Top 10 Conservative Idiots #13-16: Showdown At The Golden Corral Edition

[Top 10 Idiots]

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #13-16: Showdown At The Golden Corral Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yooooooooooo! What’s up Irvine? It’s good to be home after nearly 2 months out on the road! We’ve had a great time, though! Especially our stops in Honolulu and Los Cabos! But because next week’s Top 10 got canceled, this is our last regular Top 10 of the year. We originally planned to have this at our home base in Santa Ana, but the schedule got fucked up and well, here we are! So before we begin, I want to address the 800 pound gorilla in the room. That concerns the official Top 10 Twitter account - @10Idiots. Look, we’ve seen the requests. We know about Elon’s plans to unleash hell by letting white nationalists and other undesierables back on the platform after being banned. Rest assured, we will be terminating both the Top 10 account @10Idiots and the Holy Shit account @churchoftop10 on Dec. 31st. We’re currently researching alternatives. We hope to launch on Mastodon when we come back in January. I will make the official announcement when we are ready to do so. OK do we have time for the thing? Of course we do! If you’re a 90s kid like I am, you remember the utter disaster that was the Super Mario Bros. movie. Although in all fairness, it is one of those movies that you watch with your friends while drunk and/or high and make fun of with snide comments about how stupid it is. Well, guess what? Nintendo is at it again with a new Mario Bros. movie that’s being planned for next summer. Only this time – it’s animated. And the “you ruined my childhood” people are already complaining about it! These morons can ruin everything and anything! But… Princess Peach is “woke” now? That’s what you have to complain about? I guess these are the guys who either played as Peach in Mario Kart because they could, or they played as Bowser because they thought they were bad asses. But really guys, do you know what you need to do now? That’s it - just put down the bong and back away from the computer very slowly. Also turn off Fox News, it’s good for you! OK enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first John Oliver is back and he highlights the human rights atrocities committed by FIFA and the nation of Qatar in the 2022 World Cup:

&t=21s

So where do we begin? Well unfortunately this week another week, another mass shooting in America happened while we were off last week. And that’s not even the weird part. I’m of course talking about the Club Q shooting (1) and the more you go down the rabbit hole on this subject, and the people behind it, the weirder it gets! In the second slot this week is of course our old buddy Elon Musk (2) who continues to take a wrecking ball to the social media platform known as Twitter, and it’s much like the way Surtur destroyed Asguard at the end of Thor: Ragnarok. It’s truly stunning. In the number 3 slot this week is another one of our old buddies, Kanye West (3). Yes, Ye is hanging out with notorious anti-Semitic racist, sexist piece of shit podcaster Nick Fuentes and they went and had dinner with Trump at Mar-A-Lago, and it’s quite the shit show. Of course the MAGA camp is in full “move along, nothing to see here, please disperse” mode. In the number 4 slot this week is Kevin McCarthy (4) and his first week back as House Speaker is already proving to be the colossal shit show that it is. Why do people keep electing these clowns? Madness. Speaking of madness, the number 5 slot this week is going to go to Election Deniers (5). Yes, specifically Arizona, where the madness over the Kari Lake – Katie Hobbs election is the stuff of insanity, but the GOP’s newfound smugness could cost them big time! In the number 6 slot this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” and of course, this week, when there’s a mass shooting at a gay bar, Christian right preachers are naturally going to shoot their hateful mouths off and start spouting the same insane conspiracies and hateful rhetoric we’ve heard a million times, and we’ve got the best (and also worst) reactions! In the number 7 slot this week, is our newest segment on corporate greed, Late Stage Capitalism (7)! So it looks like everyone is going on strike – from Amazon to the University Of California, and employers are not liking it one bit! It’s truly a clusterfuck. Speaking of clusterfucks, in the number 8 slot this week is a new Conspiracy Corner (8) and our old buddy, Creepy Pillow Man, aka Mike Lindell, is convinced by God that he is going to be the new RNC chair. The GOP is continuing to swirl its’ way down the drain! In the number 9 (NEIN!!) slot this week we have a new “I Need A Drink” – and this week we’re going to have some drinks and talk about the lack of beverages available at the 2022 World Cup, and what’s being done about it! Maybe having the World Cup in a country known for religious totalitarianism and egregious human rights violations was a bad idea? probably! Finally this week it’s time for our 2022 World Tour (10)! This week we’re heading south of the border to the land of tequila, Mayan pyramids, futbol, and Chicen Itza – Mexico! Plus to close things out, we have some live music from Death Cab For Cutie! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]The Club Q Shooting: Heroes And Villains
[br] [/font] [br]

Fuck. Another day another mass shooting. And it will most likely never end. Gun violence is increasingly becoming an inherent danger to American society. But nothing is gonna change. We’re going to go through the same fucking routines we’ve been going through the last 20 years when it comes to this shit and it’s getting really old. The United States really follows the textbook definition of insanity on this subject. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Look, we’re a laughing stock because of this shit. Other countries have travel advisories to the United States because of it. The target this time? It was a drag show at Club Q in Colorado Springs. Drag shows lately have been the target of violence ranging from Twitter accounts like @libsoftiktok and the Tucker Carlson show. But once you get to the details, it paints an incredibly fucked up picture of an individual driven to acts of violence after being rejected by society. Almost kind of sounds like the plot of Joker when you think about it. But before we introduce the villain, let’s talk about the hero.

Richard M. Fierro said he was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub. His instincts from four combat deployments as an Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself.

snip-"...tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun.."


snip-" Mr. Fierro, who served in the Army for 15 years, said he raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him."


snip-" As the fight continued, he said, he yelled for other club patrons to help him. A man grabbed the rifle and moved it away to safety. A drag dancer stomped on the gunman with her high heels. The whole time, Mr. Fierro said, he kept pummeling the shooter’s head while the two men screamed obscenities at each other."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/21/us/colorado-springs-shooting-news

Yeah so let’s think about this – without Mr. Fierro risking his life in this heinous act of violence, the situation would have been that much worse. Remember the Pulse shooting? Picture a scenario that’s worse than that. But it’s another day, and another mass shooting. And we’re going to hear Fox News spout the same damn arguments we’ve heard about guns a thousand times. It’s truly the definition of insanity. Now let’s talk about the villain. Yes, Fox and other right wing sources were extremely quick to bring up the sexual orientation of the shooter.

Another weekend passed in America with yet another mass shooting, this time at a gay bar in Colorado Springs.

In an attack that lasted barely more than a minute, five people were killed and at least 18 others injured when a gunman stormed Club Q, a bar that had functioned as a rainbow safe haven for the conservative town’s small LGBTQ community.

Were it not for the heroism of patrons who confronted the shooter and subdued him with one of his own weapons, many more might be among the dead. That inconceivable act of bravery is worth unending celebration.

But for LGBTQ people across the country, the most devastating part of this slaughter was its sense of inevitability. All year long, it has felt like we have been inching toward some form of fated tragedy, like a car crash in slow motion. Now the horror has manifested.

For some time now, a resurgent right-wing strategy of portraying queer people as an invasive species of predators — who “groom” children in classrooms, “mutilate” the bodies of transgender children, or otherwise corrupt young minds — has burrowed into mainstream political discourse with horrifying efficiency. “Don’t Say Gay,” the edict goes, or else it will spread like a virus.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/colorado-springs-shooting-gay-bar-politicizing

Holy shit. It’s truly insane what right wing propaganda has done to people. It’s destroyed and ruined many lives and driven people to violence and madness. But once again the circle of death rears its’ ugly head around us. Will nothing be done about this terrible tragedy? Nope. Will we hear the same damn arguments about guns that we’ve heard 1,000 times before? Oh yeah that’s coming. But you know what we haven’t seen yet? Ho w violence happens. In fact the relationship between the shooter and his father is an incredibly fucked up one, and the more you dig into it, the more fucked up it gets. But please, conservatives, continue to lecture us on how much better straight relationships are.

When Brink asked his ex-wife why their son had changed his name, she blamed it on the father’s involvement in a reality TV show called Intervention, as well as his acting career in the adult film industry.
“His mother told me he changed his name because I was in Intervention and I had been a porno actor,” said Brink.
For six years Brink believed his son was dead, until Aldrich unexpectedly called his father six months ago, and started arguing with him over the phone.
“He’s pissed off. He's pissed off at me. He wants to poke at the old man,” Brink recalled.

Then, two days ago, Brink got a call from his son's defense attorneys, telling him Aldrich was involved in a shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.
Brink said he's a Mormon and his first reaction was to question why his son was at a gay bar. “You know Mormons don't do gay. We don't do gay. There's no gays in the Mormon church. We don't do gay,” Brink said.

