Initech

Initech's Journal

February 2, 2017

Trump Counter Terrorism Will Focus Exclusively On Islamic Terrorism

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO The Trump administration wants to revamp and rename a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism, five people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.

Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries.

The CVE program aims to deter groups or potential lone attackers through community partnerships and educational programs or counter-messaging campaigns in cooperation with companies such as Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O).

Some proponents of the program fear that rebranding it could make it more difficult for the government to work with Muslims already hesitant to trust the new administration, particularly after Trump issued an executive order last Friday temporarily blocking travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO

But nothing about angry white guys with guns terrorism. Got it.

February 1, 2017

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-11: 2.5 Minutes To Midnight Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-11: 2.5 Minutes To Midnight Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Don’t ask me to play Freebird, because we both know that ain’t happening! You know we love talking about diva behavior on this show, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I love when celebrities go full diva. To me that's the best part of being a celebrity. Have roses blowing out of the air conditioning at all times! How about a personal chauffeur for your dog? Make the lamps all one color! This week, Rob Lowe filed a job applicant request for a personal assistant, and he could be taking diva behavior to completely new extremes here. I couldn’t love this story enough! And for $70,000 I would happily accept this job because a) I love the crazy, and b) Rob Lowe sounds like he is extremely crazy. Especially after reading this job description. My favorite part of this whole thing is “Never assume anything”. So that means that one day you could be in Puerto Rico drinking heavily, or you could be in LA going to premieres with Hollywood elite. I also like that you have to schedule a haircut for the client every single time, and be able to lift up to 25 pounds. Which really makes me wonder what the applicant is really in store for. Oh and what has to be my favorite part - every place Rob goes, you have to make sure there’s a hot jacuzzi waiting for him. What happens when you have to dispose of the deceased hookers? Or if Rob Lowe plays dead? How do you report that to the media? Or do you even know he’s dead? That’s what he wants you to think! Maybe that's the test! Mmmhmm! OK enough of the intro. We have a lot of conservative idiocy to talk about as Donald J. Trump dropped the big one, but first we have to play Bill Maher’s new rule which is about as spot on as it gets.

Holy shit. Donald Trump dropped the big one this week and effectively killed the United States constitution by banning Muslims from entering the US, and then doubling down on Twitter! By the way, we get to try out our fancy new Twitter embed feature which means no more fake Trump Tweet generator! Don’t be sad, we will still use it! In the number 1 slot, is not Donald Trump. Instead it’s Steve Bannon, and we’ve got another installment of “How Is This Still A Thing?”. We’re going to ask “Shadow Governments – How Is This Still A Thing?”. In the number two slot we have to talk about the travel ban enacted by one Donald J. Trump (2). Taking the third slot, we have to talk about how Donald Trump (3) handled the firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates. It’s very Nixon-esque. In the fourth slot, Donald Trump gets caught quoting Batman villain Bane, while it was revealed that he curiously has a fear of stairs and we’ll explore that in depth. At number 5 is Kellyanne Conway who has been complaining about a lack of sleep since the campaign. Hey you knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Kellyanne. Taking the number 6 seed, is how Donald Trump handled Holocaust Remembrance Day (6), and if you guessed he omitted the very people he was supposed to remember, you are correct! At number 7, Sean Spicer (7) sent out a really curious series of cryptic tweets which may or may not have been his personal account password, while he gets caught quoting everyone’s favorite satirical newspaper. In the number 8 slot, it’s conservatives vs. Starbucks, Round 2! So the CEO announced an unprecedented hire of refugees and guess what conservatives did to retaliate? If you guessed “boycott Starbucks”, you are correct sir / madam! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!!) slot we’re going to talk about the Insane Clown Posse. Do we really need a “Gathering Of The Juggalos” march on Washington DC? I mean really? Finally this week we’re going to bring back our Stupidest State March Madness Tournament Of Idiocy! This week we’re going to the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference where regional champion Michigan takes on its’ arch rival Wisconsin in the battle for the reigning king of Fiscal Irresponsibility! And since you’re nice for listening to my schtick, how about some live music? This time we’ve got Avenged Sevenfold! I mean really if you don’t have their new album “The Stage”, you’re really missing out, it’s one of the best prog rock albums to come out in quite some time, and I say that as a true fan of the genre. And they might stop by to play something from it. Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

[font size="8"]Steve Bannon[/font]

Now it’s time for another installment of:

Shadow Governments – how are they still a thing? You know Alex Jones loves to rail on the very idea that a shadow government exists:

And that was just taken from the first page of a Youtube search on “Alex Jones Shadow Government”, we are not kidding. But this week it was revealed that hey, a shadow government might exist after all! But it’s not Hillary Clinton as Alex Jones and Wikileaks would love to have you believe. Instead, it was revealed that Steve Bannon might actually be the president and the guy who’s really drafting those executive orders that Donald Trump is signing.

Two of Donald Trump’s senior advisors — neither of whom has any previous government or legal experience — have reportedly been writing executive orders without any input from the agencies they would affect.

Aides told Politico that Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and Stephen Miller, the senior White House advisor for policy, have made almost no effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they wrote executive orders.

Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart, and Miller, a Republican political operative who’s written most of Trump’s major speeches, are writing many of the orders based on ideas that came from transition officials or “landing teams” who weren’t working in the White House.

The orders have come so quickly, and from seemingly out of nowhere, that aides sometimes aren’t even sure which actions Trump will sign until they cross his desk.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/27/1625663/-Ex-Breitbart-Alt-Nazi-promoter-Steve-Bannon-is-author-of-Trump-s-executive-orders

And with last week’s travel ban on Muslims entering the US, Bannon created what is effectively known as a “Shock Event”:

What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.” Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event."

When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

Last night’s Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
https://thewayofimprovement.com/2017/01/29/historian-heather-cox-richardson-on-trumps-muslim-ban-its-a-shock-event/

And in case you’re wondering how much Steve Bannon loves the Nazis (no, don’t you dare call them Nazis, call them “alt right”! As he would say.

), he actually uses the words “Master Plan” on a regular basis.

There was so much going on in President Donald Trump’s first week of presidential decrees that it was hard to keep track of it all. The most acute problem, in that it immediatelyaffected people’s lives, was the executive order issued on Friday that banned entry to the United States for immigrants, refugees or visitors arriving from a list of certain Muslim-majority countries designated as having terrorist activity. On Saturday when it became clear that the ban was taking effect immediately and people were being denied entry or told at their point of origin that they could not board U.S.-bound planes, all hell broke loose.

