Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-23: Aint No Party Like A GOP Party Edition

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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-23: Aint No Party Like A GOP Party Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! For the intro this week, we got to talk about the Eagles. The band of course.

Thanks, Dude. We love the Eagles here. I’ve seen them in concert and they were amazing. So you know that the Eagles sued Hotel California, right? No it’s not that Hotel California. There’s a hotel in Baja California, that apparently was using the name of the Eagles song and their music without their permission. You’d think Don Henley would love the idea of the fact that there’s an actual hotel called “Hotel California” right? WRONG!!!! Apparently they don’t and they are suing. And you know my favorite part of this whole thing? So the actual inspiration for the song was the real life Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California (my state!!!). So the Eagles are suing to prevent association from the hotel and the band. But you’d think this would be a natural marketing gimmick for both the band and the hotel. But nope. Now here’s the kicker – the actual hotel was opened in 1950. Don Henley on the other hand – was born in 1947 – he was 3 when that hotel opened! Yeah think about it! Doesn’t that blow your mind? Yeah that just happened ! OK enough of the intro this week. We got a lot of idiocy to cover. That’s enough of the intro. But first. John Oliver is back and he’s uniting the time wasters and trolls of the internet to help sign the FCC’s petition on Net Neutrality:

The top 2 slots in this week’s edition are easily going to the House Republicans (1,2). They are cheering over the fact that they just denied 24 million Americans healthcare. Not only are they cheering about it, they’re quite literally popping the champagne as if they won the world series. In the third slot is of course President Trump. And we’re going to have some fun with this one, and we get to introduce to you our fun new character – Trumpy The Fake News Parrot! So you know the Trump – Flynn hearings are ongoing. And it’s a shit show. And of course Trump is playing the Fake News card. Taking the 4th slot, is of course President Donald Trump. And this time we’re going to talk about something we haven’t discussed in much detail – his stance in the war on drugs. Attorney General Forrest Gump wants to bring back the War on Drugs and escalate it, but without Drug Control offices, he may be SOL. And in the fifth slot, we’re going to debut a new feature, and I hope it goes well. This one is called “Fundies Say The Darndest Things!”. And there’s a lot of batshit stuff that fundies have been saying in the wake of AHCA, Oh and by “darndest”, I mean “evil, crazy bullshit”. At number 6 is Republicans Vs. Talk Shows. So republicans attacked Jimmy Kimmel for speaking out about how we need a better health care system, while they also attacked Stephen Colbert for his controversial joke last week, and we talked about that in the intro. In the 7th slot is the Trump brothers – Uday and Qusay, because Eric Trump recently admitted that the Trump organization may or may not have taken money from Russia. This is not the thing to say when you’re under investigation regarding your dealings with, I don’t know, Russia!!! Taking the number 8 slot, the biggest loser this week is none other than Marine LaPen and we’re going to talk about her defeat and what this means for the white nationalist movement – which may or may not be coming to a country near you! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!!) slot – we have to talk about music once again, but the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot is going to the ruling party in New Zealand. Because in case you haven’t heard, New Zealand is being sued by rapper Eminem after it was found that New Zealand was using a janky version of “Lose Yourself” in campaign ads. It’s the Vanilla Ice defense all over again! And we might try our hand at some freestyling. Or maybe not. In the 10th slot this week – the penultimate round of our Stupidest State Contest! Now, don’t be sad – it’s been a long time coming and I cant wait to reward the winner with the “head up ass” trophy! For this edition we’re going to do a deep dive on Doomsday Prepping when Montana takes on Tennessee for the Flyover League crown. And finally this week, we’ve got some great new music for you – this time from a Los Angeles based band who I like to call “Cold War Kids”. Yay! The kids love Cold War Kids. They have a great new album out and they will be stopping by to play something from it. Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!


[font size="8"]Trumpcare Pt.1: The Apocalypse Begins[/font]

Well, I tell you there aint no party like a rich white man’s party because a rich white man’s party don’t stop! Oh wait – it exactly stops at 11:00 PM. With no after party. And probably no booze either. Killjoys. You know – remember when the GOP had all those insane hearings and kept going on about how “death panels were going to kill your grandma”? Well they’re coming to kill your grandma all right, but it’s not Obama’s death panels. Nope, the sadistic assholes in the GOP House are the ones who are going to pull the plug. And if you’re not already angry as shit about this, well, you should be!

Republicans are trying very hard to disguise what the American Health Care Act would actually do.

They keep insisting their bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act, would “lower premiums and improve access to quality, affordable care,” as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) put it last month.

Any time analysts point out the ways in which those promises are misleading or false ― or cite the Congressional Budget Office prediction that the AHCA would leave about 24 million people without health insurance ― Republicans insist that a combination of new tax credits, state innovation, and so-called high-risk pools will take care of people better than the current system does.

This is not true. And perhaps the clearest evidence is in those CBO numbers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-health-care-bill_us_59089a06e4b0bb2d0871e21b

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! So what changes are made to this bill? In fact the whole thing is certifiably insane. And when you get down to it, it’s really just a giant “fuck you” to liberals and to the Obama administration. And now that they got their guy in SCOTUS, this shit will become reality. Yeah, think about that. But if that doesn’t piss you off, then maybe this will? The GOP celebrated like they won the fucking World Series:

President Donald Trump applauded House Republicans for passing their version of a health care overhaul bill Thursday afternoon, hailing the vote as a step to alleviate the "ravages" and "suffering" caused by the Affordable Care Act.

The president was joined in his Rose Garden victory lap by Vice President Mike Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Medicare and Medicaid administrator Seema Verma and dozens of Republican lawmakers who rode busses from the Capitol to the White House shortly after voting.

"What a great group of people," Trump said, turning around to thank the lawmakers gathered behind him. "They're not even doing it for the party, they're doing it for this country."

The president said that the bill was tantamount to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, though the legislation, which passed 217-213 in the House faces an even tougher fight in the Senate.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-05-04/gop-gathers-at-white-house-to-celebrate-passage-of-health-care-bill-with-donald-trump

And you can call this picture what you want. I call this picture “Meet The Fuckers”:



By the way, what would it look like if they all had the exact same face? Let’s take a look!



I mean… would anyone notice? Really? Anyone at all? And I think that picture deserves a far more fitting background:




But while Rome burns and Caesar celebrates, the celebration aint over just yet. It’s got a long, uphill battle to become an actual law signed of course – by guess who? Donald “Fake News” Trump.

House Republicans journeyed to the White House Thursday for a health-care victory lap in the Rose Garden, but Senate Republicans were in no mood for celebration.

Instead, they sent an unmistakable message: When it comes to health-care, we're going to do our own thing.

"I think there will be essentially a Senate bill," explained Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the fourth-ranking Senate Republican.

"It's going to be a Senate bill, so, we'll look at it," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

"We will be working to put together a package that reflects our member's priorities with the explicit goal of getting 51 votes," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, reasoned.

Now that the House has narrowly passed legislation overhauling the nation's health care system, it is headed to the Senate, where Republican leaders will wrestle with political and procedural challenges complicating chances for final passage.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-gop-health-care-bill-senate-20170504-story.html

But we’re still not done! In case you need all the horrifying details of what Trump’s insane new health laws ensue, here’s a handy guide for you.

Republicans in the House say they have the votes to pass the American Health Care Act, a measure that will repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The vote is scheduled for Thursday. We analyzed the AHCA in March, when the original version was scheduled for a vote that eventually was canceled.

[UPDATE: The House passed the bill 217-213 on nearly a strict party-line vote, with 20 Republicans voting against it and no Democrats in favor.]

