Rejoice libtards. You win. There isn’t going to be a “Freedom Phone 2” as the Daily Beast reports the company has collapsed amid infighting, bricked phones, money embezzled to fund a video game shopping spree, and other such failures for a “revolution” that turned out to be just a lousy $120 Chinese Android model modified to be more freedom-y and justify its $500 price tag.

The Pentagon is planning to send a portion of a vast American weapons stockpile in Israel to plug holes in Ukraine’s artillery shell inventory, the New York Times reports. The Israelis of course bitched and moaned, worried that such a move would damage their relations with Russia, but the shells don’t have the Star of David flag on them. US officials also withdrew from supplies in South Korea and, as an actual, non-fake ally, they were much more amenable to the move.

For all the silly jokes people have been making about lying piece of shit Congressman George Santos claiming he landed on the Moon in 1969 or invented penicillin or won multiple gold medals in the Olympics, nobody we’ve seen has really stepped out and asked “Well, what’s theoretically more realistic for George Santos but just so fucking dark and ugly that nobody would laugh?”

Of course somebody had to be capable of imagining this one. We give that anonymous hero or heroes our props, for their pessimism has been validated: Patch.com reports Santos in 2016 raised $3,000 for veterinary surgery for a disabled veteran’s dog suffering from cancer. Santos stole the money and the dog died in agony. Not much else to add here. It’s one thing to lie about working for Citibank, because whatever fuck them. Ganking some dude’s pricey scarf was scummy shit too, but it’s just a scarf. The guy can buy a new one. But to check this many boxes – disabled veteran, suffering dog, charity scam – in one single article about Santos is… We’ll just end it here.

Police in Hudson, Wisconsin say the patriot who knocked out power for thousands on Sunday afternoon in a “lone eagle” attack on a substation was found dead at the site, WEAU reports.

“We are aware of the power outage. Unfortunately an American Bald Eagle flew into a power line and caused the outage. The proper authorities have been contacted for the power outage and the deceased eagle,” said Hudson Police officials in a Facebook post. It’s just the latest attack on energy infrastructure with suspected domestic extremist motives but the first attributed to a living symbol of American patriotism rather than humans who paint them onto the hoods of pickup trucks.

A woman who ran for a seat on the Surfside, Florida town commission was charged with murder by firearm in connection to a death that occurred just six days after she lost the election, the Miami Herald reports.

Fifty-two-year-old Shannon Gallagher was arrested during a trip to Chicago and extradited to Florida last weekend where she was charged with murder.  The details of the case are under seal, however, the date of the alleged murder coincides with the death of Gallagher’s 74-year-old uncle, who in a case of highly coincidental timing had just signed four days before his death, a new will leaving his estate to his niece while explicitly excluding his ex-wife and children.

The alleged murder happened March 21st, a week after the March 14th election for the town commission, which pitted Gallagher against five other candidates.  Gallagher finished the race in sixth.

The Justice Department had considered having FBI agents supervise President Biden’s lawyers as they searched his homes and offices for Obama-era classified documents but ultimately decided against it as Biden’s team had been forthcoming about their findings, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The revelation will no doubt frustrate the absolute shit out of Trump fanboys who think there was a double standard applied to the two presidents’ respective situations but that’ll again only underscore that Biden was cooperative and Trump wasn’t. Let them squirm angrily as much as they want.

I will never attend the World Economic Forum.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) January 17, 2023

Rescue personnel with the Coast Guard and Hawaii County Fire Department on Tuesday continued searching for a third day for 63 year-old angler Mark Knittle who disappeared in the waters about four miles off Honaunau early Sunday morning, immediately after yelling “This fish is huge!” and being pulled overboard and underwater by the large ahi tuna he had hooked, the AP reports.

Not sure what else to write here. The account of what was very likely Knittle’s last moments relies on only one witness, but you would have to expect that cops are looking at that person very closely to see if there would be any motive for them to fake such an accident. Barring that, we’re left with what’ll probably end up the kind of funeral everyone laughs through tears, and “This fish is huge!” ends up in bold letters on Knittle’s headstone, jokes about how Hemingway’s waiting just inside the Pearly Gates, ready to punch Knittle in the face in a jealous rage. We should all be so lucky to cash out on a cartoonish mishap where the tuna hooked a human for his kind for once rather than expiring in a decrepit hospice from COVID or brain cancer wrought by stupid artificial sweeteners.