Nobody understood the rules. Passengers were being held and interrogated. Chaos ensued at international airports all over the country. Protesters gathered en masse at terminals to show their solidarity. Immigration lawyers arrived to help detainees and their families navigate a system that nobody understood — because it was arbitrary and constitutionally dubious. The world reacted with disbelief.

Finally several federal judges issued stays, for a variety of reasons, in response to suits filed by civil liberties and immigration attorneys around the country. Even hawkish constitutional experts were appalled.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/30/trumps-rasputin-seizes-the-moment-a-week-of-chaos-may-suit-steve-bannons-master-plan/

So Steve Bannon has effectively overwritten the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and by the way, this was confirmed by the Trump White House:

Earlier this week, it was reported that President Donald Trump wrote his inauguration speech himself, with CNN stating that two Trump transition officials told them he had written the draft. The report further noted that the president told historian Douglas Brinkley last month that he was writing the address.

Trump would also post an image on social media of him purportedly working on the speech while at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago.

Well, it appears that Trump wasn’t telling the full truth, per a White House official.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal last night, advisers Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon were responsible for much of the speech.

Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/white-house-concedes-that-steve-bannon-and-stephen-miller-wrote-much-of-trumps-speech/

Yes Steve Bannon is effectively running a real life shadow government, the very thing Alex Jones loves to talk about as its’ his favorite subject. And how did Donald Trump reward Steve Bannon for this sort of thing? Why he gave Bannon – a guy who won’t publicly admit he wants to bring back the Holocaust – with access to national security! Yes, this guy will be overwriting the Joint Chiefs Of Staff by being given access to national security secrets!

In a Jan. 28 order, US president Donald Trump appointed his senior political strategist Stephen Bannon to full membership on the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee,” the senior-most gathering of US security and foreign policy firepower. The same order stripped the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of such status, relegating them to a seat at the table only on issues involving their direct responsibilities.

In an administration explicitly aiming to tear down what it considers obsolete and inefficient domestic and foreign policy practices going back decades, the elevation of Bannon is unprecedented. No US president before has named a political operative to the Principals Committee, less one lacking any professional or academic experience or credential in security or foreign policy, experts say.
https://qz.com/897950/donald-trumps-appointment-of-steve-bannon-to-the-nsc-is-a-soviet-style-political-power-play/

But Steve Bannon really hates the media, as is evidenced by the multiple times he’s told the media to shove it, despite that the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.

WASHINGTON — Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.

“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/media/stephen-bannon-trump-news-media.html

And that article by the way appeared in Donald Trump’s favorite punching bag – the New York Times, which he calls “failing” on a daily basis. That’s enough to make you ask: Shadow Governments:

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

We need some appropriate music for this entry.

Yeah! Fuck yeah! Nothing like some good ol’ Iron Maiden to kick things off! But it’s really no laughing matter. See – there’s this thing called the Doomsday Clock. And right now it’s literally about 2 minutes from striking midnight. 2.5 minutes to midnight to be exact. I mean shit, Donald it hasn’t even been a week! At least give us a year!

It is getting closer to midnight.

On Thursday, the group of scientists who orchestrate the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic instrument informing the public when the earth is facing imminent disaster, moved its minute hand from three to two and a half minutes before the final hour.

It was the closest the clock had been to midnight since 1953, the year after the United States and the Soviet Union conducted competing tests of the hydrogen bomb.

Though scientists decide on the clock’s position, it is not a scientific instrument, or even a physical one. The movement of its symbolic hands is decided upon by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The organization introduced the clock on the cover of its June 1947 edition, placing it at seven minutes to midnight. Since then, it has moved closer to midnight and farther away, depending on the board’s conclusions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/science/doomsday-clock-countdown-2017.html

There is literally a meme or video clip for everything. So what did Donald J. Trump do to advance World War III this week? Well besides this…

War with the US under Donald Trump is “not just a slogan” and becoming a “practical reality”, a senior Chinese military official has said.

The remarks were published on the People’s Liberation Army website, apparently in response to the aggressive rhetoric towards China from America's new administration.

They communicated a view from inside the Central Military Commission, which has overall authority of China’s armed forces.

Quoted in the South China Morning Post, the official from the Commission’s Defence Mobilisation Department wrote: “A war ‘within the president’s term’ or ‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality.”

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-donald-trump-war-us-military-official-practical-reality-president-latest-a7550601.html

But no really, we have to talk about the Islamic travel ban, and other things Donald J. Trump is afraid of – this week. This is absolutely insane. Plus we get to test out our shiny new plaything! Which we will do right now:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826774668245946368

I think you're unclear as to what the concept of a "ban" is, jackass! It means you're gone, bye bye, sayonara! Auf wiedersen! Fuck off! So how did this happen? We already discussed how Steve Bannon is bypassing both Congress and the Joint Chiefs to enact his own shadow government. But this is just… such an egregious violation of the Constitution of the US. I mean really WTF!

Although White House adviser Stephen Miller has quickly emerged as a fall guy for this past weekend’s chaos at major American airports, he nonetheless appeared on CBS’s This Morning to paint the Trump administration’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries as a massive success.

Miller also said that the Trump administration will, over the next month, develop screening procedures to ensure that only foreigners who “love” America are allowed into the country.

“We’re going to take the next 30 days to develop a new set of screening protocols to try and ensure that people entering our country, particularly on a permanent basis, truly love and support the United States of America,” he said. “There’ll be a 60-day period where countries will be asked to comply with the new directives. Countries that are in compliance will have regular, ordinary and routine migration with the United States.”

People who are permanent legal residents of the United States — a.k.a., green card holders — are already subjected to a meticulous vetting process to ensure that they have valid reasons for being in the country, that they have no criminal history, and that they pose no danger to national security.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/trump-adviser-stephen-miller-travel-ban-intended-to-protect-america-from-bigots/

Are you fucking kidding me???? This executive order was written to protect America from bigots? I mean seriously??? Hey Stephan – BIGOTS ARE THE ONES WRITING THIS ORDER!!! I mean if you were to look up the word “bigot” in the dictionary you’d see pictures of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon!

And how do you determine who loves America more than the next guy? Do you make them take a test?? Oh wait – they already do that! You know what – let’s make Donald Trump take the citizenship test and see what kind of score he gets! Go on, I’ll wait.