The new version is appreciably worse. Like the original, it threatens the health coverage of more than 24 million Americans but includes provisions that are even crueler. Here’s a handy guide to the worst elements of a nasty bill that will harm you and your neighbors.

1. The AHCA guts protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

Safeguards for people with pre-existing conditions long was thought to be the line in the sand, the last frontier, the third rail of Obamacare repeal — the point that Republicans wouldn’t cross. The final version of the AHCA crosses it.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-obamacare-repeal-20170504-story.html

[font size="8"]Trumpcare Pt 2: Electric Boogaloo Die Harder[/font]


Come on everybody lets get a chant going! “There aint no party like a GOP party because a GOP party don’t stop! There aint no party like a GOP party because a GOP party don’t stop! There aint no party like a GOP party because a GOP party don’t stop!”. Well it actually probably does stop after Steve Bannon drinks two handles of Jack Daniels and gets caught knocking over neighborhood lawn ornaments and mistaking a mailbox for a urinal. I’m just saying it happens! But were you invited to their crazy party and celebration? I know I wasn’t!

They had a party in Washington to celebrate that an $8 billion risk-pool fig leaf was enough to drain the guts out of Republican "moderates" in the House and get them on board. This was a thing to celebrate.

They had a party in Washington to celebrate that freedom was served because Medicaid took a serious shot below the waterline. This was a thing to celebrate.

They had a party in Washington to celebrate that one state—Mississippi? Kansas?—could bring freedom by restoring lifetime limits on employer-based healthcare coverage for 129 million Americans. This was a thing to celebrate.

They had a party in Washington to celebrate the fact that taking healthcare from poor people was enough to give the top two percent of Americans a trillion-dollar tax cut. This was a thing to celebrate.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54896/republican-healthcare-bill-pass/

Hey even Caligula and Caesar partied heartily while Rome burned. But there’s more to this insane celebration of evil and greed that may be more than was led on.

Or perhaps there was no party, and the Bud Light seen at the Capitol was merely meant to be an aperitif for the House Republicans heading to the White House to mark the AHCA's passage at a press conference in the Rose Garden. "Republicans will be having a big press conference at the beautiful Rose Garden of the White House immediately after vote!" President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday. Dana Bash, CNN's chief political correspondent, reported two GOP sources had told her House Republicans planned to travel to the White House "for [a] victory event" following the vote.

Democratic legislators were quick to criticize their Republicans colleagues' rumored celebration. "As Americans rally against #Trumpcare, buses wait to take Rs to the White House to join @POTUS to toast making life miserable for millions," Rep. Ted Deutch tweeted.

"Millions of Americans are about to lose health care coverage and the Republicans are drinking beer. Outrageous," Rep. Rosa DeLauro tweeted.

If House Republicans are popping open cans of Bud Light to celebrate the AHCA's passage in the House, it's a party seven years in the making as many within the GOP have been eager to see Obamacare repealed since the day it became law. But party or no party (or drinks aboard a party bus), it seems beyond tasteless to celebrate legislation that stands to leave so many people without insurance.
https://www.bustle.com/p/the-gop-is-reportedly-throwing-a-party-to-celebrate-taking-health-care-rights-away-55774

I’d imagine the GOP parties like this:

But cases of Bud Light? Really? That’s their go-to beer? Although if you look at the great list of performers that they had at Trump’s inauguration – 3 Doors Down, Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood, their taste in music and their taste in beer are both quite similar – they have none!!! Taste and the GOP are two words that do not belong in the same sentence. I mean just look at their taste in interior decorating:



Is that a high rise NYC penthouse or a discount Sistine Chapel? And their taste in food:



Perfect metaphor for Trump – giant cake, tiny scoop of ice cream! “The best, OK?” And their taste in travel:



So why am I surprised that they have no taste in music or beer? But what really happened after their supposed “win”?

Maybe MSNBC really has changed Greta Van Susteren.

The former Fox News host did not pull any punches on Thursday as President Donald Trump and House Republicans prepared to make what she called a “premature” victory lap in the White House Rose Garden after passing a health care bill that is widely expected to fail in the Senate.

“Maybe I'm delusional, but I don't get this one at all,” Van Susteren told her new colleague Chris Matthews. “What is the celebration? It can’t pass in the Senate. It hasn't even gone to the Senate.” The idea that Republicans are “taking selfies of each other and high-fiving” did not make sense to her at all.

“It’s like claiming victory in a football game at the end of the first quarter or the half or something,” she continued. “For the life of me, I don't know why they put themselves in a position where they're clapping each other on the back for getting something halfway done. The American people want a product. We're not even there and it’s not even likely to be there. Now we have this picture, this bus ride, this big hoopla.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/04/msnbc-s-greta-van-susteren-rips-apart-gop-s-premature-trumpcare-celebration

So they celebrated before they really should have celebrated. The bill still has a long way to go before it passes Trump’s desk. But even the GOP reps are quick to point out that the GOP shouldn’t be partying so soon:

One of the Republicans who helped get the American Health Care Act narrowly passed through the House of Representatives yesterday is making it clear that he isn’t all that thrilled with the bill… nor the president celebrating in the Rose Garden over its passage through just one chamber of Congress.

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), who earlier today admitted to not reading the bill in its entirety before voting for it, compared President Donald Trump‘s celebratory speech to a rather infamous premature declaration.

“It’s kind of like George Bush going up on top of the aircraft carrier and saying ‘Mission Accomplished,'” he told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin when asked why he didn’t attend the Rose Garden event. “I mean, you’ve got to be careful about these things. People get ahead of their skis and it can come back to bite them.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-rep-compares-trumps-ahca-rose-garden-celebration-to-bushs-mission-accomplished-speech/

Although speaking of accomplished douches, next the bill heads to the Senate, and would you be surprised in the least to learn that it’s one big sausage party? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

Washington (CNN)Just hours after House Republicans managed to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Senate is signaling it will write its own proposal -- announcing a group of 13 Republican members who will be responsible for crafting the Senate's plan.

Senators in the group include Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, Health and Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander and conservatives Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

A GOP aide defended the makeup of the group.
"We have no interest in playing the games of identity politics, that's not what this is about; it's about getting a job done," the aide said. "We'll work with any member of any background who wants to pass a health reform bill that will reduce premiums and take away the burdens that Obamacare inflicted.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/05/politics/senate-republican-health-care-men/

[font size="8"]Donald Trump[/font]


Before we get into this week’s entry, we have to talk about some late breaking news! You know Comey was fired, and we wont be able to get into that in the kind of detail you’d expect from the Top 10 until next week, but we do have to talk about this:

Washington (CNN)Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are interviewing potential interim FBI directors Wednesday, according to a Justice Department official.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is one of those being interviewed, the official said.
By statute, McCabe became acting FBI director Tuesday in the wake of James Comey's firing.
The official said an announcement of the decision should come soon -- later Wednesday or Thursday.


