says. In lieu of other details, we’ll simply add that maybe American citizens should just stay the fuck out of Russia rather than be arrested on bullshit charges and held hostage by the Putin regime for months or even years.

Team investigating Trump classified docs includes seasoned DOJ officials who prosecuted his top allies https://t.co/WG1ly109XC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 19, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has triggered the Kremlin with a conspiracy theory questioning whether Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is even still alive, the Daily Beast reports.

“I don’t quite understand who to speak with and about what. I’m not sure the president of Russia, who sometimes appears against a green screen, is the right one. I don’t quite understand if he is alive, if he is making the decisions, or who is making the decisions there,” said Zelensky in a video address to the Davos crowd, which pissed the Kremlin off enough to respond. “Clearly, Zelensky would prefer for neither Russia nor Putin to exist. The sooner he realizes that Russia exists and will exist, the better for such a country as Ukraine,” said Kremlin spokesworm Dmitry Peskov.

Asserting that it violates his state law about teaching Critical Race Theory–spoiler alert: it doesn’t–Republican Florida Governor (and bigot for his political ends) Ron DeSantis has denied a request from the company that approves Advanced Placement curriculum in schools to certify African Studies course in Florida public schools, something that will put students who want to study the field in college at a significant disadvantage.  And shockingly, the majority of students who will want to study African Studies are [switch to stage whisper voice] Black.

According to the Daily Beast, the action continues a line of censorship DeSantis is imposing on public schools and teachers in Florida in an effort to stifle any recognition that some people experience a different society than a rich, straight, white, christian-ish, doughy, Ivy League-educated Republican male.  DeSantis has also taken such actions against LGBTQ educational material and anything he deems insufficiently “christian.”

Denying actual history, DeSantis’s Department of Education rejected the request from the company, The College Board, to certify the program saying, “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”  A spokesperson later added, “If the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the Department will reopen the discussion.”

“Oh boy, those dems aren’t very inclusive, are they?”

– The current top comment on the Twitchy article “MSNBC columnist confirms that George Santos was a drag queen named Kitara,” posted Wednesday night. This was not easy to find as it appears every other right wing site (out of the ones that use Disqus at least) was avoiding the Santos drag queen story like the plague. Probably a smart move since it causes this kind of cognitive meltdown.