He might fail because he needed Germany’s Angela Merkel to explain to him what the Geneva Convention means:

A spokesman for Angela Merkel said the German chancellor regretted Trump’s decision to ban citizens of certain countries from entering the US, adding that she had “explained” the obligations of the Geneva refugee convention to the new president in a phone call on Saturday.

“The chancellor regrets the US government’s entry ban against refugees and the citizens of certain countries,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement.

“She is convinced that the necessary, decisive battle against terrorism does not justify a general suspicion against people of a certain origin or a certain religion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/29/merkel-explains-geneva-refugee-convention-to-trump-in-phone-call

And here’s where we get to test our shiny new plaything! You see the Gods of the Top 10 have blessed us with the ability to embed Tweets now! Yes, we can now quote Donald J. Trump directly! Oh yes, the tables are going to turn again as we’re going meta! So here’s how Trump responded this week:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826041397232943104
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826042483155013632

You know Donald, the correct answer to this, is absolutely ZERO people should have been detained or separated from their families. Any other answer than zero is an egregious violation of the 1st amendment of the US constitution, which reads, and I’m quoting:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Oh and in case you were wondering, this hasn’t made us any safer. In fact it’s made us more of a target since actual jihadist groups are calling this a “victory”:

Jihadist groups on Sunday celebrated the Trump administration’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, saying the new policy validates their claim that the United States is at war with Islam.

Comments posted to pro-Islamic State social media accounts predicted that President Trump’s executive order would persuade American Muslims to side with the extremists. One posting hailed the U.S. president as “the best caller to Islam,” while others predicted that Trump would soon launch a new war in the Middle East.

“ al-Baghdadi has the right to come out and inform Trump that banning Muslims from entering America is a ‘blessed ban,’” said one posting to a pro-Islamic State channel on Telegram, a social-media platform. The writer compared the executive order to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Islamic militant leaders at the time hailed as a “blessed invasion” that ignited anti-Western fervor across the Islamic world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/jihadist-groups-hail-trumps-travel-ban-as-a-victory/2017/01/29/50908986-e66d-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_campaign=pubexchange&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_term=.bb9ce0ca15c2

[font size="8"]The Firing Of Sally Yates[/font]

So I was going to use this space to talk about Trump’s SCOTUS pick. But you know what? I’m not going to. What? Make me. I don’t want to. I know you are but what am I? It takes one to know one. But moooooooooom!!! Yeah no I don’t give a fuck. What happened on Monday night was just plain fucking evil, and it hasn’t even been 10 days since Trump took office and he’s dangerously treading in Nixonian territory. So here’s what happened.

WASHINGTON — President Trump fired his acting attorney general on Monday night, removing her as the nation’s top law enforcement officer after she defiantly refused to defend his executive order closing the nation’s borders to refugees and people from predominantly Muslim countries.

In an escalating crisis for his 10-day-old administration, the president declared in a statement that Sally Q. Yates, who had served as deputy attorney general under President Barack Obama, had betrayed the administration by announcing that Justice Department lawyers would not defend Mr. Trump’s order against legal challenges.

The president replaced Ms. Yates with Dana J. Boente, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying that he would serve as attorney general until Congress acts to confirm Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. In his first act in his new role, Mr. Boente announced that he was rescinding Ms. Yates’s order.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/trump-immigration-ban-memo.html

Yes – someone is finally having the guts to stand up to Trumpenfuror and his maddening executive orders that are causing nothing but chaos. And that someone happens to be Sally Yates. We’ll have more for you as this scandal unfolds but Trump went full Nixon and fired her not even 4 hours after she told the DOJ not to pursue the travel ban:

Yeah so we lost one of few true liberal voices we had, who by the way – stayed on at the request of Donald Trump himself. And in case you’re wondering, his fans are every bit as classless as he is:

On Monday evening, just when you thought it was safe to go to bed, Donald Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Yates for — brace yourself — "betraying" the White House. Yates had committed the grievous sin of pointing out that Trump's refugee ban did not align with her understanding of "stand[ing] for what's right." The whole thing is horrifying and unjust and a Yates-themed "You're Fired!" meme from The Apprentice waiting to happen.

You can't make this up, can you? Real estate tycoon carves out a career on reality television, rising to notoriety for the catchphrase "You're fired!" as he eliminates yet another contestant. Reality television star uses economic uncertainty and fear to his advantage and becomes president-elect. Ten days after being sworn in, said president has already provoked chaos around the globe, and kicks off his second week by firing somebody who dared to oppose his (wholly unjust, unhelpful, and unproductive) ban on the people who need immigration most — refugees, and in particular refugees from war-torn Syria.

It's like watching car crash. It's a severe undermining of democracy. It could be grounds for a constitutional crisis. As Twitter struggled to grapple with the America in which we now like, it was also a "You're Fired!" meme.
https://www.bustle.com/p/youre-fired-memes-tweets-because-sally-yates-dismissal-made-twitter-lose-it-34281

And Twitler has spoken – and his response is every bit as classy as the incident itself.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826229971584708608
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826390034693623809
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/826391334248407040

Um………………………………………………. Fuck you!!!!

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

Yes, that is Donald J. Trump quoting Bane from the Dark Knight Rises. *Puts on Bane mask* Nobody cared who I was until I put on the giant, oversized, novelty tie that looks like I got it in the bargain bin at the novelty store in the mall! Anyone know where Batman is? Anyone? Did Trump break Batman’s spine first? When will Trump ask people to take control of their cities? And that's not the first time Trump got caught quoting a Batman villain. We didn't have time to put together anything on Trump's SCOTUS pick but I will give you this:

So besides Muslims, we have to talk about other things that Donald Trump is afraid of. Because I don’t think we’ve addressed that enough on this show. But this week in particular it was revealed that he has a very peculiar fear of stairs. Yes. I wish I were making this up. Apparently Trumpenfuror is afraid to go up and down a flight of stairs – even if its’ only 2 or 3 stairs. And this is a thing apparently! It’s called “bathmophobia”.

Taken as they walked from the building’s state rooms to the West Wing, it seemed to sum up how deeply they had bonded after a historic first meeting on Friday afternoon in Washington DC.

But an alternative explanation emerged that the US president suffers from bathmophobia – a fear of stairs or slopes.

Government sources in Washington DC said they had been told the New York property billionaire is uncomfortable with using either.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2729177/donald-trump-held-hands-with-theresa-may-due-to-his-chronic-fear-of-slopes-and-steps/

In fact Newsweek is saying that a Trump administration marks the beginning of the *cue reverb* ERA OF FEAR!!!