The candidates are not just limited to FBI officials -- they must be someone with significant law enforcement experience. The official said it cannot be a former US attorney.
The official expects four to eight individuals to be interviewed.
If McCabe is not selected, he will go back to being deputy director.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/10/politics/james-comey-replacements/index.html

So if you’re keeping score at home – Donald Trump just fired James Comey. And the guy who gets to look for his replacement has been accused of lying under oath. Seems legitimate. Now back to the original entry! The GOP loves to rub salt in the wound don’t they? They’re like the sports commentator who when your team loses very badly in a post season game, they’re the ones going “Well you should have tried harder and you wouldn’t have lost!”. I mean really? You have to go there? Well it’s bad enough that Donald Trump fired Sally Yates because, reasons. Well, now Mrs. Yates is hopping mad. And Trump himself is terrified! Oh yes, he is terrified, folks! So much that he tweeted this, we presume while on the toilet at 3:00 AM after he ate too many Trump branded cheeseburgers and chocolate cake:

Link to tweet

Does he… even know what happens when you testify under oath? I don’t know a lot about how our legal system works, but doesn’t what happens when you testify under oath have serious consequences? Like things that I don’t know, could land you in federal prison? And isn’t this threatening a witness?

Lawyers for President Donald Trump tried to prevent former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on links between Trump campaign staff and Russian officials, according to correspondence first obtained by The Washington Post.

In a series of letters last week, Yates’ lawyer, David O’Neil, accused the Trump Justice Department of trying to silence Yates by asserting that “all information Ms. Yates received or actions she took in her capacity as Deputy Attorney General and acting Attorney General are client confidences that she may not disclose absent written consent of the department.”

Yates served as deputy attorney general in the Obama administration and then as acting attorney general in the first few weeks of the Trump administration. Trump fired her on Jan. 31, after she refused to enforce the president’s original executive order banning immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sally-yates-testimony-trump_us_58da79c5e4b0286e65b5dbe8?473&

Now here’s where we get to introduce our new character Trumpy The Fake News Parrot. Say hi to the audience, Trumpy!



So now Trumpy the Fake News Parrot was created because Trump loves to decry any news outlet that doesn’t kiss his ass 100% as “fake news”. But seriously, we could have a whole series of these characters. There’s Kellyanne, the PR Lhasa Apso. There’s Pencey, the sly VP fox. There’s Jared, the foreign relations chameleon. There’s Bannon the Sloth. I could literally do these all day! But I’m getting off topic here What else does he say?



Thanks Trumpy! Does Trumpy want a cracker? Huh? Does Trumpy want a cracker? Maybe his companion Spicey The Truth Telling Bear will help ease the tension:

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that he expected former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to tell the truth during her testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Since revelations Yates warned the Trump administration that ousted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a blackmail risk in that position, because he had misled the Vice President about his discussions of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, President Donald Trump has attacked her as a partisan leaker.

“Do you have any reason to doubt that her testimony, which will be under oath, will be truthful before this senate subcommittee?” one reporter asked Spicer during his daily press briefing Monday. “I would assume that when you raise your right hand and agree to tell the truth and nothing but the truth that you’ll do that. That’s the whole reason you pledge,” he said.

Spicer also said at the press briefing that Yates had not, to his knowledge, cleared her testimony with the White House general counsel’s office. That point was subject to a brief controversy in late March, after Yates’ scheduled testimony to the House Intelligence Committee was cancelled.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/spicer-expects-sally-yates-tell-the-truth

Wait, let’s contemplate this for a minute. Sean Spicer wants Sally Yates to tell the truth. Sean Spicer wants Sally Yates to tell the truth. Sean Spicer wants Sally Yates to tell the truth. No matter how many times I say it, it still sounds weird. This whole thing is a shit show. Oh and just like a parrot would do, guess who’s getting the blame for hiring Flynn? Yup! You guessed it!

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday said it should not come as a surprise that President Barack Obama “wasn’t exactly a fan” of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn. Obama reportedly warned Trump against hiring Flynn for the post.

“It’s true that President Obama made it known that he wasn’t exactly a fan of Gen. Flynn’s,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing. Obama dismissed Flynn from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 amid concerns about his temperament and complaints from employees at the agency.

According to a report by NBC News, Obama cautioned Trump in November 2016 not to hire Flynn for the highly sensitive role, advice which Trump apparently ignored. Flynn was ousted in February after reports revealed he spoke about sanctions in a call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration.

Spicer on Monday said Obama’s alleged antipathy “shouldn’t come as a surprise” since Flynn “was an outspoken critic” of Obama and campaigned against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, leading a chant at the Republican National Convention in 2016 to “lock her up.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sean-spicer-obama-not-a-fan-of-flynn-trump

Except, like most things Trump does, it’s not fucking true:

Former President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News. The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.

The revelation comes on a day that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is expected to testify that Flynn misled the White House about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States.

NBC News has asked the Trump administration for a response.

According to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn. The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/obama-warned-trump-against-hiring-mike-flynn-say-officials-n756316

Thanks Trumpy!


[font size="8"]Donald Trump[/font]


So you know before we get into this next entry, we have to go back to talking about AHCA for just one more minute. It’s certifiably batshit insane the more you do a deep dive into it. We have to talk about what kind of drugs the Trump administration might be on. I mean it’s no secret that Attorney General Casper The Friendly Ghost is planning to stomp out marijuana farms in his quest to ignite The War On Drugs II: Electric Boogaloo Die Harder. But the Trump administration is doing its’ best to pull a Jedi Mind Trick on you in regards to marijuana.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to revive the war on drugs, and a crackdown on weed appears to be a major part of that. He is expected to pursue harsher punishments for using and distributing marijuana, which were relaxed under President Trump’s predecessor, as The Washington Post’s Sari Horowitz has reported. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” Sessions opined last year.

It’s a far cry from what Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said about the drug Sunday.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Kelly told host Chuck Todd that marijuana was “not a factor” in the war on drugs and argued that “arresting a lot of users” wasn’t the right solution to the country’s drug problems.

Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, was discussing border enforcement when Todd asked him if legalizing marijuana would help or hurt his efforts to control the flow of drugs into the United States.

“Yeah, marijuana is not a factor in the drug war,” Kelly said.
http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/04/17/homeland-security-marijuana-john-kelly/77489/

I like that one! But now let’s juxtapose that with some fact checking. You know – as Donald Trump calls it “fake news!”. Where’s Trumpy at?



Thanks Trumpy! Now Trump must be talking out of his ass or Attorney General Beauregard is telling him what to think.

Two days after saying that marijuana was “not a factor” in the in the drug war, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security warned that it was “a potentially dangerous gateway drug” and said his agency would pursue the enforcement of laws against it.

DHS doesn’t have much legal authority to pursue drug-related arrests of U.S. citizens, if they aren’t involved in transnational crime — that responsibility falls to local law enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI and others.

But the agency pursues the flow of illicit drugs into the United States through U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and considers past drug charges and convictions in the cases of undocumented immigrants who could be deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd Sunday, DHS Secretary John Kelly said that marijuana was “not a factor” in the drug war (methamphetamines, cocaine and heroin were, he said). He seemed to change his tone Tuesday in a speech at George Washington University, according to a copy of prepared remarks provided by DHS.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/kelly-marijuana-potentially-dangerous-gateway-drug-dhs

So what kind of drugs could the Trump administration be on? They’ve got to be smoking crack. I mean there’s no strain of marijuana out there that could make someone think the kind of thoughts about marijuana that the Trump administration must be thinking. But there’s more:

Donald Trump said Monday that he believes that building a wall on the Mexican border will help stop the heroin and painkiller epidemic killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

At a town hall meeting Monday in Columbus, Ohio, the Republican presidential nominee stressed the need to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, saying he would “cut off the source, build a wall.”

“If I win, I’m going to stop it,” he said, after being asked what he would do to address the opioid epidemic.