SNIP——-
Brink currently works as a mixed martial arts coach. He says he taught his son how to fight.
“I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant and you'll get immediate results,” the father said.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/im-sorry-i-let-my-son-down-father-of-accused-colorado-club-shooter-speaks-out/509-6c4ad66e-35ef-41a5-9255-bca31cea3a73

Hooooooooooooooooooly shit. You want to know why violence happens, this is how violence happens, people! The shooter’s own father is a violent psychopath who praised his son for his violent behavior, and then thought he was dead. And then was surprised to learn that the worst part was that his son wasn’t gay, but a mass murderer! This is fucked up on multiple levels. And if you can’t see that then you’re part of the problem! Oh and don’t think we’ll be hearing the last of these cretins either, because this is, like we always say, one of those stories that’s like peeling an onion. The more layers you peel back, the more it stinks, and the more likely you are to cry as a result.

The mother of the suspect accused of fatally gunning down five people and wounding 18 at a Colorado Springs gay bar was herself arrested in the hours after the deadly shooting, according to a summons obtained by The Daily Beast.

Laura Lea Voepel, 45, is facing two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest over a meltdown she allegedly had when police showed up at her home around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 20. Roughly three-and-a-half hours earlier, authorities say 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich opened fire on patrons and staff at Club Q, a local LGBTQ nightspot.

Aldrich, whose lawyers say he identifies as non-binary but whose mother used male pronouns in text messages to him on the day of the shooting, was born Nicholas Franklin Brink in 2000 to Voepel and MMA-fighter-turned-porn-actor Aaron Franklin Brink. The 6-foot-4, 260-pound Aldrich, who is listed as male in jail booking records, changed their name in 2016 to escape their father’s criminal past, court filings show.

After the Club Q massacre, officers with the Colorado Springs Police Department showed up at Voepel’s North Union Boulevard apartment building, the summons states, noting that cops warned Voepel “multiple times to stop yelling” or she would be arrested.

“Subject continued to make unreasonable noise directly next to multiple apartments,” the summons, which was first reported by Denver Fox affiliate KDVR and Denver NBC affiliate KUSA, continues. “While I attempted to place subject into custody, she became combative by physically resisting officers’ control by force.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/laura-voepel-mom-of-colorado-springs-suspect-anderson-lee-aldrich-facing-charges-after-club-q-shooting

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Elon Musk
[br] [/font] [br]

This whole thing with Elon’s plan to buy Twitter and make it a haven for racists, sexists, anti-Semites, violent thugs, and other undesirables is backfiring on him big time. You know, this week, we made the extremely difficult decision to terminate the two official accounts we have on Twitter - @10Idiots and @churchoftop10, and it was definitely not an easy one. But as of right now, it is the right thing to do at this time. But we do plan to setup shop on Mastodon when we come back in January after our extended break. Anyway enough about us, this is about Elon’s descent into madness, and you can watch it unfold in real time on Twitter. You’ve probably heard by now that Apple may pull Twitter from the Apple App Store entirely. Needless to say, the fight between Elon and Apple isn’t going away anytime soon, and they’re only just getting started.

Elon Musk loves starting fights. It’s been a hallmark of his brief, omni-shambolic tenure as the owner of Twitter. From the legal battle waged before the purchase was even completed to the waves of disruption that his management choices sparked to his disdain for federal regulators to his ongoing campaign to be the troll king of the internet, Musk has done nothing but gleefully antagonize his supposed enemies, inside and outside Twitter.

But on Monday, Musk decided to pick a fight with one of — if not the — the biggest companies in the world: Apple, Inc. And this is a fight that he absolutely cannot win. There is no legal gambit he can pull, public shaming he can inspire or money he could set on fire in the pursuit of either, that could force Apple to save Twitter from the corporate devastation Musk has unleashed.

Musk’s latest fight began, as so many have in the last two months, with bad news about advertising. Musk tweeted that Apple had “mostly stopped advertising on Twitter,” an unwelcome development for a social media platform that’s already seen a major hit to the $5 billion in annual revenue that advertising has provided. According to The Washington Post, “Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48 million on ads on the social network” in the first quarter of 2022, accounting for “more than 4 percent of Twitter’s revenue” in those months. That makes any pullback from Apple a big problem for Twitter and Musk.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-going-war-apple-rcna59211

Yeah and that’s one thing about Elon – he is not afraid to start a fight, doesn’t matter whose side he is on, but he usually picks the wrong one. But my favorite part about this whole thing is that Elon plans to pull a Bender and launch his own phone in the event that Twitter gets banned from the Apple Store for the lack of content moderation. But yeah what’s he going to get for advertising support? We have our speculations! Cash 4 Gold maybe? Whatever company makes the end times slop that Jim Bakker sells on his show? Nutritional vitamin supplements? But one thing that we can say for sure is a definite – Elon has gone quite mad with power and he’s not coming back to earth anytime soon.

Musk's remark came after being asked about the potential scenario of Twitter being removed from app stores, which could conceivably happen if the social media network fails to sufficiently moderate content posted on its platform. Twitter has undergone considerable changes since Musk acquired the company in October, losing hundreds of employees and offering verification via a paid subscription. The questions around the future of Twitter's moderation emerged since Musk has repeatedly expressed his desire to promote free speech, reinstate suspended accounts, and make the platform more open.

Elon Musk has pledged to offer an "alternative phone" if Apple and Google remove Twitter from their app stores, adding to long-standing rumors about an iPhone rival from Tesla.

Musk's remark came after being asked about the potential scenario of Twitter being removed from app stores, which could conceivably happen if the social media network fails to sufficiently moderate content posted on its platform. Twitter has undergone considerable changes since Musk acquired the company in October, losing hundreds of employees and offering verification via a paid subscription. The questions around the future of Twitter's moderation emerged since Musk has repeatedly expressed his desire to promote free speech, reinstate suspended accounts, and make the platform more open.

While Musk affirmed that he hopes no such clash with Apple and Google will occur, he recently signaled displeasure with Apple's App Store fees and, in light of his plans to significantly expand the Twitter Blue subscription service, further conflict in the future seem likely. Musk's other companies, such as Tesla, have a strained relationship with Apple, and are reluctant to integrate features like Apple Music or CarPlay. There were even rumors that Musk demanded to become Apple CEO in talks over Apple potentially acquiring Tesla.

Musk is behind influential companies such as PayPal, SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and, now, Twitter, so the prospect of him initiating a project to offer a new consumer smartphone to rival the iPhone seems plausible, especially if his companies' relationships with Apple worsen in the future. Tesla making a phone has long been an unsubstantiated rumor on account of its experience with hardware and software, but it may now be more likely given Musk's growing propensity to publicly disagree with Apple.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-pledges-to-build-iphone-rival/

Oh yeah? Well I’ll found my own cell phone company! With blackjack! And hookers! On second thought, forget about the cell phone company! Now here’s where it gets weird. Elon has reportedly fired and disbanded Twitter’s entire Belgium office, and put his company in jeopardy as he’s now on an EU watch list because his platform is not moderating content. See this is what happens when you buy an international corporation like Twitter. What applies in the United States does not apply internationally, and the EU doesn’t fuck around with this sort of thing.

Elon Musk’s plans to turn Twitter Inc. into a free speech haven could run into its biggest political obstacles in the European Union, where he has to contend with its new Digital Services Act, which forces companies to take down illegal content.

Musk said he’ll follow national laws — and specifically reassured concerned EU officials that he’ll follow the DSA — but this will be difficult in practice with so few staff left to moderate content. It won’t be easier in the EU’s lawmaking capital of Brussels, where Twitter’s office is now lifeless.

EU leaders know Musk himself was a controversial speaker on Twitter — he was taken to court for defamation after he called a British caver a “pedo guy” (Musk won), the US SEC sued him for tweets about taking Tesla Inc. private (Musk settled), he tweeted a Nazi meme (then deleted it), and posted misinformation about an attack on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband (also deleted.)

While most if not all of these wouldn’t have breached the DSA, it’s certainly made lawmakers attentive to the possibility that they were signs of what’s to come.
https://fortune.com/2022/11/24/elon-musk-sacks-twitter-brussels-staff-collision-course-eu-laws-gdpr/

Oh and this isn’t the most evil thing that Elon has done yet. You know why he’s going out of his way to pick fights with Apple and Google? Because his plan to add paid verification is not only backfiring on him big time, but it’s apparently because he wants to avoid paying a 30% cut to Apple. And even Apple hasn’t even fed the troll, probably because they know better than that. But the thing is the GOP can whine all they want about Apple and Google’s Terms Of Service agreements. The logic is clear though – it's their TOS agreements. They can do whatever the hell they want. So unless you create your own phone and app store, you have to abide by their rules. So we really hope this failed experiment shuts them up for good. But it won’t.