Even with, or maybe because of, all our military hardware and security, the American people—the safest humans in the history of humanity—are more afraid this year than ever. Immediately after Trump’s election, people who had not voted for him started using the words scary and terrifying. A week after the election, The Washington Post ran an explainer titled “Why Millions Fear the Looming Trump Presidency.” If you are brown or gay, the reporters wrote, you are even more “afraid.”

On any street in New York or San Francisco, it’s easy to anecdotally confirm the fear. But social media confirm it as a massive event. Crimson Hexagon, a Boston-based social media analytic company, found that social media conversations about being “scared” or” afraid” about Trump increased 19 percent after the election, compared with before November 8. In fact, people were already pretty scared of him before the election: From August 1 to November 8, out of the 331 million social media conversations about Trump, 4.3 million were people saying they were “afraid” or “scared.” Of the 248 million conversations about Trump since the election, 5.1 million were people talking about being “afraid’ or “scared.”
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fear-inauguration-2017-afraid-america-545308

By the way you know I thought I had way more for this entry but I did have to mention the story about him being afraid of stairs. But while he has the entire world fuming at him for the unconstitutional, inhumane, international treaty-violating Muslim ban, you know how Trump enjoyed his Sunday Funday? Oh and by the way when you work a job that requires you to be on 24/7, you don’t really get Sunday Fundays. So, like the Joker and Bane, he sends the entire world into chaos, causes untold physical and psychological damage to the people he damaged, separates children from their families, separates families, denies directors from attending movie premiers, not to mention this tragic story, tarnished America's reputation around the world, causes people to get out in the streets, and is like "You know what? Fuck it, I'm taking the afternoon off." And you know how he spends that time off? Watching Finding Dory. Yes, while the the world descends into chaos over the Muslim ban, he watches a fucking movie about a lost fish!

The White House screened the film “Finding Dory” on Sunday afternoon, as hundreds gathered outside to protest his immigration ban.

President Trump's White House screened the Disney Pixar film for staff and family in the afternoon amid massive backlash against his executive order prohibiting foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

The White House announced the screening of the movie, about a fish who searches for her lost parents, in its official schedule for the president.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316770-trump-screens-finding-dory-as-hundreds-protest-immigration-ban

I like that one!

By the way, speaking of the animal kingdom, a recent study was done to show exactly what happens when chimpanzees are ruled by a tyrant, and well, just like in real life, it doesn’t end well:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119677-chimps-beat-up-murder-and-then-cannibalise-their-former-tyrant/

Thirteen years ago, Foudouko reigned over one of the chimp clans at the Fongoli study site, part of the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project. As alpha male, he was “somewhat of a tyrant”, Pruetz says.

Early one morning, Pruetz and her team heard loud screams and hoots from the chimps’ nearby sleep nest. At dawn, they found Foudouko dead, bleeding profusely from a bite to his right foot. He also had a large gash in his back and a ripped anus. Later he was found to have cracked ribs. Pruetz says Foudouko probably died of internal injuries or bled out from his foot wound.

By the way, switching subjects – in case you’re wondering how this couldn’t possibly get any weirder, we go to Louisville for this story, where a bunch of armchair commandos are telling people they must bow to the almighty Trumpenfuror. Classy:

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2017/01/30/military-convoy-trump-flag-rolls-through/97255844/

Flying a large "Trump" flag, a mysterious convoy of military vehicles rolled down Interstate 65 through Louisville on Sunday morning. But nobody is claiming it.

A spokesman for Ft. Knox, Patrick Hodges, said it wasn't theirs.

Same for the Kentucky National Guard, said Maj. Stephen Martin, director of public affairs.

A Defense Department spokesman, Maj. Jamie Davis, who examined images of the four-truck procession for the Courier-Journal, said he doesn't think it belonged to any service branch — and that the vehicles may have been military surplus.

[font size="8"]Doanld Trump & Kellyanne Conway[/font]

Try and get through this if you dare:

Yes, that’s Kellyanne Conway appearing to do standup comedy of some sort. So we need to talk about Kellyanne for a few minutes shall we? And yes in regards to Trump’s Muslim ban, the consensus coming from his camp was that of a childish one.

Over the weekend, thousands protested President Trump’s temporary ban on admitting refugees and immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries into the U.S., including those from war-torn Syria.

In an interview with Cosmopolitan.com yesterday, top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway backed the timing of the president’s executive order, which he signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"The idea that we have to wait for the next terrorist attack to actually happen and say, ‘How did that happen? Were we looking another way?’ It’s just not going to happen here," she said. "President Trump inherited a hot mess."
www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8626496/kellyanne-conway-muslim-ban-refugees/

But this might be one of the more bizarre stories coming from Trump’s PR advisor:

WASHINGTON ― Kellyanne Conway, top advisor to President Donald Trump, suggested on Sunday that she understands what it’s like for immigrants and refugees to be detained at U.S. airports because her own travels were slowed down after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“I was stopped many times ... after 9/11,” she said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I didn’t resemble, or share a name with, or be part of any kind of terrorist conspiracy, but this is what we do to keep a nation safe.”

Conway was defending Trump’s sweeping executive order on immigration, which halts refugee resettlement for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., and for 90 days blocks individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Scores of immigrants and refugees were detained at U.S. airports over the weekend as protesters around the country demanded for them to be let go.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kellyanne-conway-airport-stop-immigration_us_588e1114e4b017637794f37f?

But she is hopping mad folks! We can’t rest idly by on this one while Donald Trump does his best impression of Heath Ledger’s Joker from the Dark Knight! I mean he only

https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/825358733945475073

Yeah he’s a man of action! Because he likes doing shit, and doesn’t care about things like facts, or laws, or the US Constitution, or international treaties. You know things that have prevented a flat out ban on one particular religion from happening. And did I mention facts?

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, appeared a week ago on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd and famously uttered the phrase “alternative facts” when pressed about the falsehoods uttered the previous day by White House press secretary Sean Spicer regarding the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration. In an appearance yesterday on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace, Conway made clear just how much the media uproar over those words had affected her.

“Talk about fake news, talk about alternative facts: What happened last week? I went on three network Sunday shows. I spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said, ‘alternative facts.’ Not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for never covering the facts that matter to America’s women — 16.1 women in poverty as we sit here, the 12.4 million women who have no health insurance,” said Conway, suggesting that people like Todd and ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos were addicted to phony issues and not big-time issues.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/01/30/kellyanne-conway-is-mad-about-alternative-facts-blowup/?utm_term=.8db8acecc690

And in case you’re wondering why Kellyanne has to work triple overtime, gets no sleep, and probably gets mistaken for a terrorist by the TSA, Donald Trump is now the most unpopular president in history! Bravo, well done!

A majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s work during his first week in the White House — breaking a record of how long it generally takes the majority of Americans to disapprove of a president.

On Saturday, 51 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump, a Gallup poll found.

The poll tracks daily approval ratings for Trump by surveying 1,500 Americans.

It took just eight days to reach these ratings. It took at least several hundred days for the majority of Americans to disapprove of past presidents.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/poll-president-donald-trump-disapproval-rating-record

[font size="8"]Doanld T & The Holocaust Remembrance Day[/font]

The Holocaust. Yeah there’s nothing to joke about mass genocide, no, sir, and I’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pole. We’re not even going to cover the Quebec Mosque Incident, which was a major terrorist attack because we have a long standing policy on this show of not turning tragedy into comedy, which can be done, but not when you’re talking about the Holocaust or even the murder of 50 nightclub patrons in Orlando. What we can do on the other hand is talk about Donald Trump’s flub when he of course used his favorite toy to tell people about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

A statement from President Trump marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day omitted any mention of Jews or anti-Semitism, a departure from recent bipartisan precedent set by previous presidents.

The statement calls for remembrance of “victims, survivors, heroes,” but nowhere does it mention the millions of Jewish people killed during the Holocaust, nor does it mention the ideology of anti-Semitism that led to the killings.

Here’s the statement from Trump in full:

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror. Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent. In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-statement-marking-holocaust-remembrance-leaves-out-mention-of-jews/2017/01/27/0886d3c2-e4bd-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.1a22638c409f

Yes that’s the full statement, and surprisingly Trump makes no mention of himself. That sounds pretty presidential right? Except for one tiny little detail:

Washington (CNN)Many organizations that advocate for refugees slammed President Donald Trump's executive action Friday imposing "extreme vetting" on those fleeing to America, among them Jewish groups that took particular exception to the day on which he signed it: Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"It's repulsive," said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a faith-based nonprofit dedicated to resettling refugees in the United States. "I mean, the timing is incredibly offensive."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/trump-refugee-holocaust-remembrance-day/

Yes! On the same day Trump signed the refugee ban, was also Holocaust Remembrance Day! Just seriously… WTF. Oh and by the way, everyone’s favorite Dippin’ Dots Truther Sean Spicer said that people were nitpicking the official White House statement – and he’s about to blow a gasket:

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday defended the controversial White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, which did not specifically mention Jewish people. Spicer said President Donald Trump had been "praised" for the statement and called its critics "pathetic."

He added that Trump "went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust."

"Well, I think he's aware of what people have been saying," Spicer said. "But I think, by and large, he's been praised for it. The president recognized the tremendous loss of life that came from the Holocaust.
http://www.businessinsider.com/spicer-trump-holocaust-statement-2017-01

And in case you’re wondering how this couldn’t possibly get any weirder, the Anne Frank Center issued their official statement on Trump’s wall, and well, it’s not good:

Statement of Steven Goldstein, Executive Director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, the U.S. civil and human rights organization among Anne Frank organizations worldwide:

As President Trump prepares orders to wall out Mexicans and shut out refugees from America, today marks one of the most hateful days in our nation’s history. Donald Trump is retracting the promise of American freedom to an extent we have not seen from a President since Franklin Roosevelt forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II. Today the Statue of Liberty weeps over President Trump’s discrimination.

President Trump is beyond the wrong side of history. He is driving our nation off a moral cliff.
http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/01/25/trump-just-ended-refugee-program-anne-frank-centers-response-perfect/

And he’s also pissed off actual Holocaust survivors:

As reports spread that U.S. President Donald Trump is considering suspending the U.S. refugee program on the eve of the United Nations’ International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust survivors responded with a mix of outrage and empathy.

“A million and a half Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust and the world stood silent,” says Gerda Freiberg, 91, an Upper Silesian native who survived three years of brutal Nazi slave labor in a women’s camp in Sudetenland when she was a teenager. “When we were liberated, we just stood there not knowing where to go or what to do, and not one person, not a local doctor or a mother or father offered to help us or give us food or make sure were okay. There were girls dying of typhoid."
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.767553

[font size="8"]Sean Spicer[/font]

So can someone tell me what the fuck Sean Spicer was doing last week? And we thought Donald Trump had some batshit crazy tweets from the toilet. But this, I mean seriously what the fuck did he tweet last week? Can we show that?

https://twitter.com/Jordanfabian/status/824271155490131968

And then:

https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/824623455211511808

Tell me more, Sean Spicer! Please! And yes that is a really good question and I too have many more! So here’s a possible explanation from the Washington Post:

Two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security for password-protected accounts, and it would be good for the official account of the press secretary for the White House to have it. In fact, it would be good for anyone with a Twitter account to have it. According to a brand-new Pew report on cybersecurity, about 52 percent of Americans have used two-factor at some point to manage an account.

In case you are one of the 48 percent of Americans who haven’t used it, here’s how it works: In addition to entering in a password, two-factor requires users to enter in a randomly generated code that changes with each login, usually sent to your phone through either an app or a text message. For Twitter, those codes are sent via text by default, from a number that should look familiar to any longtime Twitter users: 40404.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/01/26/a-short-investigation-into-the-mysterious-tweets-from-press-secretary-sean-spicer/?utm_term=.e1effe18b3c8

But…was it hypnosis? Was it cryptic passwords? What was it? I want to know!!!! By the way in case you couldn’t wonder how this could possibly get any weirder, I give you this tweet from Sean Spicer’s personal Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/seanspicer/status/825565510418968578

Wait! Whoa, whoa whoa! Back up! Beep! Beep!

Let’s examine that last word there – the word is “misinformation”. Key part of that word: “mis”. And then he follows it up with “You nailed it period!”. So the key word is “misinformation” again. I just…. These people get weirder and stupider every single minute! Let’s throw that tweet that he’s referring to up there, shall we?

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/825546280034201600

He quoted the Onion!!!! Yes, he actually quoted the Onion!!!! WTF! I just…

[font size="8"]Conservatives V. Starbucks: Round 2[/font]

Silly conservatives, when will you learn how to properly stage a boycott? See, our boycotts are successful, like the time we got Glenn Beck kicked off Fox News after his sponsor of his show was just boiled down to Cash For Gold. By the way, how is that still a thing? We should examine that in a future edition of the Top 10. Getting back on topic, here’s what happened.