In a misdemeanor bench trial guilty verdict for California Capitol riot defendant Danean MacAndrew, DC Circuit Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Tuesday ruled that MacAndrew had been heeding fat former President Trump’s commands to go into the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021.

“Beyond a reasonable doubt, Danean MacAndrew knew on January 6, 2021 that her actions at the Capitol were unlawful. Every step of the way, from the western boundary of Capitol grounds, to the West Lawn, to the Upper West Terrace, to the interior of the Capitol itself, she saw sign after sign that her presence was unlawful. Nevertheless, heeding the call of former President Trump, she continued onwards to ‘stop the steal.’ For her participation in the insurrection of January 6, the Court finds Danean MacAndrew GUILTY on Counts 1, 2, 3, and 4,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly in the verdict.

A former staffer for deadbeat dad Herschel Walker’s failed Senate campaign has filed a lawsuit against gropey CPAC chief Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes over the sexual assault the man alleges occurred as he was driving Matt to his hotel room in October 2022, Politico reports.

There’s already some fairly solid circumstantial evidence backing up the still-anonymous plaintiff’s accusations against Schlapp in the form of contemporaneous text messages and that the Walker campaign barred Schlapp from coming to an event the next day. Walker himself even offered his campaign’s lawyer’s services to the staffer. The lawsuit, filed in an Alexandria, Virginia circuit court seeks $9.4 million in damages from the Conservative movement power couple.

The real takeaway here is that, despite all the money and media coverage lavished on CPAC, Matt Schlapp is not a star. Because when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

This event is located in Las Vegas Nevada. In the oak room at the Venetian https://t.co/UBNERQEPFS

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) January 16, 2023

Because, as Fox 5 Las Vegas reports, the “Oak Room” bar has canceled the event. The Venetian’s management apparently told them no fucking way would they be allowed to throw an event with this little shit, saying “Our tenant informed us that they have canceled the event. We do not speak on behalf of our tenants, but want to emphasize this event did not align with our property’s core event guidelines,” in a statement. What’s gotta sting even more is that dead former Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson probably would’ve vetoed the cancelation if he were still around.

Pro-domestic terrorism Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was unanimously approved by the steering committee for a spot on the House Homeland Security Committee Tuesday, CNN reports.

In a tearjerker of a story/photo essay from the New York Times, students at a Kyiv school for kids ages 6 to 18 continue to show up and learn even amid blackouts and interruptions from missile strikes causing them to evacuate to the basement shelter. There’s even pics of the younger kids having a pajama party in a darkened classroom on the last day before their winter break.

Missing from the story are parents complaining over non-existent critical race theory lessons, books being banned for being written by Black authors, litter boxes, and teachers being sued for acknowledging gay people exist. The children are however threatened by armed maniacs empowered by a Kremlin-backed organization. Though here in the United States it’s the NRA and in Ukraine it’s the actual Russian army and Wagner Group, they do tragically have that in common.

The cowardly Speaker of The House also said he doesn’t think the incident where a Santos campaign staffer impersonated McCarthy’s chief of staff was that big of deal because Santos fired that staffer, as if we’re supposed to believe any of that complete bullshit non-explanation.

In related news, McCarthy’s security detail reportedly had to step in Tuesday when a Republican Congressman exploded in rage on the floor over being denied the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. “You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me,” screamed Florida Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan to McCarthy. According to Puck News, Buchanan is so pissed he may simply retire early to screw McCarthy out of a vote.

The Andrew Tate fanboys who watched in horror as their hero tried to troll teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg with pics of his garage full of luxury cars, then recorded a video claiming all the likes on her hilarious clapback came from bots, a video which indicated to Romanian authorities that Tate was in the country because of a pizza box from a local chain leading to the men’s rights activist’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, and the subsequent seizure of all of those luxury cars can take a small measure of solace in the fact that Thunberg was arrested in Germany on Tuesday.