Twitter’s revamped Blue subscription might not be available as an in-app purchase on iOS when it eventually relaunches so that it can dodge Apple’s 30 percent cut of App Store purchases, according to Platformer. When the new Blue was briefly available earlier this month, you could only purchase it through Twitter’s iOS app. But while Elon Musk is publicly tweeting his displeasure with Apple, it appears he wants to avoid having to pay Apple’s fees.

Musk had said that the new Blue, which allows people to purchase a blue verification check mark, was set to relaunch on Tuesday after signups were paused following a wave of impersonators. But that launch has been delayed, Platformer says, and The Verge has also heard of the delay from a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Twitter employees have been told that there will be other changes to Blue, including a one-cent price increase from $7.99 to $8 and requiring phone number verification, Platformer reports.

Over the course of this month, Musk has ramped up his tweets targeting Apple. On November 18th, he criticized the App Store’s cut by calling it a “hidden 30% tax on the Internet.” And on Monday, he claimed that Apple, reportedly one of Twitter’s biggest advertisers, has “mostly” stopped advertising on the social network and that it has “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/29/23485300/elon-musk-twitter-blue-avoid-in-app-fee-ios

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Ye, Trump, and Nick Fuentes
[br] [/font] [br]

You know it’s a fucked up week when that guy who we inexplicably used to call president, Donald Trump, met with noted anti-Semite Kanye West, aka Ye, and notorious racist, sexist anti-Semitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, and that’s not even the craziest thing that has happened this week! Trump always loves him some fast food, not to mention his tacky, faux gold decorating lifestyle, and we all know this. So maybe instead of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", let's modernize it and call it "Showdown At The Golden Corral". Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I love our graphics department! But there’s definitely tension brewing in the GOP between hardcore members of the MAGA community and the more sane, rational members of the GOP who aren’t racist. Wait, what? Who am I kidding? Those people don’t exist in today’s republican party, which is now the party of Alex Jones and Trump. And by the way, like most things involving Trump, the more you dig into it, the weirder it gets. Also too, just even having dinner with Ye already makes this the worst Thanksgiving ever!

Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

The two had arranged to break bread Tuesday night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of private phone conversations as Ye lost lucrative partnerships and became a mainstream cultural pariah for his antisemitic remarks, according to those familiar with the talks between the two men.

But Trump may have been walking into a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls — one that leveraged his own penchant for spectacle and showmanship against him. Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.

Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity. News of the meeting prompted an avalanche of criticism, from some Republican rivals and allies of Trump and his then-week-old presidential campaign.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/story-trumps-explosive-dinner-ye-nick-fuentes-rcna59010

Yeah come on, Trump, you can’t tell me you didn’t know who Nick Fuentes was prior to having dinner with him. I mean come on, how lax is the security detail at Mar-A-Shithole? But here’s the thing – if sponsors are dropping Kanye to the point where he's lost almost a billion dollars, you might want to do that thing called “reading the room”. Oh wait, the MAGA crowd doesn’t do that sort of thing. In the event of a shooting, their first instinct is to buy more guns. But that just paints a picture with the MAGA world – it’s always someone else’s fault. Or it didn’t happen. Or it was a false flag. Or some other bullshit nonsense.

Donald Trump, who had dinner and fun times last week with virulent antisemite Kanye West (now known as Ye) and white-supremacist-slash-Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, initially defended himself by claiming that he had no idea who Fuentes was. Posting on his own network, Truth Social, as the firestorm began to build over Thanksgiving weekend, the former president defended the dinner by explaining that as it occurred, Ye “expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”

This is, of course, the long-standing Trump defense: He can’t ever have done anything wrong because he simply doesn’t know anything, ever. It affords durable protection because, over time, the more things Trump acknowledges he doesn’t understand or care to find out, the less we expect him to comprehend or research anything in the future. It’s actually very much the mirror image of QAnon admonishment that everyone “do your own research.” In this iteration, “I did no research at all” somehow means that you are off the hook for knowing nothing.

He uses this excuse regularly. In 2017, after the white supremacist and antisemitic Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in the murder of an anti-racist protester on the street, Trump said there had been “very fine people on both sides” of the violent rally. He refused to walk that back, even in the face of threatened resignations from people around him. In part, Trump could assert things about who was there that day and what their character was like because he seemingly never tried to figure anything out. Fuentes, by the way, was at Unite the Right, as was David Duke, whom Trump had claimed to “know nothing about” during the 2016 primary.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/what-donald-trump-never-knows.html

Yeah come on, you can’t take back your blatant racism. That’s one thing I learned during the Trump years – racists don’t like being called racists. And if you play the tape back for them when they say racist things they don’t admit saying, they always pass the blame. It must be nice to live in reality denying fantasy land. Yeah I didn’t fail that class – some other crazy people made me fail that test! And this entire dinner was basically an exercise in “don’t fuck with me” mantra, while the GOP is going full on into “nothing to see here, please disperse” territory!

House and Senate Republicans are speaking out against former President Donald Trump's dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

"There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday. "And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States."

Earlier in the day, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy denounced Fuentes, who is labeled as a white supremacist pundit and organizer by the Anti-Defamation League, in language similar to McConnell's, though he stopped short of condemning the former president.

"I don't think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes. He has no place in this Republican Party," McCarthy said. "I think President Trump came out four times and condemned him and didn't know who he was."
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/29/1139742844/republicans-denounce-trump-dinner-white-supremacist-nick-fuentes

Yeah so there’s a lot of infighting in the GOP right now. And the weird thing is that Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are awfully silent on this issue. Which is a first because they’re usually the biggest loud mouth jackasses in the room. So why did Trump arrange this dinner? Well, it turns out there may be sinister forces afoot! But hey as long as these pricks keep fighting with each other and losing elections, I’m OK with it! But wait… why don’t we take off the mask and see who’s really behind this? Milo YIANNOPOLOUS???? Thanks, Velma!

As fallout from Donald Trump’s meeting with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes continues, a far-right activist has claimed the meeting was a set-up, meant to “make Trump’s life miserable”.

NBC News reported that in an attempt to “send a message” to the former president, Milo Yiannopoulos, a rightwing provocateur and former Breitbart editor, helped arrange for Fuentes to travel to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for a dinner between Trump and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Trump dined with Fuentes and Ye at his resort on 22 November. Since the meeting, Trump has been criticized by senior Republicans and by conservative Jewish leaders.

Trump said Ye was invited to dinner and “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends … whom I knew nothing about”. He has not condemned Fuentes and his views. Fuentes has been described by the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League as “among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/30/milo-yiannopoulos-nick-fuentes-donald-trump-dinner

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Kevin McCarthy
[br] [/font] [br]

You know what my favorite thing about the right wing is? They love them some American symbolism, and they cannot get enough of it. It’s not enough to just have an American flag. There has to be a bald eagle in front of it. Riding a tank. Carrying an AR-15. And the American flag has to be torn. And set on fire. And you know what? Fuck it, let’s add some fireworks for good measure. And maybe a ripped piece of the Constitution that says "WE THE PEOPLE" in a large font. You get the idea. Unfortunately, Kevin McCarthy (Q – Batshit) is going to be our Speaker Of The House for the next two years. Here’s the thing – now that conservatives are back in control of the House, we can expect that Fox News will be calling a lot of the shots. So expect investigations into child grooming (whatever that is), the border crisis (whatever that is), and of course, Hunter Biden’s laptop. Which is the Benghazi of Pizzagates. So what does Kevin McCarthy plan to do on his first day as the new House Speaker? Why he plans to waste Congressional time by reading every single word of the US Constitution. Every one,.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is still short on the Republican support he’ll need to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the next Congress. The GOP leader is also still looking for ways to impress members of his conference, especially on the far right.

To that end, McCarthy last week pitched an idea via Facebook: “Next year, Republicans will start every day of Congress with prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. No exceptions.” It wasn’t long, of course, before annoying people like me reminded the congressman that Congress already starts every day with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance — it’s literally a written rule of the U.S. House of Representatives, as it’s been for many years — and his vow was entirely redundant.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s not your imagination. As readers with long memories might recall, shortly after the 2010 midterms, the newly elected GOP majority leadership arranged for the entire Constitution to be read out loud. Two years later, Republicans did it again.

There wasn’t any harm in the stunt, of course, but there wasn’t any point, either. It seemed to be the Republicans’ way of trying to tell the political world that they are the ones who truly love the Constitution.