The number of US overdose deaths involving opioids, including prescription opioid pain relievers and heroin, has nearly quadrupled since 1999. But many of those deaths have been linked to prescription painkillers, which have been prescribed by American doctors and which are a gateway to heroin addiction.
https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/01/donald-trump-heroin-opioids-addiction/

http://images.memes.com/meme/920139

So Trump’s plan to keep drugs out of America is to build a wall around the Mexican border, and to make Mexico pay for it. That’s like getting in a bar fight, and the guy who beats the shit out of you makes you pay his tab. And what good is a wall going to do? Sea and air travel still exist. And how do you expect to stop the influx of legal painkillers coming from Merck, GSK and Bayer out of the hands of addicts? A dome would be more effective than a wall.

Got to love it. But the only thing the wall will really do is symbolize the terrible choice we made in 2016. Yes, thank you! But would you be surprised in the least to learn that Trump is cutting funding for the Drug Control Office?

WASHINGTON — When he was running for office, Donald J. Trump promised to rid America of the scourge of drugs, vowing to crack down on dealers and invest heavily in programs to get heroin and other opioids off the streets.

But on Friday, President Trump’s administration revealed plans to gut the 2018 budget of his Office of National Drug Control Policy. According to an Office of Management and Budget document obtained by The New York Times, the White House is proposing to slash the drug policy office budget by about 95 percent, to just $24 million from $388 million.

The cuts would mean the office could lose up to 33 employees. The budget would also eliminate grant programs it administers, including the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program and the Drug-Free Communities Support Program. According to the document, the Trump administration thinks the programs are duplicative of other federal and state initiatives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/us/politics/white-house-proposes-cutting-drug-control-office-funding-by-95.html

[font size="8"]Fundies Say The Darndest Things[/font]


Ladies and gentlemen it’s time for “Fundies Say The Darndest Things”!!!!! Yay!!!! Now here’s how this is going to work. This week, the fundamentalists turned out in droves to say some completely fucking insane, evil, horrible, hateful things. And when you think one can’t get worse, along comes another. I’ll give you this one from Mike Huckabee to start with – So this week, Twitter's worst comedian strikes again. And this one is indescribable. Mike Huckabee put out a tweet that is so jaw dropping, stunningly idiotic that both sides of your brain just shut down and go "LET'S FIGURE IT OUT!!!!!!"

Link to tweet

I just…. How… why… who… what… where… Does he even know how you celebrate Cinco De Mayo? You don't celebrate it by drinking an entire bottle of hot sauce unless you want to tear a hole in your stomach lining and spend the night in urgent care. If that’s the way Mike Huckabee wants to celebrate Cinco De Mayo, that’s his choosing. And Speedy Gonzales? Is there any character more racist than that, or have no Latino-themed cartoon characters been created since 1956? But no! You celebrate by drinking tequila! And I'm not talking about your hipster Patron or your frat boy Jose Cuervo. Or whatever the fuck this thing is:



But no, you need real tequila. And a real understanding of what this holiday is about. And I can guarantee that it doesn't involve Trump brand taco bowls. And if he's trying to be funny, that's what we call a swing and a miss. But now we get into even crazier territory – take a look at what Rick Wiles said last week:

End Times radio host Rick Wiles interviewed “financial analyst” Jim Willie of GoldenJackass.com on his “Trunews” radio program on Friday, where Willie asserted that Queen Elizabeth is a child-killing satanist lizard who is literally inhuman and that Bill and Hillary Clinton are both cannibals.

Willie claimed that the announcement that Prince Philip will retire from public life was really a cover story to conceal the fact that “the Queen Lizard,” as he called Queen Elizabeth, has died.

“I think the Duke made his announcement because he wanted to get out of Dodge,” Willie said. “The satanists are on the run. The Queen Lizard is a satanist. There are lots and lots of missing children at Buckingham Palace from the tours. Diana was killed—I mean murdered—because she was on the verge of revealing some of the satanism and some of the lizard stuff. These are very sick people and they not all human.”

Willie went on to warn that former president Bill Clinton “is at death’s door” due to “some form of very advanced venereal disease” combined with a brain disease brought on by cannibalism.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/just-another-day-on-trunews-queen-elizabeth-is-a-satanist-lizard-and-bill-clinton-is-a-cannibal/

Now I don’t speak stupid, but even this has to be one of the most fucking insane things I’ve ever seen them say. I mean… Bill Clinton is a cannibal? Or is he an actual cannibal like Shia LeBeouf?

That never gets old. Next up in Fundies Say The Darndest Things, we have Theodore Shoebat, who we have discussed on this show a great many times.

Extremist anti-LGBTQ activist Theodore Shoebat, who was featured in a radically anti-gay documentary made by Janet Porter called “Light Wins” along with various Religious Right activists and Republican elected officials back in 2015, posted a new video on his website last week insisting that it should not be considered a hate crime to kill “fags.”

While ranting about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Caitlyn Jenner last week and demanding that Jenner be arrested and executed for promoting “perversion,” Shoebat declared that murdering gays should not qualify as a hate crime.

“Fags kill each other all the time,” he said, “and the reason why they kill each other all the time is because they’re demon-possessed people and Satan wants them to kill each other because Satan hates humanity.”

“If someone kills a homosexual because they’re a homosexual, that should not be considered a hate crime,” he continued, “because right when you start considering that a hate crime, then you might as well just say, ‘Well, if someone kills somebody because they’re a pedophile, that should also be a hate crime.'”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/theodore-shoebat-killing-fags-should-not-be-considered-a-hate-crime/

Yeah because genocide is so hilarious isn’t it! I mean do these people believe the things they say? Or are they like that Lamar Bell guy from UCLA and they just say stupid shit like they want a billion dollars because it brings them money? But genocide? Really? You’re going there? We’re going to talk about what’s going on in Chechnya later, but it’s horrifying. And if you think it’s funny it isn’t. Now just remember – the fundamentalists want to end the Johnson Amendment. And if you think we’re kidding about this: Donald Trump reiterated this point last week:

With hundreds of executive branch jobs yet to be filled, the Trump administration needs a lot of people. One person it especially needs is Goldilocks, who might save the president from his habit of doing too much or too little but seldom getting anything just right.

In the executive order he signed Thursday titled “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,” Donald Trump had a rare opportunity to pursue a small yet significant change that would have accomplished both of his stated purposes. Instead, he ceremoniously unveiled a heaping platter of nothingburgers.

In February, at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump extolled religious freedom and promised: “I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that. Remember.”
http://www.nationalmemo.com/churches-politics-trump-nothing/

And in case you’re wondering what makes Fundies Say The Darndest Things, could it possibly be brain damage?

Hunting for God in our grey matter seems to be a popular topic for neurologists, with past studies comparing religious highs with drug-induced ones, linking spiritual experiences with neurotransmitters such as serotonin, and identifying which parts of the brain (if any) could be responsible for a faith in the supernatural.

Now a new study has now found that those with damage to a section of the brain associated with planning become less open to new ideas, explaining why some people are more likely to become extreme in their religious beliefs.
http://www.sciencealert.com/damage-to-a-specific-part-of-the-brain-could-result-in-religious-fundamentalism?utm_content=buffera671a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Or could it be Trump’s “spiritual advisor” – someone who has a “church” where the members funnel insane amounts of money to her in exchange for… absolutely nothing?

President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, Paula White, claims credit for converting Trump to Christianity. In exchange, she has been awarded exclusive access to the White House where she advises Trump on everything from legislative priorities to judicial appointments as chair of the Evangelical Advisory Council.

White is not an ordinary pastor. She is a Prosperity Gospel adherent who believes that God’s plan for her is a luxurious, consumerist lifestyle. White has spent decades exploiting her followers who are mostly poor and working class people of color.

Pastor White demands that her congregation members donate huge portions of their incomes to her church which leaves them poor and allows her and her husband to live in a mansion stocked with designer clothes and luxury cars. When her congregation members have no money to give, she insists that they put jewelry and other valuables in the offering collection.

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/05/09/pastor-just-revealed-trumps-spiritual-adviser-huge-fraudster/

[font size="8"]Republicans Vs Talk Shows[/font]


So the GOP is apparently going after talk shows now. Because there’s apparently no other battles to be fought. Yes that is the world in which we live. Trump supporters are the angriest group of people on the planet and they cant stand it when someone doesn’t kiss Trumpenfuror’s ass 100%. Gee I wonder what would happen if they were to find out about this show? But that’s beside the point. You know last week, one of my favorite talk show hosts – Jimmy Kimmel – had this to say about Trumpcare in the wake of his son being born with a birth defect:

But if you listened to the talk shows or anyone who has a conservative opinion…

I mean, really, Jimmy, does your newborn child not mean more to you than petty politics? How do you look at the miracle of your child and think — partisan politics!

That is not to say he didn’t also lie and claim to be above partisan politics — even as he was pushing exactly that.

“Let’s stop this nonsense,” he said. “This isn’t football; there are no teams. We are the team — it’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants.”

Yes, that’s right. He just had a kid and the kid nearly died and he wants you to know that if you are not for bloated federal bureaucracy, socialized medicine, higher taxes and tons of more debt piled onto your grandchildren, then you are not a “decent person.”

Actually Jim, if you were a “decent person,” you would shut your fat trap about partisan politics and go care for your kid, who just nearly died, you elitist creep.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/2/jimmy-kimmel-elitist-creep-who-needs-shut-up/

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! That is a pretty fucking new low, and this is the party that elected Donald Trump as their president. And you know the old saying – when you’re already in a hole, stop digging:

An Alabama Congressman has prompted a wave a backlash with his comment Monday regarding health insurance coverage of those with pre-existing conditions.

Speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper about House plans to vote on a revised health insurance bill, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-AL, referenced people who lead "good lives" and said they should not have to pay as much as others.

"My understanding is that (the new proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool," Brooks said. "That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they're healthy, they've done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people--who've done things the right way--that are seeing their costs skyrocketing."
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/05/rep_mo_brooks_people_who_live.html

Wait, so let me extrapolate what Mr. Brooks is saying – so people who “live good lives” will have a better quality of life? What if you’re born in a shit hole? Like most rural, extreme far right fundamentalist places in Alabama, for instance? And so that means no more late night booze and hooker binges? Come on, how’s a single guy supposed to spend his Saturday nights? Oh and by the way here’s how Jimmy Kimmel responded:

Now let’s juxtapose that with another one of my favorite talk shows – Late Night With Stephen Colbert. You know last week during the intro we talked about Colbert’s controversial monologue about his joke with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And in case you forgot about that, let’s roll the tape on that one!

Well, now here’s how the republicans have responded. I mean come on, let us have something. You guys have a monopoly on the media and the government. But take away my Colbert, and heads are going to roll!

Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert’s controversial joke about President Trump drew the attention of the Federal Communications Commission. The agency received “a number” of complaints about Colbert’s commentary earlier in the week, according to the FCC’s chief.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai promised to “take the appropriate action” following a comprehensive investigation of Colbert’s remarks.

The FCC's response will depend on whether Colbert’s remarks are considered “obscene.”

“We are going to take the facts that we find and we are going to apply the law as it’s been set out by the Supreme Court and other courts and we’ll take the appropriate action,” he told Talk Radio 1210 WPHT Thursday.

“Traditionally, the agency has to decide, if it does find a violation, what the appropriate remedy should be,” he said. "A fine, of some sort, is typically what we do.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/332132-fcc-probing-colberts-trump-putin-joke

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Oh by the way, here’s how Stephen Colbert responded. I love this man:

&t=164s


By the way it’s funny how the Trump crowd – the people who pride themselves on their anti-political correctness agenda – suddenly care about homophobia! I mean really! Do you actually care about homophobia or are you just doing it to piss us off?

“Now, folks, if you saw my monologue on Monday, you know that I was a little upset with Donald Trump for insulting a friend of mine, so, at the end of my monologue, I had a few choice insults for the president in return,” Colbert continued. “I don’t regret that. I believe he can take care of himself. I have jokes, he has the launch codes, so… it’s a fair fight.”

But then, a tiny mea culpa: “So, while I would do it again, I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be. Now I’m not going to repeat the phrase, but I just want to say, for the record, life is short, and anybody who expresses their love for another person in their own way, is to me, an American hero,” offered Colbert.

“And I think we can all agree on that,” he added. “ I hope even the president and I can agree on that—nothing else but that.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/04/stephen-colbert-refuses-to-apologize-to-trump-i-believe-he-can-take-care-of-himself?via=twitter_page

[font size="8"]Eric Trump[/font]


Eric Trump. I think even Beavis and Butthead would be embarrassed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. And this one falls under the category of “When you’re in a hole, stop digging”. Unfortunately we wont get to cover the Sally Yates hearings as they’re ongoing, we’ll get to that this week. But the Trump sons are even dumber than you might imagine. So here’s what Beavis, er, Uday, er, Eric Trump said this week in regards to his father’s business dealings:

The federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia appears to be proceeding in fits and starts. The House Intelligence Committee, which was once taking point, began on strong footing with a blockbuster hearing featuring F.B.I. director James Comey and National Security Agency director Mike Rogers, but quickly fell prey to congressional politics. Chairman Devin Nunes stepped away from the probe amid revelations that he had been coordinating with the Trump administration—one of the targets of the inquiry he was supposedly leading. A hearing that was to feature testimony from former acting attorney general Sally Yates, among others with potentially crucial information, was abruptly, and mysteriously, delayed as the investigation ground to a halt. Now, with the momentum having shifted to the intelligence committee in the Senate, Yates will finally speak her piece Thursday morning in what is expected to be another day of bad press for the White House. But perhaps the F.B.I., House, Senate, and Justice Department could all save themselves some time by simply speaking directly with Trump’s second son, Eric Trump—or better yet, catching him for a few minutes on the golf course.

Golf writer James Dodson apparently had such luck in 2014, when he visited the elder Trump’s new golf course in North Carolina at the urging of a P.R. flack. “He kept saying things like, ‘Oh, Donald Trump loves your books,’” he told WBUR over the weekend. “And I kept saying, ‘Donald Trump doesn’t read books, I’m told. And he hadn’t a clue who I am.’ Anyway, he called three or four times. Finally, I said yes.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/eric-trump-russia-investment-golf-course

Wow, that one got the Jumbotron facepalm! That’s epic! But why would you say that to a golf reporter? I mean come on, your father is under multiple investigations for possible Russian involvement in the 2016 elections that gave us his ass. And of course – Eric Trump responded in the most Trump way possible – yup, you guessed it!

On Monday, Eric blasted the writer's account of their interaction.

"This story is completely fabricated and just another example of why there is such a deep distrust of the media in our country. #FakeNews," he tweeted.

Donald Trump's campaign associates and his businesses have repeatedly come under fire since the 2016 election over questions of their ties to Russia.

Some of his campaign associates are currently under investigation for their contact with Russian officials. Russian interference in the US election is also the subject of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/08/fake-news-eric-trump-disputes-claim-trump-golf-courses-funded-russia/22075898/

Thanks Trumpy! But folks – Eric Trump isn’t a fighter! He’s a uniter! With as divided as America is now – is this really the guy we want uniting us? I mean really?