Yeah it was just a protest arrest and Thunberg will probably have to pay a fine or do community service or whatever for trying to block a new coal mine. Maybe she’ll be banned from Germany for a year or two at worst. And she meant to do it. But Tate’s fanboys should take what they can get. Thunberg still very temporarily suffered the indignity of being handcuffed and detained by authorities. That should still mean something to them, even though it absolutely pales in comparison to possibly the greatest fucking self-own in the history of mankind that Tate achieved.

Biden Administration officials on Tuesday called on cowardly shitweasel House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to explain to the public what he gave away to the House Freedom Caucasians for them to acquiesce to him becoming speaker after 15 votes of holding out, Politico reports.

“An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this month’s chaotic elections and claim the gavel. It is well past time for Speaker McCarthy and the ultra MAGA Republican House members to come out of the dark and tell the American people, in-full, what they decided in secret,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement shared with Politico.

The Federal Election Commission have unanimously tossed the Republican National Committee’s complaint against Google claiming their Gmail inboxes correctly rejecting their batshit fundraising emails as spam was an “in-kind contribution” to Democrats, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution,” the FEC wrote in its ruling. One study cited by the RNC in their complaint showed that nearly 70 percent of emails from Republican candidates in 2019 and 2020 were caught in the filter compared to only about 10 percent of those from Democrats.

Of course, like with pretty much everything for Republicans in this day and age, the problem is never with them, it’s always with somebody else. It can’t be that maybe Republicans should maybe reduce the amount of spammy bullshit in their emails, it has to be that Google is rigging it for Democrats. It can’t be that maybe normal parents simply don’t want their children around deeply racist Fox News-brainwashed grandparents, it has to be that those snot-nosed punks are being indoctrinated by the liberal media and education system. It can’t be that John Durham brought a bad case against some Dem lawyer nobody had heard of, it has to be that all 12 jurors were biased somehow because two or three of them donated to Hillary and AOC. It can’t be a trillion different variables across billions of people, places, and institutions in a deeply imperfect system of a capitalist democracy collectively express antipathy to fascist extremism, it has to be “cancel culture,” Antifa intimidation, Chinese bamboo ballots, and Jewish space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds rigging it against the GOP.

The content of a memo detailing social media platforms’ failures to fully crack down on extremism in the lead up to the Capitol insurrection out of fear of reprisals from MAGA Republicans was left out of the final House January 6th Select Committee’s final report as the committee themselves were reluctant to get into the weeds with Big Tech, the Washington Post reports.

“The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin. These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones,” said the 122-page memo written by committee staffers and obtained by the Post.

On one level it made perfect sense to keep the investigation’s focus on Trump and his minions. Twitter and Facebook may have failed to help prevent the attack but so did the Capitol and DC Metro Police and the Justice Department. There’s only so much responsibility you can hang on the people who saw four years of MAGA shitposting not backed up by any actual significant action against government institutions. On another level, some of these details in the report about how the pre-Musk Twitter still treated Trump and his fanboys with kid gloves internally even while cracking down publicly is shocking and the report probably should have been published separately.

Defeating socialism starts with retiring Joe Biden for good in 2024.

— GOP (@GOP) January 17, 2023

Nine out of nine of the candidates for Michigan state Republican Party chairperson who appeared at a forum in Midland last weekend said they believe there’s a massive election theft ring in the state that steals every election that Republican candidates lose, the Detroit News reports on the kind of situation that will probably end up with eight of the nine candidates saying the Democrats somehow infiltrated the state GOP and rigged the leadership election against them.

Among the lowlights of the chair candidates’ statements on the matter were the QAnon freak 2022 Secretary of State loser Kristina Karamo calling fighting election fraud a “matter of national survival” and Macomb County GOP chair Mark Forton saying he believes in his “heart of hearts” that disgraced former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a “landslide.” Another candidate, Lena Epstein complained about “ballot dumping” by blue counties, adding “There is not one person on this stage that can fix it. The almighty can fix it.” Candidate Michael Farage touted his record of leading a protest in which MAGA Michiganders mass burned absentee ballot applications in 2020, encouraging the crowd to search for “Operation Incinerator” on Google.

One candidate, Matthew DePerno, who got crushed by incumbent Dem Dana Nessel in his 2022 bid for Attorney General, apparently received zero pushback from the other candidates for being under criminal investigation for trafficking in stolen election equipment, almost as if facing felony indictment would not in any way interfere with his ability to run a state Republican Party.