The practice soon after fell out of favor, even under GOP majorities, in part because no one seemed to find any value in that symbolic gesture, and in part because the process became more contentious than expected. As The Washington Post reported in 2011, “They skipped several passages that no longer apply, including those that condoned slavery, angering some Democrats. On a day designed to celebrate the Founding Fathers’ growing role in the nation’s political discourse, Democrats accused Republicans of distorting history and the men who wrote it.”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/still-looking-gop-backing-mccarthy-pitches-another-stunt-rcna58971

Yeah ‘Murica!!!!! Hey do we have any statistics analysts in the audience? What’s the Vegas over / under on him actually reading the part about “no religious test shall be required to hold public office” in Article 3? If I were a betting man, I would be willing to bet good money that he skips over that section. But really prayer in Congress? That won’t sit well with the growing atheist population in this country. And of course because the Infowars wing of the GOP doesn’t know how the government actually works, their solution in the coming months will be to impeach or investigate anyone they don’t agree with, and that’s going to be insane.

Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and warned of potential impeachment proceedings if he doesn’t step down, marking the House Republican leader’s strongest comments on the matter to date as he scrambles to lock down the votes for his speakership.

McCarthy, speaking from an event at the southern border, said that when Republicans take over the House in January, they will “investigate every order, every action, and every failure” to determine if they should begin impeachment proceedings.

“Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty. This is why today I am calling on the secretary to resign,” he said. “If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure. And we will determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Mayorkas has no plans to resign and called on Congress to come up with legislative solutions to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. The agency continues to maintain that the border is secure, but has acknowledged it is dealing with an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the country and that shifting demographics have added to the migration challenges they are facing.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/politics/kevin-mccarthy-homeland-security-secretary-alejandro-mayorkas-impeachment/index.html

So yeah GOP the question is – is this really your guy? Is this who you want to lead your party? If the answer is yes then that’s huge sign that the GOP is in disarray and is being taken over by batshit crazy conspiracy theorists. And already you know what they say about first impressions. And that is that you only get one. Mr. McCarthy isn’t even the speaker yet and he’s already made quite the first impression and that’s a total shit show. I guess he plans to get revenge for Greene and Boebert being booted off of committees by booting Omar and Swalwell? The stupid never ends.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is toeing a delicate line on national security issues in the lame-duck session as he seeks to win enough votes on the House floor to win the Speakership in January.

McCarthy is torn between competing factions of the GOP as he weighs a series of moves targeting the Biden administration and other Washington Democrats in the next Congress — all while trying to convince conservative GOP lawmakers to back him for Speaker.

He’s vowed to boot California Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the House Intelligence Committee and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He’s also threatened to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the southern border.

And McCarthy has indicated he will withhold GOP support for a lame-duck vote on a bipartisan defense policy bill as a way to fight “wokeism” in the military.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3754749-mccarthy-speaker-quest-leaves-balancing-act-on-national-security/

What other nonsense will the new MAGA-friendly House GOP be up to when they take over in January you might ask? Well I answer you. Even Marjorie 3 Names admitted that most of this is basically a “get revenge quick” stunt designed to, well, get revenge for the 2020 elections and lockdowns. Their plan is to get revenge on… Dr. Fauci? What did he do? Oh yeah that’s right – the MAGA morons who have no idea how government works think that one guy was single-handedly responsible for the 2020 lockdowns. Really, grow up, losers. Most of us have moved on from that shit already.

Democrats are bracing for pressure from GOP lawmakers as they threaten investigations of the Biden administration while fighting over who will be speaker when Republicans assume control of the House in the next congressional session.

After clinching the House in this year’s midterm elections, Republicans are expected to use their new subpoena powers on top Biden officials.

Those could include top White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has drawn GOP ire for record-high migrant-crossing numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Has he been derelict in his responsibilities? I think so,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Sunday of Mayorkas on ABC’s “This Week.” “I have a wide-open border in my home state. We have all these people coming in. We don’t know who they are.”
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-gop-eyes-fauci-dhs-secretary-probes-20221127-rrrwmidrf5cwbps5kanbtepi2q-story.html

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Kari Lake
[br] [/font] [br]

Q Anon. It’s like watching the kid who failed the test convincing the entire school board that he’s right and it was all a big lie. That’s what it’s like to watch the madness unfold in Arizona. Kari Lake (Q – Batshit) continues to deny that she lost the election to Katie Hobbs. Watching the shit show unfold in Arizona this week has been the true stuff of insanity. There were election deniers and Infowars fans coming out of the woodwork. So of course, the natural course for anyone connected to the MAGA world is if you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em. And that’s exactly what Lake did after refusing to concede. You just know they’re setting this up for a SCOTUS challenge, and god help us if they do. It’s funny that for the party that claims to hate trial lawyers, they really do love them some trial lawyers, don’t they? We probably won’t be hearing the end of this for a while.

Kari Lake, the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor, has filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over a variety of documents related to the election.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has for weeks drawn attention to voters who said they experienced long lines and other difficulties while voting on Election Day in Arizona’s largest county.

Her lawyer, Tim LaSota, says in the suit filed Wednesday that the county has not fulfilled public records requests filed on Nov. 15 and 16. The requests seek to identify voters who may have had trouble casting a ballot, such as people who checked in at more than one vote center or those who returned a mail ballot and also checked in at a polling place.

Lake is also asking for information about counted and uncounted ballots that were accidentally mixed. County officials have acknowledged the problem occurred at a handful of vote centers but say it happens in most elections and can be reconciled.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/kari-lake-files-elections-records-suit-after-losing-arizona-governors-race

Yeah sue ‘em now! Who cares? All they want to do is keep the grift going so they don’t have to, you know, do any real, actual work. But it gets worse – Kari’s nonsense is apparently spilling out into the Arizona Election Board certifiers. One county in Arizona – Cochise County – is refusing to certify the election results. And their nonsense could potentially cost them big time. Not just in the monetary department – which this will be ridiculously expensive – but it may also cost them a House seat! So keep playing with fire, Arizona GOP! Eventually you will get burned in the end!

Officials in a rural Arizona county Monday delayed the certification of November’s midterm elections, missing the legal deadline and leading the Arizona secretary of state’s office to sue over the county’s failure to sign off on the results.

By a 2-1 vote Monday morning, the Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.

In the lawsuit filed by the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – a Democrat who will be the state’s next governor – officials said failing to certify the election results violates state law and could “potentially disenfranchise” the county’s voters.

The standoff between officials in Cochise County and the Arizona secretary of state’s office illustrates how election misinformation is continuing to stoke controversy about the 2022 results in some corners of the country even though many of the candidates who echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were defeated in November.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/politics/arizona-county-delays-election-challenges/index.html

Yeah why do we keep putting up with these losers? It’s absolute madness! Whatever happened to “you lost, get over it!”. I don’t remember how many times I was told that after Hillary Clinton lost in the 2016 election. The good news is that most of the election deniers and hardcore conspiracy theorists like Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake lost their elections. But I always love when the Infowars wing of the GOP makes absurd claims like they’re fighting the Battle of Lexington And Concord in 2022. Well I got news for you conspiracy theorist kooks: you ain’t fighting shit. Keep fighting these pretend wars in your head.

According to the political website FiveThirtyEight, “the vast majority of election-denying candidates who lost their races have conceded.” They no more deserve applause than would arsonists who, at the last minute, decide to fight the fire that they had set.

But unlike these candidates, Kari Lake, the two-fisted, election-denying Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, adamantly refuses to concede even though the Associated Press declared that she lost the election by 17,000 votes. No surprise there because Lake had vowed during the campaign only to accept a result in which she was the winner — in other words, “heads I win, tails the election was rigged.” To emphasize her election-denying grit, Lake’s campaign recently began playing on social media the late Tom Petty’s song, “I won’t back down.”

Time will tell whether the 2022 midterms were the Gettysburg of election denial, the kind of battlefield defeat that in hindsight was a turning point. But, as the midterms demonstrated, election denial is certainly losing traction. Its adherents’ most realistic hope of a revival depends on a replay of 2020 in which Donald Trump, as the Republican nominee, loses the 2024 general election in a tight race and then uses election denial to rouse his MAGA mercenaries, at least those no longer serving prison terms, and the lunatic conspiracy theorists, to stop the electoral certification. It will be harder in 2024 since Trump won’t be rabble-rousing from a presidential perch and President Biden will have considerable means available to prevent a Jan. 6 replay.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3752836-kari-lake-and-the-last-stand-of-the-election-deniers/

Oh Kari, Kari, Kari. You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is – never try. And of course because rule of law doesn’t matter to the party of Alex Jones and Donald Trump, they’re simply wishing Kari into office. By the way if you’ve seen the protest pictures from Maricopa County, they’re ridiculously laughable. But apparently, Trump is attempting to just wish Kari into office. Yeah you know you can wish for anything. Like… I wish I was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now I am! Ya…! But this new version of the GOP is like The Secret, but for moronic conspiracy theorists.

Much of Lake’s Trump-backed campaign was centered around bolstering unfounded claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, and the former TV anchor has lived up to her commitment to only accept election results if she won.