A battle continues. While the larger war—between our beautiful, wild-maned president Donald Trump and those fools and losers dissuading him from trying to pull off the tablecloth without knocking over all the dishes—rages on, a smaller, ongoing side skirmish demands our attention today. It’s between Trump’s son, the dashing businessman Eric Trump, and a so-called comedian named Chelsea Handler, who has a show on Netflix because she’s too scared to go on network television and try to compete with Donald’s amazing Apprentice ratings.

Back in March, Handler—lost in some kind of self-admitted marijuana reverie—tweeted about Eric’s wife being pregnant, saying, “Just what we need. Another person with those jeans.” She later owned up to the typo and blamed it on the devil’s weed, but the fact remains that she tried to deliver a powerful burn, but, as tends to happen when playing with fire, wound up burning herself. Now, a month and change later, Eric Trump will appear on Dr. Oz on Tuesday—because he and his wife are looking for an OB/GYN and they’ve heard that Dr. Oz knows what babies are—and Page Six reports that Eric says something about Handler’s joke on the show.
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/04/eric-trump-chelsea-handler-tweet

[font size="8"]Marine LaPen[/font]


For this entry, we’re going to take a dip in the international Conservative Idiots file and head to France. Viva La France!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whew!!!! Whew!!!! Thank you. So over the weekend the French held their elections between the liberal candidate Emmanuel Macron, and the Trump / Putin / 4chan candidate Marine LaPen. Who united French nationalism and emboldened France’s white supremacists and neo-Nazis the way Trump did in the United States. Only difference between the two is – LaPen *KNOWS* she is emboldening white supremacists. But here’s why she lost:

Lesson 1: This election was less surprising than others, but voter abstention is a noteworthy trend

As French scholars know too well, French citizens often surprise observers. That happened in the 2002 presidential ballot, when the Front National (FN) candidate, Jean Marie Le Pen, shocked France by coming in second during the first round, knocking the incumbent Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, out of the race. In a similar surprise, French voters rejected the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution.

But this year’s election was not a political earthquake. France is suffering from a slow economic recovery, with a 10 percent unemployment rate and only 1.2 percent GDP growth in 2016. With the rest of Europe, it faces an unresolved and unprecedented migrant crisis. Its two most recent presidents have been highly unpopular: Nicolas Sarkozy failed to get reelected; and François Hollande’s record as the most unpopular president prevented him from running again. And so a vote rejecting the establishment is readily understood.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/09/4-key-lessons-from-frances-presidential-election/?utm_term=.2688c952a76e

Wow, that sounds strangely like the United States doesn’t it? I mean no one does voter abstention quite like the American GOP. Surely that can’t be the only coincidence can it?

Lesson 2: The French party system is changing from within

Across the developed world, voters are making clear their disenchantment with political elites. So it’s no accident that all the candidates attempted to define themselves as anti-system. This was much easier, of course, for the parties of la France protestataire — the parties voicing fundamental disagreement with the political and economic status quo. Together, first-round scores for the extreme left, radical left (the France Insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon) and the extreme right amounted to 42.61 percent. That distrust has been accelerated by recent corruption scandals. For instance, François Fillon, candidate of the main right-wing party, was accused of nepotism (“Penelopegate”), with charges pending on embezzlement. And E.U. authorities are investigating Marine Le Pen, charging that she illegally used E.U. funding on her presidential campaign.

Holy shit! Disenfranchisement with “political elites”? That doesn’t sound anything at all like our elections does it? What’s behind door #3?

Lesson 3: The French Fifth Republic has rebounded, but the Front National is no longer a fringe party

The single most important lesson from this election is the weakening of one unwritten rule of the French model: the “cordon sanitaire” imposed against the FN. By securing its first-ever political endorsement from a conservative politician — Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a dissident Gaullist — the FN has consolidated as a mainstream party. Similarly, the radical left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s refusal to join the “republican front” against the extreme right contributed to further normalizing the FN.

How much does this sound like the US elections? So lets’ recap – you have voter abstention, which sounds a lot like the GOP. You have disenfranchisement with “political elites”. Which again sounds a lot like the republicans after the 2016 election. You also have the rise of an lunatic fringe novelty party that was once considered ideally insane. Which sounds a lot like the Breitbart / Infowars arm of the republican party. Now what’s behind door number 4?

Lesson 4: It’s all about the June legislative elections

The biggest unknown now is whether and how Macron and Le Pen will transform their movements into solid party structures capable of standing in all 577 legislative districts. France’s current system makes it relatively easy for presidents to win majorities in the National Assembly. However, local notables and party structures are influential in winning local seats — and, therefore, in creating parliamentary majorities. To really start changing things, as he promised, Macron will need to build coalitions and a party.

[font size="8"]Eminem Vs. New Zealand[/font]


We need some music here, can we get some music?

God damn it!

No!!!! I mean we need the right music for this entry! Come on!

Yeah that’s more like it!! So this entry is about Eminem. Anyone remember the Vanilla Ice defense back in the 90s? It was when the surviving members of the legendary band Queen sued Vanilla Ice for using samples of their song “Under Pressure”. Well the suit ruled in favor of Vanilla Ice based on a few chords in the song and it’s been the butt of jokes in the music industry ever since. Well, in this day and age when anyone can put out an album without going the traditional routes, how do you stay original? Well, this is not one of those times. And it’s the Vanilla Ice defense all over again.

Eminem is far from feeling flattered that his hit song, “Lose Yourself,” was reportedly being used by New Zealand’s conservative National Party without his permission.

The Detroit-based music publishers for the 44-year-old American rapper are suing the National Party, alleging the soundtrack for a 2014 election campaign ad copied the artist’s acclaimed 2002 song. Titled “Eminem Esque,” the track has a beat that’s familiar to the original.

The party previously said it purchased the track through an Australian-based supplier and doesn’t believe it has infringed anyone’s copyright.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/05/01/eminem-kicks-off-legal-battle-against-new-zealands-national-party-over-lose-yourself-copyright.html

Now if you think we’re joking about this – this is real. This shit happened. Let’s take a look at the video:

And there’s more to this. This really is the Vanilla Ice defense circa 2017.

Eminem has taken New Zealand's governing party to court over a music track it used for a campaign ad.

The US rapper says the song, used in the 2014 advert by the National Party, was an unlicensed version of Lose Yourself, one of his biggest hits.

But the party's lawyers argue it was not actually Lose Yourself, but a track called Eminem-esque which they bought from a stock music library.

The case began on Monday, with the two tracks played in court.

A lawyer for Eight Mile Style - a publishing group representing the artist - said Lose Yourself was "iconic" and "without doubt the jewel in the crown of Eminem's musical work".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39768381

But the interesting thing is this case began 3 years ago and is just now festering. But the court footage that was obtained was certifiably insane. Let’s roll tape first and then discuss.

US rapper Eminem is suing New Zealand’s National party for allegedly using his Lose Yourself song in a campaign ad to get the prime minister, John Key, re-elected.

The Ministry of Justice on Tuesday confirmed that proceedings were filed in the Wellington registry of the high court.

Eminem’s publishers also made a statement saying they were seeking damages for copyright infringement against the National party.