The coffee giant on Sunday made major news when outgoing CEO Howard Schultz pledged that the company would look to hire 10,000 refugees in its stores worldwide, including some who have helped the U.S. military, in response to President Donald Trump's executive order to bar entry of refugees from several predominantly Muslim countries. The statement from Schultz—who also sought to reassure his employees after Trump's immigration ban—was one of many public statements made by high-profile CEOs. The tech industry has been especially vocal and executives from other industries are just now starting to weigh in.
http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/starbucks-boycott-refugee-hiring/

OK so remember my 5 part lecture series about How To Talk About Trump For Dummies? Well here’s where you can put that training to good use. See, conservatives are trying to get a meme started about how Starbucks is hiring 10,000 refugees but ignoring 10,000 homeless veterans here in the US. Here’s where you can turn the tables on that line of thinking.

1. Starbucks is a multi billion chain with shops in more than 100 countries world wide, so the policy of hiring refugees affects more than just the US.
2. This is the most important one – just ask them what they’ve done to help homeless veterans today besides tweet about it. That shuts them up pretty fucking quick!

Now conservatives, here’s how you stage a fucking boycott, and it sucks that it comes to this, but I don’t blame the people of Mexico one bit after the way Trump has treated them:

Boycotts in Mexico banning the purchases or endorsement of American products have spread across the nation in response to the first few days of the Donald Trump administration. A Mexican food activist group urged consumers to cease buying U.S. products, while additional boycotts have called for Mexicans to ban U.S. companies Walmart, Starbucks and McDonalds and products like Coca-Cola.

Frustrations between the countries have surmounted since Trump signed an order last week greenlighting a U.S.-Mexico border wall just days into his presidency. The Trump administration also proposed a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports in a bid to get the country to pay for the wall, further straining relations. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto then canceled a scheduled meeting with Trump after repeatedly vowing that Mexico would not pay for the wall.

Starbucks was a major target of a boycott with social media hashtag reading “#AdiosStarbucks began to trend last week. A Mexican state governor also called for Mexicans to cease buying cars from U.S. car company Ford, Reuters reported.
http://www.ibtimes.com/mexico-wall-latest-update-mexicans-boycott-starbucks-us-companies-products-protest-2483445

[font size="8"]Insane Clown Posse[/font]

OK I get it – everyone is pissed at Donald Trump. I am, I know you are, and I’m sure there’s a lot more that he’s affected that we haven’t heard from. But after the women’s march is this really what we need right now? After Trump effectively killed the EPA and he’ll most likely go after the arts next, I get that scientists want to march on Washington. But there is one group that wants to march on Washington that some would consider a radical fringe group. Let’s explain:

Last year, Insane Clown Posse vowed they would march on Washington D.C. to protest the FBI, with whom they’ve sparred for the last few years. (In 2011, the FBI named the Juggalos a “loosely organized hybrid gang”; ICP sued the FBI over the slander in 2014, lost the initial lawsuit, and won on appeal in 2015.) Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J are not ones to break their promises, and ICP have officially announced the Juggalo March, which will take place September 16 at Washington D.C.’s National Mall.

“This is the day that we are asking every single Juggalo to join us in our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., to make a collective statement from the Juggalo Family to the world about what we are and what we are not,” the group said on a website launched for the march. “We must collectively show them that we truly are a family that is united by a shared love of music and fellowship.”

The march will be followed by a free concert with performances by ICP, Vanilla Ice, 2 Live Crew, and several other artists affiliated with ICP’s Psychopathic Records.
http://www.spin.com/2017/01/insane-clown-posse-are-officially-marching-on-washington-d-c-to-protest-anti-juggalo-treatment/

That just… wow. I mean really. Wow. But they actually do have a good reason to protest and I give them credit for that. But really, did stores not stock enough Faygo Cola? I mean this isn’t really a march, this is the Gathering of the Juggalos in Washington, DC.

The Insane Clown Posse is protesting the FBI.

No, really.

The rap duo and their fans will march on Washington, D.C., in September to protest the group’s FBI classification as a gang.

“As many of you are no doubt personally aware, the FBI’s inclusion of Juggalos as a ‘gang’ has resulted in hundreds if not thousands of people subjected to various forms of discrimination, harassment, and profiling simply for identifying as a Juggalo,” the group wrote in an online manifesto.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/insane-clown-posse-details-protest-fbi-gang-designation-article-1.2956991

I think ICP is unclear of what the definition of “family” is. But really, I am very curious about the use of the term “manifesto” here. And in the typical type of armchair journalism you’ve come to expect from the Top 10 by now, let’s go through this thing, shall we?

This is the day that we are asking every single Juggalo to join us in our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., to make a collective statement from the Juggalo Family to the world about what we are and what we are not. Recently Psychopathic Records’ court case in our lawsuit against the F.B.I. and Department of Justice for listing Juggalos as a “loosely organized hybrid gang” in their 2011 Gang Task Force report was once again dismissed, meaning we are back to square one from a legal standpoint. We have tried to use the American judicial system to achieve justice and we failed.

So on Saturday, September 16, 2017, we are taking out fight to the streets. Literally.
http://www.metrotimes.com/the-scene/archives/2017/01/27/heres-the-manifesto-for-the-insane-clown-posses-juggalo-march-on-washington-dc

Are we talking about the same fanbase here, Violent J? And yeah Violent J, you can take your fight to the streets, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anybody outside your fanbase will listen. I mean take a look at our current president who’s going out of his way to prove that fact. Let’s continue:

That is the date that the Juggalo Family must truly shine and show America and the world that we are not a gang, public menace, cult, or any of the other untrue labels they have attempted to slap on us throughout the years.

Cult? Interesting choice of words there! I don’t think we need to go any further!

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Round 2: Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference #5 Michigan Vs #6 Wisconsin[/font]

16 states will enter, only one will be crowned the official Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State! If you need a reminder of the conferences, we have the Gun Nut Conference, the Family Values Conference, the Batshit Conference, and the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference. Ladies and gentlemen we are back with round 2 of our Stupidest State contest! If you remember from last week, Alabama routed Arkansas in a Family Values face off to advance to the second round – the Hateful Eight if you will (apologies to Quentin Tarantino). This week we’re going to the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference where regional archrivals #5 Michigan will take on division leading #6 Wisconsin in a battle for regional supremacy as the state with the most irresponsible spending! So let’s get out our brackets and place your bets as to who will take the crown for the Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State Contest!