Lake, who lost her bid for governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has refused to acknowledge the election results, instead filing a lawsuit requesting public records from Maricopa County that would detail which voters experienced issues casting their ballots, and information regarding errors in ballot counting.

“We know we won this election,” Lake said in a weekend interview with far-right streaming service Real America’s Voice. “We are going to do everything in our power to make sure that every single Arizonans vote that was disenfranchised is counted.”

Her efforts are clashing with a major electoral deadline. Monday is the last day for Arizona counties to certify the results of the 2022 midterms, and several counties have held out to register challenges. Cochise and Mojave country — both rural, Republican strongholds in the state — voted not to certify and instead delay their final decision until the last possible moment. If the counties fail to certify their election in time, Arizona state officials have indicated that they will go to court to force a certification, or all of the county’s ballots shall be discarded. If not resolved, the challenges could cause issues with Arizona’s scheduled statewide certification on December 5th.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-calls-for-kari-lake-to-be-installed-governor-of-arizona-1234637436/

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Holy Shit
[br] [/font] [br]

Gather around my fair brothers and sisters! It’s time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate, for the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it’s time to remind you that the holiest among us are the most full of:



My fair congregation! Please be seated! You know I’m becoming increasingly alarmed by the outright disgusting behavior coming from our brothers and sisters on the right. It’s getting truly beyond the pale and I’m tired of going through the same song and dance every single time we have a mass shooting in this country. Nothing changes. Nothing. That’s because our brothers and sisters on the right don’t worship GAWD or JAYSUS. They worship the unholy, ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a man so foul, so depraved and disgusting that his name DARE NOT be spoken in my church! But that said, every time something like this happens, the politics of the Dark One get in the way of any progress being made in this country. It’s truly the stuff of insanity. And once again, our brothers and sisters on the right don’t help any and in fact make the situation that much worse. I’m of course talking about the terrible Club Q tragedy in Colorado Springs last week. But wait, my fair congregation, just wait! Because the reactions to this terrible tragedy are every bit as equally horrifying!

A Washington state pastor celebrated the mass shooting last weekend at an LGBTQ nightclub that left five people dead.

Aaron Thompson, of Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Vancouver, said the massacre was a "good thing" and falsely claimed the victims had been molesting children, although he walked that back moments later by saying their had only been looking at children in an inappropriate way, reported Only Sky.

"Am I sad that five homos got shot?" Thompson said Tuesday in a sermon. "No, I’m not sad at all. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a good thing that they’re not here anymore to molest kids."

The gunman opened fire during a drag performance, which have become a target of conservative outrage, but the event at Club Q in Colorado Springs was not open to anyone younger than 18, unlike child-friendly "drag queen story hours" hosted by many libraries.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/right-wing-pastor-celebrates-club-q-massacre-as-good-thing-in-hate-filled-sermon/ar-AA14xW7e?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=b733479cd5c44d5ab83c1adac0443899

Now this is the problem that I have with the unchecked and unfiltered system of nonstop right wing propaganda in this country. It makes people do and say things like this that are truly horrible and beyond the pale. Oh and he’s apparently not the worst of them either. Check out this crazy woman Jenna Ellis – a former employee of the unholy Dark One. And here’s what she had to say. She is definitely on the side of the unholy Dark One. And the shit coming from the right after finding out the shooter’s orientation is just as cringe worthy as you might expect.

Jenna Ellis, one of the right-wing lawyers who represented former President Donald Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election, proclaimed on Wednesday's edition of The Jenna Ellis Show that the five victims who were murdered in the massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado early Sunday morning are burning in Hell.

"The five people who were killed in the nightclub that night, there is no evidence at all that they were Christians. So assuming that they were not, that they had not accepted the truth of the gospel of Christ and affirmed Jesus Christ as the lord of their life, they are now reaping the consequences of having eternal damnation," Ellis said. "And that is far, far greater – we should be having that conversation. Instead of just the tragedy of what happened to the body, we need to be talking about what happened to the soul and the fact that they are now in eternal separation from our lord and savior Jesus Christ."
https://www.rawstory.com/reaping-the-consequences-of-eternal-damnation-jenna-ellis-says-club-q-victims-are-burning-in-hell/

Pretty sure those who give comfort and aid to our enemy will be the ones answering to SAYTAN, yet they are convinced that they will see the light. But of course we are currently living in a world where the lunatic right wing fringe is convinced they are always right, and we also live in Elon Musk’s Twitter world, where white supremacists are freely given a megaphone. This is yet another sad tale of America’s lust for the firearm. And of course another lunatic on the right, Herschel Walker – a man who claims to be a man of GAWD. With followers like these, who needs heathens?

On Saturday, a 22-year-old man with a history of domestic violence killed five people and injured 22 others with an AR-15 at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Some people were at the venue, Club Q, to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a commemoration of people killed in anti-trans violence. One of the victims, bartender Daniel Aston, was transgender.

Some gun-loving Republicans offered their typical thoughts and prayers after the 34th mass shooting in the U.S. this year; others just carried on with the kind of homophobic rhetoric that fuels hate crimes like this. Herschel Walker, who’s currently campaigning for a December 6 runoff election in Georgia against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), went ahead with his wildly bigoted stump speech on Sunday in Carrollton, without acknowledging the shooting at all.

Here’s what Walker told voters yesterday, according to audio obtained by Jezebel:

“Do y’all know what the definition of an enemy is? A enemy is somebody that don’t like you. But they been telling you they don’t know the definition of a woman either. So think about that either. They don’t know the definition of a woman. But I’m going to tell you the definition of a woman. Because it written in my great book. It said ‘a man and a woman.’ And there’s a difference between the two of them. So that’s the reason men shouldn’t be in women’s sport—here’s a difference.

-snip-
Read more: https://jezebel.com/herschel-walker-delivers-unhinged-transphobic-speech-th-1849808603

Yes you should! Because the one that you’re currently on isn’t working! You know we may have to do a deep dive on Herschel Walker’s insane religious views in a future Holy Shit. But there is one thing I wanted to touch on. Colorado Springs isn’t just a symptom of the problem in this country in the growing war on hate vs free speech, they are a part of the problem. Because Colorado is the home to an organization that you may have heard of, that we discuss on this program from time to time, called Focus On The Family. So yeah how do you fight back against toxic religion? Well with this.

A sign at the Colorado Springs headquarters of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian group Focus on the Family was vandalized in protest of the mass shooting at Club Q in that city, a crime that left five people dead and nearly 20 injured.

Someone spray-painted “Their blood is on your hands” and “Five lives taken” on the sign at Focus’s headquarters, The Denver Post reports. Officials at the organization wouldn’t say exactly when the incident happened.

A group called Colorado Peoples Press claimed responsibility for the incident. “We chose to proceed with this action because of the incredible violence that Focus on the Family continues to perpetuate” against LGBTQ+ people, the group said in a press release shared on Twitter.

“These [five] individuals gathered at Club Q with friends and loved ones, new and old, to be in community and to grieve all the lives lost to transphobia,” the group added. The shooting was an “act of hate,” it said.
https://news.yahoo.com/focus-family-anti-lgbtq-group-180059790.html

Sigh… so that’s why things will never get better after every mass shooting. It’s the circle of death and it screws us all! There you go! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:




[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Late Stage Capitalism – Everyone’s On Strike
[br] [/font] [br]

When mega corporations have nowhere to go but excessive profits and are trying to squeeze out your every last dollar, there’s extreme greed, and then there’s:



Welcome everybody back to our segment, Top 10 presents: Late Stage Capitalism! That’s right – what’s a few extra zeroes on your quarterly profit statement? At the expense of the entire rest of the world. So when mega billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson have more wealth than entire continents combined, it’s time to take them down a few pegs! And how do you do that, you might be asking? Well, I answer you, ladies and gentlemen. That answer is: the strike. And it seems like everyone is going on strike these days. Whether it’s Amazon workers in Kentucky. Or Starbucks workers in New York City, or it’s automotive workers in Michigan. Look, the entire world is coming out of the nightmare of the last two years known as the COVID-19 pandemic. And nobody ever said that reopening the world after being closed for nearly a year and half was going to be easy. But of course leave it to the union busting tactics of the likes of Jeff Bezos to reel in those sweet, sweet profits.

Amazon workers at the air hub outside the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport, Amazon’s largest air hub in the world, are pushing to organize a union in the latest effort to mobilize workers at the tech company.

Workers say they are dissatisfied with annual wage increases this year. About 400 of them have signed a petition to reinstate a premium hourly pay for Amazon’s peak season that hasn’t been enacted at the site yet. Their main demands also include a $30 an hour starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings.