The Detroit-based copyright holders allege “unauthorised use has been made of Eminem’s Grammy and Academy Award-winning song Lose Yourself in election campaign advertising run by the National party in the lead-up to the 2014 New Zealand general election”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/16/eminem-suing-new-zealands-national-party-for-allegedly-using-his-song

By the way, I love that John Oliver had a field day this week on this whole trial:

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest Round 14: Flyover League Championship[/font]




16 states will enter, and only one state will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State! If you need a reminder of the conferences, there’s the Batshit Conference, the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference, the Gun Nut Conference, and the Family Values Conference. Folks , the Final Four has been set! This is it folks! This is the penultimate round of our long running Stupidest State Contest! Yes, penultimate means “next to last”, don’t you know? It’s like the “Granite State” episode of Breaking Bad – you know the final one is coming, and you wont know what it will bring! And then for the finale, we’re going to dive on a subject that all four states have in common that could be taken away from them as soon as next week – sanctuary cities! But let’s do a recap! Last week, Texas easily knocked off Kansas to advance to the finals. But who will be their opponent? Will it be the gun nuts in Montana, or will it be the racists and misogynists in Tennessee? Now what do you get when you combine reckless gun laws with reckless religious laws? You get one of the craziest things possible – Doomsday Prepping! And we are going to do a deep dive on this subject and how it affects both states. Did you see that recent John Goodman Doomsday flick “10 Cloverfield Lane”? Yeah it’s kind of like that. Alex Jones sells lots of shit aimed at the prepping faithful. The Prepping Faithful by the way, I saw them at the Troubadour last week, pretty awesome band! So who will challenge Texas for the crown? Will it be Montana or Tennessee? So let’s get out our brackets, shall we?



[font size="6"]Round 14: Flyover League Championship: Montana Vs. Tennessee[/font]

[font size="4"]Montana [/font]

Got to love Frank Zappa. So the state of Montana is home to some of the world’s craziest Doomsday Preppers. Now you might be wondering, how did we draw this conclusion? Well, part of it stems from Montana’s neighbors to the west - Idaho, who have been busy feeding the doomsday prepping frenzy, and frenzy is a word I hardly ever get to use. But what about doomsday prepping? Before we get into it, let’s talk about what they were doing in Idaho. There’s a colony being setup in far rural Idaho, called “The Citadel”. Let’s explain more:

ST. MARIES, Idaho — A group of survivalists wants to build a giant walled fortress in the woods of the Idaho Panhandle, a medieval-style city where residents would be required to own weapons and stand ready to defend the compound if society collapses.

The proposal is called the Citadel and has created a buzz among folks in this remote logging town 70 miles southeast of Spokane, Wash. The project would more than double the population of Benewah County, home to 9,000 souls.

Locals have many questions, but organizers so far are pointing only to a website billing the Citadel as “A Community of Liberty.”

“There is no leader,” Christian Kerodin, a convicted felon who is a promoter of the project, wrote in a brief email to The Associated Press. “There is a significant group of equals involved ... each bringing their own professional skills and life experiences to the group.

“It is very much a `grass-roots’ endeavor,’” Kerodin wrote, declining to provide any additional details.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/the-citadel-idaho_n_2624629.html

Yes – be prepared. Because a bunch of armed, crazy lunatics living in the mountains with a truck load of guns practicing for combat that’s never going to happen. Where have I heard that before? Anyone, does that ring a bell? OK. Now let’s go back to Montana. So what do the nexus of batshit crazy gun laws and batshit crazy religious laws get you? Why they get you this.

Despite the remoteness of these homes, they're not backwoods shacks with sagging metal roofs. Some of her listings sell for more than $1 million if there's a lot of land and if water rights are included. The one with the helicopter pad is a spiffy, two-story log home with a wraparound porch. It has solar panels and inside, a backup generator, luxury bathrooms and a kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.

"Just because you're off-grid or being sustainable doesn't mean you have to be looking like the old hick miner," she says, laughing, "with grass on your roof or whatever. You can do anything."

In the 1990s, the remote Montana mountains developed a reputation as an enclave for Y2K worriers, doomsday cults and the Unabomber. The state still gets made fun of a lot. Mondale is sensitive to this. One of her current listings was previously owned by one of those doomsday cults, but, she says, what's going on today is different. People want to be more self-sustaining, less dependent on the outside, grow their own food, that kind of thing.

"These are not crazy people," she says.
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/28/474673707/in-the-rural-northwest-a-growing-market-for-survivalist-homes

http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/upload/383214/images/z13(24).png

I like that one! Plus the clarifier “These are not crazy people”. Of course they are! You’re preparing for the apocalypse by living as remotely as possible! How is that not “batshit fucking crazy”? Well, Montana is home to Yaak Valley, where the idea of doomsday prepping has just been taken to some very weird and unusual extremes:

On the night after Thanksgiving, I wander into the Dirty Shame Saloon, in Yaak, Montana, with a few friends. A half-dozen people congregate around the pool table, not playing pool. Camo and hunter’s orange are on abundant display. A Confederate flag hangs behind the bar; shotguns are embedded in the counter.

We’ve stopped here out of curiosity about the Yaak Valley, and the people, all 250 of them, who make it home. The valley is known, in its small way, for a few things: the writings of Rick Bass, a former petroleum geologist who has long and ferociously defended it; the haven it has provided to some of the West’s darker elements — doomsday preppers, hermits and a few white supremacists — and the “World Famous Dirty Shame Saloon,” with its reputation for rowdy drunkenness. The valley, wedged up against Canada, is a funnel for wildlife to travel south and then out across the West. In its dripping woods, species from the Pacific Northwest forests and the Rocky Mountains live side by side. It’s a small valley, Bass, a Texas transplant, writes in The Book of Yaak: “Everything is all crammed in on top of everything else.” But only around the Dirty Shame do the human inhabitants live close enough together to put on any appearance of a town. Still, they’ve left their mark in the form of the logging roads stitched across the valley, hemming in the grizzlies, the caribou, the wolves.
http://www.hcn.org/issues/49.4/the-yaak-valleys-dirty-shame

So if you’re keeping score at home – Montana is home to white supremacists, hermits, doomsday preppers, extreme outdoor survivalists, and drunken rednecks. Just the exact toxic pool of people who we’re looking to draw from for this contest. But even Montana’s most hardcore doomsday preppers – you know the kind of people like you see in the flick “10 Cloverfield Lane” – are doubting their own movement even in the day and age of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un threatening nuclear war:

Don and Jonna Bradway recently cashed out of the stock market and invested in gold and silver. They have stockpiled food and ammunition in the event of a total economic collapse or some other calamity commonly known around here as "The End of the World As We Know It" or "SHTF" - the day something hits the fan.

The Bradways fled California, a state they said is run by "leftists and non-Constitutionalists and anti-freedom people," and settled on several wooded acres of north Idaho five years ago. They live among like-minded conservative neighbors, host Monday night Bible study around their fire pit, hike in the mountains and fish from their boat. They melt lead to make their own bullets for sport shooting and hunting - or to defend themselves against marauders in a world-ending cataclysm.

"I'm not paranoid, I'm really not," said Bradway, 68, a cheerful Army veteran with a bushy handlebar mustache who favors Hawaiian shirts. "But we're prepared. Anybody who knows us knows that Don and Jonna are prepared if and when it hits the fan."

The Bradways are among the vanguard moving to an area of the Pacific Northwest known as the American Redoubt, a term coined in 2011 by survivalist author and blogger James Wesley, Rawles (the comma is deliberate) to describe a settlement of the God-fearing in a lightly populated territory that includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-american-redoubt-prepper-movement-20160827-story.html

I’m guessing that by “something”, they mean shit.