[font size="6"]Round 2: Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference: #5 – Michigan Vs #6 - Wisconsin[/font]

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

The next state in our Stupidest State contest is Michigan. Which is the home of the DeVos family, Flint, and governor Rick Snyder. In case you’re unaware, Flint has been the subject of a toxic water crisis that has hit the entire nation. And it’s really the doing of governor Rick Snyder. Unfortunately what’s happening in Flint has got completely lost thanks to President Man Baby. Their water was so bad that at one point it looked like this:

And by the way – this was water coming out of a hospital sink! A fucking hospital!!! Which is used for, I don’t know, surgery!!!! This was last year! And the news of this crisis has all been forgotten about thanks to president Cheeto McShitgibbon! The toxic water crisis has hit the 1,000 day mark recently, and if you’re keeping score, that’s 2 years and 270 days that Flint’s water has been like this:

It has been over 1,000 days since Flint, Michigan switched its drinking water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River, resulting in a public health crisis that has yet to be adequately addressed, residents and experts say.

On April 25, 2014, after at least a year of deliberation and negotiation, Flint officials and its state-mandated emergency manager switched the city's drinking water supply to the Flint River. Residents soon complained of the water's odd tastes, smells and coloring while officials repeatedly told them the water was safe to ingest. The situation became a full-blown crisis when, during the summer of 2015, rising levels of lead were being detected in children’s blood.

It was later determined that the Flint River water was not being treated properly, and that lead from aging water pipes was bleeding into the water supply. Lead is a deadly neurotoxin, and exposure is especially dangerous for children, who may experience stunted growth, behavioral problems and neurological damage. During the crisis, 12 people died from Legionnaires disease, while residents, including young children, were continually exposed to dangerous levels of lead.
https://www.rt.com/usa/374545-flint-water-1000-days/

Yeah that’s about the best way we can describe that. And the powers that be don’t seem to give a shit, as evidenced by their governor Rick Snyder:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Republican federal lawmakers have shot down an attempt to subpoena Gov. Rick Snyder for additional documents tied to the Flint water crisis.

At a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 24, House Republican members voted unanimously to defeat an amendment put forward by Democrats seeking to subpoena Snyder for documents related to the city's water problems.

Last week, in a letter to Jason Chaffetz, chairperson of the congressional committee, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-MD, and U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-MI, made the request for Snyder's office to produce all requested documents within 30 days.

The letter asked that Oversight Committee members be allowed to debate and vote on a motion to subpoena Snyder "to compel the production of key documents that he has been withholding from the committee for the past year, including evidence relating to his destruction of emails."
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2017/01/committee_denies_request_to_su.html

Yup! If that doesn’t already make your blood want to boil, there’s lots of things happening in the Great Lakes state that aren’t making the news because someone hasn’t taken away Twitler’s account yet. For instance, Michigan is also the home of Betsy DeVos, who is the presumed front runner to be Donald Trump’s Secretary Of Education. Yes, thanks to the republicans’ recklessness, Detroit is left with just one public school left:

In Brightmoor, the only high school left is Detroit Community Schools, a charter boasting more than a decade of abysmal test scores and, until recently, a superintendent who earned $130,000 a year despite a dearth of educational experience or credentials.

On the west side, another charter school, Hope Academy, has been serving the community around Grand River and Livernois for 20 years. Its test scores have been among the lowest in the state throughout those two decades; in 2013 the school ranked in the first percentile, the absolute bottom for academic performance. Two years later, its charter was renewed.

Or if you live downtown, you could try Woodward Academy, a charter that has limped along near the bottom of school achievement since 1998, while its operator has been allowed to expand into other communities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/08/a-sobering-look-at-what-betsy-devos-did-to-education-in-michigan-and-what-she-might-do-as-secretary-of-education/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na&utm_term=.09dbf480a102

Yes, so President Trump would put someone who’s never attended public school or sent her own children to public school would be put in charge of public schools across the nation! That is scary enough ladies and gentlemen! In case you’re wondering any more about this gem and why should will be the least qualified person ever to qualify for that position, I give you this:

•DeVos seemed to have no understanding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, which requires public schools to provide free and appropriate education to all students with disabilities.

DeVos said that states should have the right to decide whether to enforce IDEA, but when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) later told her that IDEA is a federal civil rights law and asked DeVos if she stood by her statement that it was up to the states to follow it, DeVos responded, “Federal law must be followed where federal dollars are in play.” Hassan then asked, “So were you unaware when I just asked you about the IDEA that it was a federal law?” DeVos responded, “I may have confused it.” DeVos did not protest when Hassan said she was upset the nominee didn’t understand the law and urged her to learn about it.

{Betsy DeVos apparently ‘confused’ about federal law protecting students with disabilities}

•DeVos refused to agree with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) that all schools that receive public federal funds — traditional public, public charter or private schools that receive voucher money — should be held to the same standards of accountability.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/18/six-astonishing-things-betsy-devos-said-and-refused-to-say-at-her-confirmation-hearing/

Yeah they’re buying influence by donating tons of money to Donald Trump’s campaign. Oh how could this possibly get any worse, you might ask? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I answer you – this happened at her confirmation hearing:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was not a hearing. It was the mere burlesque of a hearing, rendered meaningless by a preposterously accelerated process that rendered all questioning perfunctory and that left all cheap evasions hanging in the air of the committee room the way cigarette smoke used to canopy the proceedings back in the day. You would not hire a gardener through the process by which Betsy DeVos likely is going to become the Secretary of Education. A public school system wouldn't hire her to work the cafeteria line at lunch. It was appalling. It was unnerving. It was a grotesque of how an evolved democracy should operate. It was business as usual these days and it likely isn't going to matter a damn.

As nearly as I can tell, the nominees for the president-elect's Cabinet fall into several different categories. There are the people you'd pretty much expect from any Republican administration. (James Mattis, Stephen Flynn, Ryan Zinke). There are the people who understand the mission of their departments and have spent their lives undermining it. (Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Rick Perry at Energy, Andrew Puzder at Labor). And there are the people who are fundamentally clueless about the general nature of public service. (Rex Tillerson at State.) On Tuesday night, DeVos demonstrated that she is that rarest of Trump administration fauna: Someone who fits capably into all three categories.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52357/betsy-devos-hearing/

And we also have to point out this stunning mind control aversion therapy that Mrs. DeVos invests in. And if you guessed the advertising is completely false and the company is ultra corrupt, you get points!

A group of brain performance centers backed by Betsy DeVos, the nominee for education secretary, promotes results that are nothing short of stunning: improvements reported by 91 percent of patients with depression, 90 percent with attention deficit disorder, 90 percent with anxiety.

The treatment offered by Neurocore, a business in which Ms. DeVos and her husband, Dick, are the chief investors, consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when the viewers become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains. With eight centers in Michigan and Florida and plans to expand, Neurocore says it has assessed about 10,000 people for health problems that often require medication.

Is it time for a mind makeover? the company asks in its advertising. All it takes is science.

But a review of Neurocores claims and interviews with medical experts suggest its conclusions are unproven and its methods questionable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/betsy-devos-neurocore-brain-centers.html

And by the way – in case you’re wondering about which states would get hurt the most in a Trump trade war? If you guessed Michigan is at the top, you are correct sir / madam! You get points!

President Donald Trump wasted no time Monday moving ahead on his campaign promise to renegotiate a nearly quarter-century-old free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico — a move that could end up hurting workers in the states that heavily supported him.

Trump is expected to sign an executive order as early as Monday stating his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, a White House official told NBC News.

Initiated by former President George H.W. Bush and signed into by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, NAFTA has helped boost U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico, the nation's two largest trading partners.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/23/these-states-would-get-hurt-most-in-a-trump-trade-war.html

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

Next in our stupidest state contest, we go to Wisconsin, the home of Paul Ryan and Scott Walker. If you need any doubt as to the endless greed and republican empathy that knows no boundaries that the GOP are famous for, look no further than Wisconsin! But to do this, it’s time for another edition of “People Who Somehow Got Elected.” Politicians at national, state and local levels who are so terrible , you wonder how they got elected in the first place. Or in this case reelected. It’s now time for another installment of:

This week – Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Scott Walker, the guy who wasn’t elected by the people of Wisconsin. Instead, he was the product of Citizens United, which allowed the Koch Brothers to purchase the governorship of Wisconsin.

"Of late, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has taken to the electric Twitter machine to snark at Hillary Rodham Clinton on what he says is the state of her political corruption. This would be funny enough coming from a guy whose entire political career has been built on penny-ante grifting that has landed several of his trusted aides in the sneezer.

However, as The Guardian points out today, Walker's sanctimonious tweeting has gone from funny to drop-dead hilarious."
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48591/scott-walker-wisconsin-supreme-court/

In fact, what’s happening in Wisconsin in regards to fiscal irresponsibility also got lost during the Trump campaign. Scott Walker’s philosophy is that he aligned himself with the Federalist Society – a think tank that thinks we should take the constitution literally. Despite that oh yeah, they don’t do that!

More than three decades ago, a group of conservative aspiring lawyers launched a new legal movement to counter their perceptions of law schools and the judiciary as liberal leaning.

Now, The Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Study’s Wisconsin chapter is poised to reshape courtrooms throughout the state with the help of Gov. Scott Walker.

Each of the two justices Walker appointed to the state Supreme Court, Rebecca Bradley and Daniel Kelly, were past presidents of the Milwaukee Federalist Society chapter.

Walker also has appointed at least a handful of lawyers with philosophies aligned to the Federalist Society to appeals court and circuit court judgeships, judicial observers say.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/scott-walker-ties-himself-to-the-federalist-society/article_15b2e76a-5229-5ab1-b785-5e6c39087671.html

But in fact, Scott Walker might be the single most unpopular governor in the entire country. At one time, he was polling at zero percent. Yes, you heard that correctly – 0%. As in less than 1%.

Madison (WKOW) -- A new national poll shows Governor Scott Walker polling at 0 percent in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The CNN/ORC poll released Sunday shows there were five candidates who received less than one percent of support from likely Republican voters. Walker was among them, joined by former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and former New York Governor George Pataki. Less than one percent equates to zero percent, statistically.
http://www.wkow.com/story/30072499/2015/09/20/walker-at-0-in-new-national-poll#.Vf8fZ4cZyrI.twitter

In fact, Walker is so unpopular, he had to beg and plead to Donald Trump to let him get away with his excessive greed. This is just an astonishing new level of evil:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who campaigned for President-elect Donald Trump during his presidential run, has sent his ally a public letter asking him to pave the way for drug testing food stamps recipients before Trump has even assumed office.

“We want your help as soon as possible,” Walker wrote, before outlining specific demands, the first of which is the ability to screen and test people who need food stamps for drug use.

While states have broad authority to change the requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash welfare program, and thus 10 states have chosen to drug test applicants and recipients and deny those who refuse the tests or fail them, they currently have no such latitude over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.
https://thinkprogress.org/walker-trump-drug-test-food-stamps-53c377019225#.sp9pb61si

And Scott Walker’s excessive greed and unpopularity in Wisconsin inspired this bumper sticker which has been taking the state by storm:

And his plan for Wisconsin’s rural area schools? Yes – you guessed it! Wifi hot spots for school buses! Which is only going to cost money and provide no benefit, much like the Wifi hotspot at your local Starbucks! Hey o!!!

No details about the plan have been revealed by the governor, but Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance executive director Kim Kaukl said funding for rural schools and transportation, expanding broadband access and initiatives to improve the “teacher pipeline” and administrative efficiency are being discussed.

Walker’s 2017-19 state budget proposal also will include funding to allow districts to apply for grants for mobile wireless internet hot spots for school buses and to allow students to take home, Kaukl said.

Assembly Republicans have previously floated the idea of proposing in the upcoming budget to supply a tablet or laptop computer to nearly all high school freshmen.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/scott-walker-to-release-dramatic-plan-for-rural-schools/article_92c855df-fa68-5416-a694-33812b47450a.html

That’s Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, yet another politician who we will be adding to the ever-growing list of:

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

Oh…………………… YEAH!!!!!! We have a double overtime shocker! Michigan hits a last minute 3 pointer at the buzzer to advance to the next round over Wisconsin! Final score – Michigan, 77, Wisconsin – 74. Sorry, Wisconsin, you may have the worst Speaker of the House we’ve ever had, not to mention one of the worst governors in the nation who keeps getting elected time and time again, but Michigan’s recklessness and complete disregard for its’ people help it to advance to the next round!

[font size="8"]And now this:[/font]
[font size="8"]Avenged Sevenfold[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, playing their song “Sunny Disposition” from their amazing new album “The Stage”, please welcome Avenged Sevenfold!

Yeah how about that?

See you next week!

February 1, 2017

Colbert: How Much Damage Could Trump Do In A Week?

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