“We have to operate a lot of heavy machinery, freight loaders, cargo tractors and things like that, and people aren’t paid any extra to do that work,” said Griffin Ritze, an air associate and ramp agent at the Amazon air hub, and a member of the organizing committee. “They just cross-train you in as many roles as possible and you’re constantly shuffled around.”

About 4,500 workers are employed at the expanding air hub in Kentucky. Those organizing have already filed two unfair labor practice charges over Amazon’s response to the unionization effort, which has included anti-union talking points on televisions and its communications system for employees that characterize the effort as a third-party scheme.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/27/workers-amazon-air-hub-union-cincinnati-northern-kentucky

It’s a lot more complex than just money. Amazon has been at the center of some egregious human rights violations in its’ warehouses which are becoming the size of the Costcos like the one in the movie Idiocracy. But Amazon isn’t the only company where workers are going on strike. There’s also Starbucks where strikes are happening in multiple states. Not only that, the Cal State University system is going on strike! Where does it end? Well it will probably end with a pissing contest between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk over who controls most of the internet world and most of the money, that’s what.

Finals start next Tuesday at UC Irvine but there are still a lot of unanswered questions as protests at all 10 University of California campuses go into a third week.

Almost 48,000 UC student researchers, teaching assistants and postdoctoral scholars walked off the job on Nov. 14 demanding better pay and benefits.

Negotiations between United Auto Workers, the union that represents the student workers, and the university continue.

"I'm stressed but I'm still hopeful," said Yiwen Lin, an education department graduate at UCI.

Picketers remain united at UCI.

"I can't believe we're into week 3 and still doing this," said Biraj Bisht, who is also a graduate researcher. "I imagined we'd be over a longer; earlier but we're still here and we'll still be here as long as it takes."
https://abc7.com/university-of-california-student-worker-strikes-campus-uc-irvine/12504448/

And you know what, people? This is why we say all elections matter. It matters who you vote for and where they stand on the issues. You think your job conditions are miserable? Well, the conservatives voted for this. But if you vote right, you won’t have to worry about it. But if you vote R because the talk shows and internet propaganda tells you to, this is what you wind up with. And it’s a good thing that we have cooler heads at some levels of the government and in the White House, otherwise things could be a hell of a lot worse.

The U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote Wednesday to block a potential rail strike after President Joe Biden warned of the dire economic consequences of a rail disruption that could happen as early as Dec. 9.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers will vote Wednesday to impose a tentative contract deal struck in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers.

"I don't like going against the ability of unions to strike but weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike," she said Tuesday after a meeting with Biden.

Biden had warned Monday of a catastrophic economic impact if railroad service ground to a halt, saying up to 765,000 Americans could lose their jobs in the first two weeks of a strike.

"Congress, I think, has to act to prevent it. It's not an easy call, but I think we have to do it. The economy is at risk," Biden said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-urges-congress-act-avert-potential-rail-strike-2022-11-29/

But here's why things aren't getting any better. It's because of one word: profit. That's right. The right can keep fighting with the left all they want, but in the end, the only thing that matters to these corporate scumbags is the almighty dollar. See the railroad strike is a thing and President Biden can only do so much to stop it. It's inherently evil and Wall Street is very broken. To stop corporations from raiding every last dollar we have, we have got to fix the profit margin.

Railroad workers are unionized and their contract is set to expire on Dec. 9, which has prompted speculation about a possible railroad strike that could disrupt travel and cripple supply chains.

President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh helped broker a tentative deal earlier this year, but four out of 12 rail unions voted against it, mostly because the proposed contract included just one single paid sick day. In their current contract, the workers have zero sick days.

-snip-

On Monday, Biden issued a statement saying Congress should intervene immediately and pass legislation to force the tentative contract on the rail workers. Taking this step would erase the workers’ right to strike, and yet, in the same statement, Biden called himself “a proud pro-labor President.”

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted on a bill to adopt the tentative contract, which passed 290-137. Many Democrats were also furious about the sick time issue, so the House also voted on Resolution 119, which would add seven days of paid sick leave to the contract. A whopping 207 Republicans voted against it. The resolution still passed with 221 votes, from 218 Democrats and a measly three Republicans.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/more-than-200-republicans-voted-against-paid-sick-days-for-railroad-workers/ar-AA14L1Xx

Yes BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! So all 207 Republicans currently sitting in the house, once again vote against our best interests. Because god forbid that people need assistance in this country. Only Americans can be tricked into voting against free money. But the good news is that while all of these strikes aren't exactly good, people should be in favor of the workers instead of the giant corporations and hundreds of billions of dollars in quarterly profits they make. Of all of these strikes, the most devastating would be a rail strike, because that would affect everyone. At least it was stopped. For now.

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation Wednesday afternoon that would help avert a freight rail strike the White House fears could cripple the U.S. economy – 30 years after Congress last intervened in a looming rail shutdown.

Lawmakers also passed a related measure that would provide seven days of additional paid sick leave to rail workers.

The bipartisan vote to avert the strike was 290-137 while the paid sick leave amendment passed 221-207 almost entirely along party lines. Both measures now head to the Senate.

After the vote, President Joe Biden thanked House Democratic and Republican lawmakers for "taking urgent action" and prodded the Senate to act fast.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/11/30/house-avert-freight-rail-strike-unions-economy/10800247002/

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner
[br] [/font] [br]



Welcome back to our segment that attempts to explain the unexplainable, Conspiracy Corner! Because when people just don’t feel like reading the full article, they just make shit up to fill in the gaps. We of course are coming to you live from our underground doomsday shelter in New Mexico, undisclosed location of course! Let me just adjust my trusty tin foil hat for maximum government interference. They are trying to read both yours and my thoughts, after all! Ah, there we go! This week, a man who is a regular guest here on Conspiracy Corner, and a man with currently both nothing and everything to lose, Mr. Creepy Pillow Man himself, Mike Lindell is getting out of the conspiracy theory basement and into the spotlight. That’s right – he plans to run for the chair of the Republican National Committee! So why not you might ask? And I counter your question with – why would you? Because the GOP is now the party of Trump and Fox News. Of course the “Trumpier Than Thou” party is going to go berserk and replace the sane members with bootlickers.

Don't sleep on the upcoming Republican National Committee chair campaign, says Mike Lindell.

The MyPillow CEO whose cause célèbre in recent years has been casting doubt about the validity of election results announced his candidacy for chair of the RNC Monday.

Lindell, who made the announcement on an online show hosted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, said in an interview with CBS News that he was unsatisfied with the party's performances in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections – in which the Republican Party failed to maintain or regain control of both houses of the federal legislature.

"You need a different input to get a different output. That's business 101," Lindell said.

The Minnesotan said if he got the job he'd approach it full-time, leaving behind the pillow business that made him famous. Lindell said he has not yet developed a campaign platform, but is first conducting "due diligence," in part, he said, by trying to talk to all 168 voting members of the committee.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mypillow-guy-mike-lindell-republican-party-chair/

Could you seriously imagine this guy in charge of anything? Let alone the Republican Party? Well the merging of the GOP with the Trump / MAGA world and the Christofascism world was pretty inevitable, this would make it official. So why now? Well like most bad things, he did some praying, and he decided that it was “God’s Will” that he run in the election. Yeah when you start thinking that it’s god’s will for you to do something like this, you should probably be locked up before you become a danger to yourself and others.

Beleaguered MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced on Monday that he would challenge longtime Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel for the party's leadership at the RNC's meeting in January.

"I am 100% running for the RNC chairman against Ronna McDaniel," Lindell declared during an interview with former White House adviser Stephen Bannon. "One of the big donors said to me, he said, 'Mike, everybody wants you to be head of the RNC, some of them just don't know it yet,'" he continued.

Speaking with Axios, the outspoken supporter of Donald Trump denied that the former president had influenced his decision to run for RNC chair, telling the outlet that "I did not call him and say, 'What do you think about this?' "This is my decision."

Lindell's announcement comes after days of telegraphing his intent to oust McDaniel, who has increasingly come under fire from within her own party, following the GOP's lackluster showing in the recent midterm elections. McDaniel, however, has reportedly locked in the backing of the majority of RNC members who will elect their next chair in January. Lindell, meanwhile, has largely spent the past several years in the spotlight for his wild, conspiratorial proclamations, and for having his phone seized by FBI investigators at a Minnesota Hardee's drive-through.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/mypillow-boss-mike-lindell-100-204646193.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACUQ131MT_dcPo_8iu_hM1Y7GwerkyPMAJRuvASRZkCl-8X8hraiOTQT5g1SW85eI7E7ZyKpTx8TprSirbuaCiZIX3mL-7sM_zihqG5IHehj-jI3JeRStaqL_PQ3pEM8B-lAf01Cb9ZRRInXK5Ot9-O2UHVvHt0YhXaIM31spD2_

So yeah what a great idea! Let’s replace anyone decent that the GOP has left with election denying conspiracy theorists, MAGA bootlickers, Fox News bots, and neo Nazi extremists! What a great idea, Mikey! And yeah it’s “god’s will”, sure, why not. I’m sure that God is great with you hanging out with all of these undesirable people. So is he the GOP’s Dark Knight? Is he the leader that they deserve? Oh yeah you betcha! Throw in Steve Bannon as his sidekick too. He’s the leader they need, but not the one they deserve. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. But no, he’s no Dark Knight.