[font size="4"]Tennessee [/font]


Now let’s explore the flip side of doomsday prepping – apocalyptic preaching. Which Tennessee has in droves. Now I define this as – did you see the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service? There’s a scene where there’s a fight in the church where Samuel L Jackson’s character Richmond Valentine triggers the whole church to kill each other. And that scene has a sermon from a preacher who is very similar to the Westboro Baptist Church. So we should go through this in more detail. But you know – doomsday prepping isn’t just a conservative only thing. Even the liberal preppers are getting in on it, and it’s becoming a huge market in Tennessee as companies are seeing the possibilities of selling “off the grid” properties:

Colin Waugh bought a shotgun four weeks before November’s election.

An unapologetic liberal, he was no fan of firearms. He had never owned one before. But Waugh, a 31-year-old from Independence, Missouri, couldn’t shake his fears of a Donald Trump presidency — and all of the chaos it could bring. He imagined hate crimes and violence waged by extremists emboldened by the Republican nominee’s brash, divisive rhetoric. He pictured state-sanctioned roundups of Muslims, gays, and outspoken critics.

“I kept asking myself, ‘Do I want to live under tyranny?'” said Waugh, who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and later backed Hillary Clinton. “The answer was absolutely not.”

With Trump now days away from assuming the White House, Waugh’s preparing for the worst. He’s made “bug-out bags” stuffed with ammo, energy bars, and assorted survival gear for his wife and their three cats. He’s begun stowing water and browsing real estate listings in Gunnison County, Colorado, which he’s determined to be a “liberal safe-haven.” Last month, Waugh added a 9mm handgun to his arsenal.
http://www.vocativ.com/390175/liberal-preppers-stock-up-on-guns-food/

And in fact there’s a huge doomsday prepper market in rural eastern Tennessee. They call themselves “The Mountain Preppers”. And unlike Montana doomsday preppers – Tennessee’s doomsday preppers have the added bonus of high altitudes.

(WBIR-Sevierville) A billion-dollar industry is finding some of its strongest support in East Tennessee.

Prepping for doomsday scenarios has become good business, including everything from emergency preparedness to self reliance.

The Mountain Prepper Home, Gun & Outdoor Expo is taking place this weekend at the Sevierville Convention Center. It's the largest prepper show east of the Mississippi River and, quite possibly, the largest in the nation.

"I don't mean to scare people because that's really not what this is about. These are not nutty people; these are people who are just preparing for the future," said Bill Vernon, one of the promoters for the Mountain Prepper Expo.

Dustin Corum with Corum Pump Service and Well Drilling in Knoxville noticed it's a growing industry. He sells a Simple Pump that is able to pump water from 325 feet below ground, without electricity.

"We've seen people drilling water wells just for this system right here to be able to have their own water source," Corum said.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2014/05/18/doomsday-preppers-east-tn-industry/9249469/

Now getting back to what I was talking about earlier – with apocalyptic preaching, that’s the other side of the doomsday prepper coin. These are the people who make their living preaching about the apocalypse, which keeps the doomsday prepping industry in check. And Tennessee is home to some of the craziest preachers like this in the country.

Tennesseee has been a surprising home of new religious groups like Ruthven's, in part because of its culture of do-it-yourself religion. Believers are encouraged to interpret the Bible for themselves rather than relying on denominational doctrines.

The Bible Belt has a history of charismatic preachers who have been accused of leading their flocks astray with unorthodox beliefs.

Among them: the late Wayne Jolley, a prosperity gospel preacher with a history of abuse and ties to the Christian music business; Gwen Shamblin, the controversial founder of The Remnant, known for her weight-loss advice and unorthodox beliefs; and Tony Alamo, a glitzy former evangelist who once had a church on Nashville’s Music Row and is now jailed for child abuse.

Tennessee is also the home base of Twelve Tribes, an end-times communal sect known for its Yellow Deli chain of restaurants, which are run by group members. Another of the group’s restaurants, the Blue Blinds Bakery in Plymouth, Mass., recently made headlines after an ex-employee took over its Facebook page and accused the Twelve Tribes of being a cult that preaches racism and corporal punishment. Twelve Tribes leaders deny the claims.
http://www.nashvillescene.com/news/cover-story/article/20832925/cult-classics

By the way, what is it with creepy psychopaths and the song “Hey Venus”? We saw that in Dexter with John Lithgow’s character and he was obsessed with that song. So even the billionaires of this world want some of that sweet, sweet doomsday prepping action. And it’s not just limited to Tennesee! Mountain prepping is a thing that’s becoming bank for America’s billionaires.

With Donald Trump’s election and the rising perils of war, climate upheaval, accelerating inequality, and civil unrest, some of the richest people in the United States are making escape plans.

In a recent New Yorker article, “Doomsday Prep for the Super Rich,” Evan Osnos writes that “even financiers who supported Trump for president … have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions.”

Osnos recently visited survivalist condos being built in former missile silos in Kansas and interviewed Silicon Valley billionaires and centimillionaires who are hedging against future social breakdown by investing in “bug out” escape homes in remote corners of the world.

This idea of privatized survival is extremely limited. In the face of growing inequalities and ecological crisis, the wealthy will not be able to build a wall high enough or a silo deep enough.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/to-billionaire-doomsday-preppers-your-wealth-wont-save-you-20170221

And by the way – in case you’re wondering whether or not you should build that bunker, regardless of what state you live in, here’s some good advice.

If you're expecting the apocalypse should your candidate not win on Tuesday, maybe a fully stocked, underground bunker is moving higher on your list of must-haves.

A Google search of the word "prepper" brings up more than 6 million hits. Websites of all persuasion are ready to share information and products tailored to surviving whatever personal apocalypse the reader has in mind. Survival bunkers are big with most of those sites.

Underground

Various prepper websites place the cost of an underground, 2,500-square-foot, reinforced concrete bunker at $30,000 for a basic shell to $60,000 for a similarly sized shelter with amenities like mechanical ventilation, bathroom, kitchen and multiple rooms. Some luxury bunkers have been priced at millions of dollars.

Concealment underground, for both its protection from blasts up to and including nuclear devices and concealment from ravaging hordes above, is a primary concern on many prepper survival websites. Having 8 to 10 feet of earth over the bunker seems to be the average recommendation.
http://www.pennlive.com/wildaboutpa/2016/11/planning_to_crawl_under_a_rock.html

[font size="4"]And The Winner Is… [/font]

WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!! Whew!!! Whew!!!! And this was a very tough, hard fought battle that went into a double overtime. But Montana has pulled it out! They will face Texas in the national championship next week. Final score – 105 – 95. Cut the net, guys! You earned it! Finally, next week we will be crowning our Stupidest State! We will have the matchup, the post game interview, the coaches’ post game press conference, the statement from the commissioner and the presentation of the head up the ass trophy. And of course we will end by singing that song we all know and love!



[font size="8"]And now this:[/font]
[font size="8"]Cold War Kids[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen , playing their new song “Love Is Mystical” from their excellent new album “LA Divine”, please welcome Cold War Kids!

Yeah how about that… wait what? My producer is telling me that we need a cliff hanger ending to set up the season finale.

See you next week for the Season 2 season finale! It will be epic!

[underpants]

1. The clustertrump needs to lawyer up

[niyad]

2. you have my deepest admiration (and sympathy) for wading in the sewer that is the cons,

each and every week to present us with this list (and how do you narrow it down to 10???)

May I offer you some refreshment? the delousing chamber is available.

[Initech]

3. That's why it's so long every week!

Impossible to narrow it down to 10!

And that's also part of why I did the Stupidest State contest - I want to talk about stuff that isn't related to Trump.