Ronna McDaniel’s tenure as chair of the Republican National Committee has not been without setbacks. In her first election cycle as the RNC’s leader, her party lost control of the U.S. House. In her second election cycle atop the party, Republicans lost the White House and the U.S. Senate. And in her third election cycle at the RNC — this year — McDaniel saw her party fall far short of expectations.

On Fox News over the weekend, South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, in apparent reference to McDaniel, said, “I don’t know if a party can continue to lose like we have and keep their jobs.”

The incumbent RNC chair is nevertheless seeking a fourth term. For McDaniel’s intra-party detractors, the good news is that she now has a high-profile rival. The bad news for Republicans looking for an alternative to McDaniel is that the rival is the pillow guy. Axios reported overnight:

As part of the same interview, Lindell told Bannon, “I’m all in ... and one of the things that one of the big donors said to me, he said, ‘Mike, everybody wants you to be head of the RNC, some of them just don’t know it yet.’”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-launches-odd-campaign-rnc-chair-rcna59136

That’s not enough tin foil there, Bart! But let’s think about this here for a minute – imagine having the balls to say that it’s “God’s will” that you’re going to do something like this? It’s true mind-boggling insanity. We think Mikey should probably be locked up before he becomes a danger to himself or to others. But it may be too late for that. And what better way to keep losing than to have noted Neo Nazi and election denier Blake Masters as your chief strategist? Well, I mean if you’re going to lose, you might as well lose in such a way that people scream “Holy shit, what a loser!”.

GOP flop Blake Masters has been tapped by the Republican National Committee to serve on an advisory council conducting a midterms postmortem and helping shape the party’s 2024 strategy, according to a report from Politico.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel has allegedly brought in a slew of advisers, including both successful and unsuccessful 2022 candidates to serve on the new “Republican Party Advisory Council.” Members alongside Masters include Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, Representatives-elect Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) and John James (R-Mich.), and senator-elect Katie Britt (R-Ala.).

Masters, who lost his bid to unseat incumbent Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, was one of several high-profile MAGA candidates whose culture war-heavy campaign strategy failed to resonate with voters. The former venture capitalist ran with the financial backing of his former boss, billionaire Peter Thiel, and the endorsement of former President Trump. Despite the loss, i a statement to Politico Masters indicated he remains interested in a future in politics. “I look forward to working with Ronna to make sure the party effectively supports our candidates and wins big in 2024,” Masters said. “Our party needs to modernize. We’re fighting against Big Tech, the media, and now, the Democrats’ GOTV early voting machine.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/blake-masters-rnc-advisory-committee-1234638130/

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]I Need A Drink: Beer At The World Cup
[br] [/font] [br]

Hey everyone, I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink!



Of course you know by now that the idea of this segment is that if you’re tired of all the terrible news in the world, the only solution is to belly up to the bar with a glass of your favorite beverage, embrace the nonsense, and forget about life for a few minutes! Only rules we got in this bar – no fightin’, no cussin’, and most importantly - no politics! We do allow swearing to some extent, as long as it’s never at someone. Only with. This week we’re drinking for all of those who are brave enough to attend the World Cup in Doha, Qatar and are unable to enjoy a glass of their favorite beverage! So tell me bartender, what goes well with a story about a lack of beer? Beer! You read my mind! Bring me the largest glass of IPA you got! That’s… a pretty big one! So of course the World Cup is going on in Doha, Qatar, and everyone is harping on FIFA for the lack of their ability to drink. Gee, you think maybe holding an international event in a country that’s run by a religious dictatorship and notorious for human rights violations may be a bad thing? Well duh of course it was!

On Saturday evening, on the fifth floor of the Crowne Plaza hotel, one solution to what has become the World Cup’s first-week crisis is revealed. The answer lies in the name of this establishment: Brewskis and Grub, a restaurant that serves pub food, is decorated with flags from all over the world, plays soccer on its myriad flatscreens and delivers something that has been endlessly debated.

Beer.

When Brewskis opens at 5 p.m., it’s empty, save for a staff from all over the world. In the corner, near the bar, there’s a sign made from light bulbs that glows like a water station in the, well, desert. BEER YOURSELF it says in neon lights, next to an image of a frosty mug with a slogan—it’s ok to tap it!—glowing red inside.

The sign is literal, in that there are taps below it. Those taps work with cards that can be purchased. Grab a frosty mug, place the card against a scanner, pour, watch the balance whittle away by the ounce and … voila. It’s time to go full Homer Simpson.

Fans the world over can buy beer—and wine and booze—all over Doha, at hotels with licenses and exorbitant upcharges. (The $12.36 at Brewskis for a—gulp—Budweiser is actually cheaper than most places). But the sentiment that’s being peddled by the host country and its FIFA enablers—that it’s not hard to find alcohol, so it shouldn’t matter if it’s sold in stadiums—is little more than clumsy, intentional misdirection.
https://www.si.com/soccer/2022/11/19/qatar-world-cup-2022-beer-stadium-ban-fifa-gianni-infantino

Yes, beer! That glorious concoction of hops, yeast and barley that’s enjoyed all over the world by, you know, people who like to have fun. Except at the World Cup. You can buy beer in Doha, you just can’t buy it at the stadium. So of course what happens after the Qatari government decides to ban beer? The fans demand it! Come on, let’s face it – beer and futbol go together like, well, beer and anything. Like pizza for instance. Pizza is so much better with a tall frosty glass of your favorite cerveza! And this is what happened after beer was banned:

Fans of victorious Ecuador were heard chanting "We want beer" during their World Cup-opening win over Qatar, while the host nation's supporters left en masse before the end of the game on Sunday.

Large swathes of empty seats in the second half summed up the Qatar soccer team's disappointing start to their first World Cup, but a lively and outnumbered group of Ecuadorians in the stands provided some levity by chanting for beer toward the end of the first half.

It was a humorous intervention two days after Qatar decided to ban beer sales at the stadiums during the World Cup. It was a late change by the conservative Islamic nation where access to alcohol is strictly limited, with only alcohol-free Bud Zero sold at the game.

The night started with more than 67,000 mostly Qatari fans filling the cavernous Al Bayt Stadium, enjoying an opening ceremony that showcased the tiny Arab emirate to a global audience 12 years after winning the right to host soccer's biggest event.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/fifa-world-cup/story/4807743/ecuador-fans-chant-we-want-beer-qatars-leave-opener-early

Yeah you know things are fucked up when your country’s most hardcore fans – the fans that are willing to travel half way across the fucking world to see your country’s team play – leave early because there’s no alcohol sold at the stadium. That is colossally fucked up! Oh and it gets weirder, my friends! Alcohol isn’t the only that’s being banned in Qatar. Free speech is limited, so is freedom of religion, and other social issues like homosexuality are all limited. Yeah maybe send a warning to FIFA that the next World Cup shouldn’t be held in a country like this!

The World Cup is equal parts sporting event and international celebration — and for many fans, alcohol plays a large role. That's been true in stadiums, and in bars that open early or stay open late to show games.

But the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is unlike any before it. Just two days before the tournament's first match in the Muslim nation, officials made the surprise announcement that fans won't be allowed to drink beer at the country's eight World Cup stadiums — a reversal of a previously announced policy.

Alcohol is tightly regulated in Qatar, where customs agents are under orders to seize any booze visitors try to bring into the country.

It's one of many cultural clashes and potential legal issues that fans might encounter in Qatar, particularly if they're traveling from more open societies. Here's a quick guide:

Islam is the official religion of Qatar — and anyone found to be proselytizing for other religions or criticizing Islam "may be criminally prosecuted," the State Department said, in a factsheet about Qatar for World Cup visitors.

It's also not safe to assume you can practice your faith openly: "Qatar allows some non-Muslim religious practice in designated areas like Doha's Religious Complex, but all faiths are not accommodated equally," the U.S. agency said.

Speech that's deemed critical of the Qatari government could trigger an arrest. Those laws apply both to spoken words and social media.

And while past World Cups have brought a heaping of argy-bargy — scenes of rival crowds yelling or even singing obscenities at one another — open conflicts can bring big problems in Qatar.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/1137783957/world-cup-qatar-fan-restrictions-alcohol

Yeah so you might be wondering what happened to all the beer, exactly? Well there’s everything from finding alternatives to beer to drinking beer outside the stadium. But many people are wondering what exactly, the king of beers, Budweiser, is going to do with all of the beer that they produced specifically for the World Cup? Budweiser is the official beer of FIFA and the World Cup. They produced some $75 MILLION DOLLARS worth of beer. Well, the good news is that whichever country wins the whole tournament, they will get all of the beer! Come on USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Cases of Budweiser that were meant to be sold during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar will instead go to fans of whichever country wins the global soccer tournament, the beer brand's parent company announced this week.

The World Cup kicked off on Sunday with fans cheering on their favorite teams from living room couches, neighborhood bars and in the stadiums — but without booze, as the host county announced a surprise ban on alcohol sales in stadiums. Now Anheuser-Busch InBev said it plans to bring the "celebration from the FIFA World Cup stadiums to the winning country's fans."

"We will host the ultimate championship celebration for the winning country," the Belgium brewer said in a statement, adding that it will provide more details on the beer giveaway as the tournament approaches the December 18 final.

FIFA officials announced last week that no alcohol will be sold at the eight stadiums in Qatar hosting matches, drawing complaints from visiting fans. The Muslim country is conservative and tightly regulates alcohol sales and usage.

Fans can still purchase Bud Zero, Budweiser's non-alcoholic beverage, inside stadiums in Qatar, FIFA said.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-cup-qatar-alcohol-beer-ban-budweiser/

[div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]World Tour 2022 Destination #15 - Mexico
[br] [/font] [br]

Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:



[font size="4"]Destination #15: Mexico: [/font]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/313g+A58k3L._AC_.jpg


Well we’re finally back in North America everybody! Unfortunately our World Tour hit a couple of bumps along the way but we’ve since got those ironed out! We have just two more destinations left in our World Tour and a couple more planned for next year! But this week we’re heading to that country that’s just south of the border of the United States, Mexico! Mexico is of course the home of one of my favorite cuisines of the entire world, Mexican food! But Mexican food is so much more than what you get at Taco Bell. Mexico is also the home of the ancient Mayans and Aztecs, and its’ chief export is corn, or what they call “maize”. But Mexico is also now apparently in a war with the US over genetically modified foods. But we can’t fault Mexico here, you don’t want to mix genetically modified foods with the naturally growing ones, that could spell utter disaster!

A row between the US and Mexico over a plan by the latter to ban imports of genetically modified corn by 2024 deepened on Monday.

US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned Mexico's president that the US would be forced to take legal action if no "acceptable resolution" was found.

Mexico argues that genetically modified seeds are a threat to its own ancient native corn varieties.

But on Tuesday, Mexico's president said he would seek a deal with the US.

A ban would have "significant impact" on US-Mexico trade, Mr Vilsack had earlier warned.

Mexico is the second-largest importer of corn in the world after China, and much of the corn it buys comes from the United States.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63793651

Yeah not the corn! But moving on, you know all the jokes and rumors that you hear about Mexican prisons losing prisoners? It’s true! It’s all true! In fact one of the worst criminals in Mexican history, Edgar Villareal, is missing, and the Mexican Federales have no idea where he is! Yeah that’s exactly the kind of person who you don’t want to go missing. At least as much as we give the US prison system a lot of shit, there’s no way a guy like that would go missing. They’d keep him locked in maximum security behind glass Hannibal Lecter style.

The whereabouts of Édgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie,” one of the most bloodthirsty drug-traffickers in Mexican history, is unknown. The cartel chief does not appear to be in the custody of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), where he is serving a sentence running until 2056, as an EL PAÍS search of the database records of all inmates within the system has confirmed. A lack of official information as to Valdez Villarreal’s current status has seen his name back in the headlines, more than a decade after he was arrested in August 2010.

“There are a number of reasons why an inmate may be listed as ‘not in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons,’” a spokesperson for the US corrections agency tells EL PAÍS. “Inmates who were previously in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons and who have not served their sentence may be out of custody for a period of time to attend court hearings, receive medical treatment or for other reasons. We do not provide specific information about the status of prisoners who are not in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for security or privacy reasons,” he adds. Until he vanished from the system, Valdez Villarreal had been serving his sentence in the Coleman II high-security penitentiary in central Florida.

The Mexican Attorney General’s Office and Secretariat of Foreign Affairs have both also confirmed to this newspaper that they also have no knowledge of La Barbie’s legal situation. One of the lawyers who represented the drug lord in court in Atlanta, Georgia, where Valdez Villarreal was sentenced in June 2018, gave no comment, arguing that he did not know why his client’s name does not appear on the BOP registry of inmates in the US federal prison system.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-11-30/mexico-asks-us-for-answers-as-notorious-drug-lord-la-barbie-vanishes-from-federal-prison-system.html

And remember what I said about Mexico and what we call soccer? Well there they refer to it as “futbol” and our version of football as “futbol Americano”. And they are a country that is very passionate about sports and their national team. Of course you know that the World Cup is still a currently ongoing thing right now, and Mexico got eliminated after scoring big against Saudi Arabia, but failed to advance after Poland won. Yeah the rules are ridiculous, I know,. But one thing you don’t do is disrespect a country or their culture or team or they will come after you!

Mexican boxer Saul ‘Canelo’ Álvarez has sent a warning to Lionel Messi, who he accused of disrespecting Mexico.

“Did you see Messi cleaning the floor with our shirt and flag????” Álvarez tweeted, apparently in reference to a video which shows Messi celebrating with his teammates in the changing room.

As the Argentine takes off his football boots, the video shows Messi’s foot appearing to make contact with a Mexico shirt that was on the floor. There is no indication that Messi kicked the shirt intentionally.

“He better pray to God that I don’t find him!!” Álvarez added in another tweet, with a series of angry emojis. “Just like I respect Argentina, he has to respect Mexico! I’m not talking about the country as a who, just about the bulls**t that Messi pulled.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/football/canelo-alvarez-lionel-messi-warning-spt-intl/index.html

Yeah it’s a lot more than that! One thing I will say is that if you’re planning on traveling to Mexico anytime soon, and you should. We went to Los Cabos a few editions ago and had a blast. But you should be aware that there’s some Mexican states that you probably shouldn’t visit for the foreseeable future, because well, there’s some bad shit going on there. And by “bad shit”, I mean kidnapping, extortion, and of course the famous ultra-corrupt Mexican police that the entire world knows about. But like all travel, just don’t wander too far from the tourist destinations and you should be good.

The United States could soon change the way it formulates its travel advice for Mexico, the Tourism Ministry (Sectur) has suggested.

Mexico is pushing for the U.S. government’s travel alerts to be more specific than they currently are, arguing that the State Department’s advice against traveling to some destinations is misguided.

Federal Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma, and state tourism ministers met virtually with State Department officials to discuss the issue on Wednesday. Sectur subsequently issued a press release with the heading “Mexico and the United States move forward on agreements so that travel alerts are correctly targeted.”

In its current advisory, the State Department warns U.S. citizens not to travel to six states — Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas — due to crime or crime and kidnapping, and advises Americans to reconsider their need to travel to seven others.

The Sectur statement noted that Torruco, during a trip to Washington, D.C., in May, suggested that U.S. travel alerts should “detail the areas that could represent problems and not generalize, as some isolated cases of insecurity are numerous kilometers from tourism destinations.”
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/travel/mexico-tourism-us-travel-alerts/

[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font]

Tourism: A
Culture: B+
Political Spectrum: C
Liberal Appeal: B

Overall: B-

Change from 2017: No change

[font size="4"]Next Week: [/font]

When we come back on the 15th, it’s our final stop of our 2022 World Tour as we visit the land of Carnivale, the rainforest, and futbol – Brazil!



[font size="4"]And Now This: [/font]
[font size="4"]Death Cab For Cutie[/font]

Folks, my next guest has a great new album out called “Asphalt Meadows”. You can see them at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas at the Kia Forum on Dec. 10th! Playing their song “Here To Forever”, give it up for Death Cab For Cutie!

Thank you Irvine! It’s good to be back home! We’re off next week but we will bring you The Best Of Holy Shit, and on the 15th we come back with our season finale and our 2022 Year In Review spectacular! See you in two weeks!

Credits

Host: Initech
Death Cab For Cutie Appears Courtesy Of: Atlantic Recording Corporation
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Irvine Improv, Irvine, CA
Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders.
Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Writing: Top 10 Writing Department
Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department
Research: Top 10 Research Department
Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department
Legal: Top 10 Legal Department
Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department
HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department
Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc.
Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA
Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management
Follow The Top 10 On Twitter at: @10Idiots
Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Twitter: @churchoftop10
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [e-mail]


Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo