Initech

Initech's Journal

March 31, 2017

Patrick Stewart Dons Drag To Impersonate Kellyanne Conway

Even Patrick Stewart thinks he is “twinsies” with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway when dressed in drag.

The actor made his one-word statement on Twitter after a photo of him in drag posted to Reddit went viral thanks to a comparison between Stewart and New Jersey-born and bred Trump advisor Conway. Stewart, People points out, dressed as a woman in 2016 to promote Blunt Talk, his since-canceled Starz sitcom. In the Reddit posting, the user notes that “Sir Patrick Stewart in drag looks a lot like Kellyanne Conway.”

<snip>

No word on whether Stewart or SNL are interested in a Conway-style cameo. Conway has not commented on the comparison, but did recently tell TMZ that her favorite SNL skit parodying her is the show’s “Day Off” sketch.

“It’s charming,” Conway said of McKinnon’s portrayal of her on the show.

Stewart, meanwhile, told The View earlier this month that he hopes to soon become an American citizen and is “now applying for citizenship” to oppose President Trump.

“I want to be an American, too,” Stewart said. “All of my friends in Washington said: 'There is one thing you can do. Fight, fight, oppose, oppose.' ”
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/celebrities_gossip/Patrick-Stewart-says-he-is-twinsies-with-Kellyanne-Conway-when-dressed-in-drag.html

https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/846852453433835520

Please do SNL! Please do SNL! Please do SNL!

March 30, 2017

Pence breaks tie, allowing Senate to revoke Obama order on abortion provider funding

Source: The Hill Via MSN

Vice President Mike Pence returned to the Senate Thursday afternoon -- the second time in one day -- to cast a tie-breaking vote on legislation to undo an Obama-era regulation on funding for abortion providers.

Pence cast the deciding 51st vote in favor of nixing the rule, after the legislation stalled in a 50-50 tie.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) sided with Democrats to vote against repealing the Obama-era rule, prompting the need for the vice president to break the tie.

The vote marks the third time Pence has had to break a tie since becoming vice president.

Republicans are using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to roll back some Obama-era regulations with a simple majority vote.
Democrats spent hours on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday's final vote, blasting Republicans and warning that the move would negatively impact women's access to healthcare.

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pence-breaks-tie-allowing-senate-to-revoke-obama-order-on-abortion-provider-funding/ar-BBz4S1n?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

March 29, 2017

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-18: Paul Ryan's Long White House March Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-18: Paul Ryan’s Long White House March Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! We are back everybody! You know what? We got to use the intro to talk about the guys in San Clemente, California. You know, being on a small town city council in a city where nothing interesting happens has got to be the dullest job in politics. But these two surfer bros in San Clemente, California – a town about 1 hour from where I live, wanted the city council to build a statue of the late, great Paul Walker, and what a coincidence because the 8th installment of the Fast & The Furious franchise is a mere 2 weeks away from being in theaters. Let’s roll the clip first:

And here’s the funny thing – the guy’s name is Chad Kroger. You might know him as the lead singer of a little band called Nickelback. Yeah it’s like a real life Office Space. I’ve been obsessed with this story since I first heard about it. If I was a member of a city council like San Clemente where nothing interesting happens, I would just let these two guys speak all day. And I love that they go deep on Paul Walker’s back catalogue of movies. I also love the misuse of the word “melancholy”. And I love that they compare it to the Robocop statue in Detroit or the Rocky statue in Philadelphia. And then they only give the council 1 month to get ready before Fate Of The Furious comes out. I love this story! Oh and then it turns out Paul Walker had no tie to San Clemente. Yeah fail. Sorry bro. All right that’s enough of the intro. We have a lot of idiocy to get to this week, but first Samantha Bee exposes one of the least talked about heads in the Trump administration:

So where do we begin this week? So this week – the number one slot has to go to Paul Ryan (1). So Trumpcare died the horrible death it deserved and Ryan has finally come out and said that they can’t keep attempting to defeat Obamacare anymore. In the second slot, Neil Gorsuch (2) came off looking like the biggest dumbass of them all at his own confirmation hearings. Al Franken completely annihilated him, and we’ll talk more about that. In the third slot this week, is of course Donald Trump (3), who occupies just a single slot this week. So while the world burns around him, he’s spending his weekend playing golf at his favorite resort. Or did he? I mean that’s what they want you to think! In the number 4 slot we’re going to open up the Top 10 Home Shopping Network and tell you about some hot new products from America’s favorite brand – brought to you by our guest shoppers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump (4)! In the fifth slot, Devin Nunes (5) may be one of the shadiest characters in the Trump administration – which is already full of shady characters. So while the FBI was busy investigating the Trump Tower wiretap claims, Nunes may have accidentally leaked some vital information to Twitter. Taking the sixth slot, we may have found the worst comedian on Twitter, and it’s former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (6). And we’re going to do something unprecedented and open the Top 10 Chuckle Hut and try our hand at open mic night. In the number 7 slot, is Fox News – you know “the real news” as Trump puts it. So king of the deplorables, Sean Hannity was called out by Ted Koppel , while they were rightfully mocked relentlessly on Twitter for saying Trump was working in the White House when he was really golfing. At number 8 – we’ve got yet another installment of “How Is This Still A Thing?”. This time – we’re going to ask – “Pizzagate: How Is This Still A Thing?”. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!!) slot is One Million Moms. So they’ve got the world’s first “gay free” TV show and it’s focusing on a mother-son relationship. I mean really what could go wrong? Finally, it’s time for round 2 of our Stupidest State contest. The Hateful 8 has been set, folks! And this time for the first round of the Conference Finals, it’s Florida Vs Texas for all the guano in the world when we pit them in a winner take all final for the Batshit Conference! Plus we have some live music for you – this time some down and dirty southern rock from Maryland’s Clutch. I love this band, and they just announced a massive tour with another favorite of mine – Primus. Their current album “Psychic Warfare” is awesome and if you don’t have it you’re missing out! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

[font size="8"]Paul Ryan[/font]

Our first story this week is of course the epic fail that was the AHCA. You know – the one campaign promise that Donald Trump made to “repeal and replace Obamacare with something better”. So how did that go? Well, we already mentioned that it was an epic fail. You know the GOP really is like the Joker from the Dark Knight.

They really are like a dog chasing cars – they wouldn’t know what to do with one if they caught it, and that is terrifying! I mean they have complete rule – they have the senate, Congress, the White House, and if they get their way, they’ll get SCOTUS too! So what’s stopping them?

A majority of American voters oppose the Republicans' plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, while very few voters support it, a new poll finds.

A poll published Thursday by Quinnipiac University found that 56 percent of voters disapprove of the GOP healthcare plan, while just 17 percent support it.

Even among Republicans, only 41 percent support the American Health Care Act, while 24 percent oppose it. And 58 percent of Democratic voters disapprove of the plan.

Republicans are scrambling to shore up support for the repeal-and-replace bill ahead of an expected House vote later Thursday. President Trump is meeting with members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, who are seeking a number of changes to the bill in exchange for their support. But centrist Republicans are fleeing from the bill as it changes to fit the conservatives' desires, complicating efforts to get the bill passed in the House.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/325448-poll-majority-of-voters-disapprove-of-gop-obamacare-repeal-plan

In case you need it spelled out for you – this is how many Americans approve of Trumpcare:

Let’s bask in that number there for a minute – 17%! I think my ass has a higher approval rating than that, and you know what else is even crazier about this whole thing?

A picture of a White House meeting with lawmakers about a new healthcare bill affecting access to pregnancy and maternity care shows 25 men discussing the reforms – and not a single woman.

Even more men are partly visible in the peripheries of the image, which was shared on Twitter by Vice President Mike Pence.

Women’s health charity Planned Parenthood pointed out this anomaly, writing on the social network: “Here’s the picture of the leaders negotiating away birth control, maternity care and abortion. Notice anything?”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-obamacare-men-mike-pence-picture-no-women-freedom-caucus-repeal-healthcare-bill-a7647426.html

Let’s show that picture for a minute:

To quote the great Dave Chappelle (by the way – watch his Netflix specials, they’re awesome), “I see white people!!!”. Oh and here’s another thing stopping Trumpcare from being a reality:

One of the most dangerous “alternative facts” coming from the White House these days is that the Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare — is an abject failure on the brink of collapse.

Let me say upfront that I believe healthcare is a basic human right, and that everyone should be covered by a single-payer system. But to say ObamaCare is failing is simply false.

To help prove this point, let me ask you a question. How many people does ObamaCare cover?

It’s not what you think. If your answer is the number of formerly uninsured people who were newly insured under the law — that’s the wrong way of looking at it. The fact is that ObamaCare has helped all of us — everyone who has healthcare.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/325471-trumpcare-will-fail-all-women

Ooh, I like that one! And there’s even more to this than was originally thought. I mean how much of an epic fail was this and how did Paul Ryan deliver the news to Trump? Remember the movie “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”? No? Well, you will remember Paul Ryan’s Long White House Walk, which I assume he took to tell a very angry Trump that AHCA failed. This is your ruling party, folks.

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday in a major defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency.

“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, conceded.

The failure of the Republicans’ three-month blitz to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement exposed deep divisions in the Republican Party that the election of a Republican president could not mask. It cast a long shadow over the ambitious agenda that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders had promised to enact once their party assumed power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html

And then there’s this:

Speaker Paul Ryan spoke after pulling the American Health Care Act from the House floor today, saying, “This is a disappointing day for us.”

He said that President Trump agreed with him that the bill should be pulled, and Ryan thanked the White House for doing what they could on this while warning that “the worst is yet to come” on Obamacare.

But minutes later, as reporters asked questions about pulling the bill, Ryan actually went so far as to say, “We’re gonna be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

He added, “Now we are going to move on with the rest of our agenda.” He acknowledged this might make getting tax reform “more difficult,” but not impossible.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/paul-ryan-were-gonna-be-living-with-obamacare-for-the-foreseeable-future/

[font size="8"]Neil Gorsuch[/font]

Ugh, how could this possibly get any worse? If this week’s hearings are any indication, look no further than traitor Mitch and his band of thugs who steamrolled over Obama to practically give SCOTUS to a man who doesn’t deserve it. And thank god for Al Franken, how awesome was Al last week? Yeah everybody let’s give it up for Al! Come on! But seriously just how batshit fucking nuts is Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s SCOTUS pick?

Neil Gorsuch is in a tough spot. He is striving to sound a note of neutrality and apolitical dignity at a proceeding in which he has been served up to perform in a political reality show. It’s not just that as his confirmation hearings grind on, Gorsuch becomes palpably more and more squeezed between the ugliness of Republican obstruction of Merrick Garland and the fragile tyranny of the man who named him. That would be enough of a lift for any nominee. But then Gorsuch is also required to serve up a three-day performance art piece to show he is floating above all of this—that the meat grinder of Senate polarization and the soaring Shakespearean nuttiness of the man who nominated him have nothing to do with who he is and how he got here.

To be fair, I keep finding myself wondering if Chief Judge Merrick Garland would have fared any better under these circumstances. Sure, he wouldn’t have been dragged down as far by the behavior of the president who nominated him, but he would have faced the same challenges of a politicized conversation about the role of judges and the same no-win subterfuge of refusing to answer substantive questions. In one sense, the uglier confirmation politics become, the hollower any judge’s claim to dispassionate neutrality must appear. Every judge is just cannon fodder for the big show. Every judge faces criticisms about hypocrisy and faux neutrality, and I imagine that had Clinton prevailed and Garland been on the hot seat this week, he would have also squirmed beneath unanswered questions and evasive generalities.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/neil_gorsuch_was_hatched_in_a_federalist_society_lab.html

I mean come on, even Gorsuch’s Wikipedia page lists him as a homophobe:

Neil McGill Gorsuch (born August 29, 1967)is Judge]] of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. On January 31, 2017, Gorsuch was nominated for a position as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Gorsuch is a homophobe and proponent of gay rights and of textualism in interpreting the constitution. He was nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Trump on January 31, 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gorsuch

Ooh, I like that one! Does anyone remember that movie Argo? OK one guy remembers it! For those of you at home, we had one guy go “WOOO!”. Well, anyway remember when they kept saying “Argo fuck yourself”? Well, I say Gorsuch yourself, GOP. Actually, better – Argo-rsuch yourself. Thank you! So this week you know his second hearing was underway, and boy was it a complete shit show!

In a few short minutes of questioning Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., exposed the utter absurdity of an elaborate legal fiction that conservatives have spent decades constructing. That fiction is meant to place them unreachably beyond any possible question, no matter how ludicrous, cruel or unjust their rulings might be. If the Democrats had any semblance of a coherent messaging apparatus, the Gorsuch nomination would be finished. But, of course, they don’t.

It happened so quickly, and Franken’s manner — as usual — was so understated, that it was easy to miss the significance of what happened. But the nation cannot afford to let that happen. The point Franken was making was far too critical to let it pass by unnoticed. In fact, it should be a rallying point to gather around, one that could reset the course of American jurisprudence along more sound and sober lines.

Franken’s questioning concerned the notorious “frozen trucker” case, TransAm Trucking v. Dept. of Labor. Other senators had mentioned it, but never quite in the way that Franken did. A trucker named Alphonse Maddin was fired for making a commonsense decision to save his own life — and to protect others as well. Gorsuch, alone among all the judges who ruled on the case, thought that was perfectly fine. Indeed, he felt it was the only legal conclusion he could possibly reach, a conclusion Franken called “absurd.”
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/22/al-frankens-grilling-of-gorsuch-exposes-the-heartless-cruelty-behind-conservative-legal-philosophy/

And yes let’s roll the tape of this, it’s a thing of beauty:

But this is probably my favorite part of the whole interview – where Franken said that he had a career in identifying absurdities:

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch kept his cool for the most part during today’s one-part-contentious-one-part-treacly confirmation hearing. Mostly the TV news cameras following the hearing lapped up his Mr. Smith Goes to Washington routine, complete with lengthy explanation to bemused Washingtonians about the fine art of “mutton busting” and the annual stock show parade that makes its way up Denver’s 17th Avenue each year.

But Gorsuch seemed to drop the Jimmy Stewart shtick and go more Edward Arnold when grilled by Democratic Sen. Al Franken about the Case of the Frozen Trucker. As an appeals court judge, Gorsuch famously ruled against a truck driver who claimed he’d been wrongly fired by his employer. The trucker claimed that, after waiting a couple hours in 14-below temperatures, in his truck with frozen brakes, while his company sent help, he began suffering from hypothermia. Ignoring his supervisor’s demand to continue waiting, he unhitched his unheated truck from its malfunctioning trailer, and drove away to find warmth.
http://deadline.com/2017/03/al-franken-neil-gorsuch-grills-supreme-court-nominee-confirmation-hearing-1202048182/

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

That guy is our president! Yes, we’re winning so much we’re going to be sick of winning! So how much winning are you actually doing, Mr. Trump? Have you come up with your bulletproof plan to defeat ISIS yet? No? Have you started any of your border wall yet? No? And will Mexico pay for it? No? Have you successfully repealed and replaced Obamacare? No? Well get to fucking work then! I mean we don’t have to remind you of how many times Trump blasted Obama for playing golf, do we?

That’s a lot of tweets about golf. You know, while the world burned around him, Julius Ceaser wallowed in his own opulence. So I guess Trump is following examples from ancient history then?

For the eighth weekend in a row, President Trump has visited a property that bears his name. He has done so on 21 of the 66 days he has been in office, meaning that for the equivalent of three full weeks of his just-over-nine weeks as commander in chief, he has spent all or part of a day at a Trump property — earning that property mentions in the media and the ability to tell potential clients that they might be able to interact with the president. And, despite his insistence on the campaign trail that he would avoid the links — “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” he said in August — he has made 14 visits to his own golf courses since becoming president, likely playing golf on at least 12 of those occasions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/26/nearly-one-out-of-every-three-days-he-has-been-president-trump-has-visited-a-trump-property/?utm_term=.15c4f2fa8b8a&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

In case you’re wondering what this looks like illustrated, I give you:

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=

That’s a lot of days spent at Trump properties! Is he just being president so he can get taxpayers to pay for his trips to and from those properties? We’ll discuss the Fox News involvement in a bit, but there’s way more to this story than you would think.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump headed to one of his golf courses again Sunday, marking his 13th visit to one since taking office and the eighth consecutive weekend he has spent at properties bearing his name.

While the President hasn't played golf on every visit, sometimes attending to presidential business, the trips underscore a break with his insistence on the campaign trail that he wouldn't spend his time golfing because of how hard he would be working.

White House officials told reporters that Trump held meetings at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, over the weekend, but did not say how many or with whom.

Both Trump and his press secretary, Sean Spicer, have knocked former President Barack Obama for his time playing golf on the job.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/26/politics/donald-trump-golf/index.html

And guess what? It’s becoming a huge political problem in the GOP thanks to Trump’s relentless tweeting about Obama playing golf:

Invariably, whenever we look at how much time President Trump spends at the golf courses that bear his name, we incur one of two responses — or both.

1. The president is entitled to time off.
2. Why shouldn’t he go to properties that bear his name?

To which the appropriate responses are: (1) He is. However! and (2) For at least one very good reason.

Or, to go into a bit more detail:
Can’t the president take time off?

Sure! The president, like anyone else, is entitled to some down time. And, of course, the president — unlike anyone else — never really gets any. He’s always on duty, always available as needed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/27/donald-trumps-golfing-is-a-political-problem-thanks-to-donald-trump/?utm_term=.f99765e201b5

Ah, Caddyshack – classic comedy! And if you’re not already outraged that Mr. President is spending way too much time playing golf, guess what? We’re paying for it!

Despite constant criticisms of ex-President Barack Obama's golfing habits, President Donald Trump has been to one of his organization's golf courses 13 times since taking office nine weeks ago.

Of his first 66 days in office, Trump spent a full three weeks at resort properties bearing his family name, and the White House has been tight-lipped about exactly what goes on when Trump is visiting and how much its costing taxpayers.

Just because he’s at one of the golf courses owned by the Trump Organization doesn’t mean he’s playing golf, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a March 20 briefing.

“Just because you go somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean you did it. So on a couple of occasions, he’s actually conducted meetings there, he’s actually had phone calls. So just because he heads there, it doesn’t mean that that’s what’s happening,” Spicer said.
http://www.metro.us/news/donald-trump-golf-outings-cost/zsJqcA---x1huXe55DEQbE/

By the way on the subject of Sean Spicer, Jimmy Kimmel imagines what it would be like if he were a Looney Tunes character and it’s hilarious:

[font size="8"]Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump[/font]

So Donald Trump is officially the QVC President. Wait, let’s open up the Top 10 Home Shopping Network, shall we? *cue music*Welcome to the Top 10 Home Shopping Network! We have a lot of great stuff to sell you. If you see anything you like, be sure to call our hotline at 1-888-FUT-RUMP with a valid credit card. Our friendly operators are standing by! First up, we have these lovely collectible half dollar coins featuring everyone’s favorite first lady, Melania Trump for the low low price of $20! And yes, this is a real product!

This is a real product by the way! Or perhaps you’re not #MAGA ’ing it enough! You need to show your #MAGA pride with these #MAGA championship rings! For the low low price of $2500!

This is also a real product! Or maybe you’d like your very own bottle of Les Deplorables wine! This lovely bottle of red or white wine is great to share with family and friends while you discuss how to #MAGA! #MAGA!

Wine not available to ship in states where it is not valid to ship wine. Check with state laws accordingly. And again, this is also a real product! And up next, we have this lovely seat for you to bid on. For the low, low price of $100,000 per senate vote, you too, can get to decide the supreme law of the land! The previous recipient of this honor. The previous person who held this seat had it for 40 years! Neil from Colorado, you’re on the line! That bit never gets old! But we have an exciting and extremely hot new brand to tell you about – in fact here’s our correspondent Eric to tell you more about it!

Saturday’s stops marked the eighth weekend in a row — out of the 10 weekends he has been in office — that Mr. Trump has visited a Trump-branded property, including his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. White House officials have said Mr. Trump goes to his clubs and restaurants because he is comfortable there, but critics increasingly argue that the visits are priceless advertising and that Mr. Trump and his family are using the presidency as a way to enrich themselves.

“It is normal for presidents to get out — and it can be a boost for small businesses across the city and the country,” said Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a liberal nonprofit group. “But with President Trump, he spends his down time as a walking advertisement for his businesses. It is a major departure from historic norm and degradation of the office.”

Eric Trump, in an interview this month, disputed any suggestion that his father’s visits to family properties represented a conflict of interest. But he agreed that the Trump Organization’s assets — from Mar-a-Lago, where interest in memberships has surged, to its golf courses — were doing well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/us/politics/donald-trump-brand-properties.html?_r=0

Well, Eric Trump is about as useful as a doorbell, isn’t he? Or to quote one of my favorite comedies – Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Eric Trump is about as useless as a poopy flavored lollipop. I mean the brand connected to the president is the hottest its’ ever been in his lifetime! But in fact this whole thing is a sham!

Eric Trump has inadvertently exposed the reality behind the Trump family rhetoric about keeping their personal financial interests separate from the presidency. In an interview with Forbes, he admits that Donald Trump will continue to have access to the financial books for the Trump Organization.

Eric Trump told Forbes he will continue to give his father updates “on the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that,” and will do so “quarterly.” He adds, “My father and I are very close. I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”

The admission shows that the Trump family’s claims that they are keeping their interests separate continues to be a lie.

The Trumps refused to follow the protocol that other presidents from both parties have used, which has historically taken the form of setting up a blind trust. In the case of a blind trust, it would ensure that Trump’s hands are completely off his business interests, and that his activity in the West Wing would not be tainted by the reality or perception that he is making decisions with his own bank account in mind.
http://shareblue.com/eric-trump-accidentally-admits-his-dads-separation-from-the-family-business-is-a-total-sham/

Yes and it’s most certainly a damn shame for us! But it passes on big savings to you, the consumer! See Trump products are very carefully handcrafted not in the USA! Isn’t that special? Well his brother Uday isn’t much better! In fact he’s profiting off the family business!

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trumps eldest son was likely paid at least $50,000 for an appearance late last year before a French think tank whose founder and wife are allies of the Russian government in efforts to end the war in Syria.

Donald Trump Jr. addressed a dinner on Oct. 11 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, hosted by the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs. Its president, Fabien Baussart, and his Syrian-born wife, Randa Kassis, have cooperated with Russia in its drive to end the Syrian civil war, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. In December, Mr. Baussart formally nominated Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mrs. Kassis is a leader of a political faction endorsed by Russia in negotiations to end the war in Syria. The couple said they dont represent Russia and are solely focused on ending the Syrian conflict.

The meeting in October represents one in a string of contacts over the past year between members of the presidents inner circle and individuals connected to Moscow and to Russian interests. The Wall Street Journal in November reported Donald Trump Jr.s appearance at the event.*

* https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-jr-held-talks-on-syria-with-russia-supporters-1479920753

So if you want a piece of this hot brand, where you can profit off the taxpayers, hang with Russian oligarchs, and not feel even the slightest bit of guilt! Act today!

[font size="8"]Devin Nunes[/font]

So a guy on the House Intelligence Committee really needs a lesson on how intelligence actually, you know, works. I give you Devin Nunes (R-obviously). So here’s what happened – Devin Nunes may or may not have committed a class A felony by tweeting information from an ongoing investigation indirectly related to what’s going on at Trump Tower and the FBI’s wiretapping. So here’s the latest allegations into what’s happening:

WASHINGTON — Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, met on the White House grounds with a source who showed him secret American intelligence reports a day before he revealed that President Trump or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The meeting, confirmed by his spokesman on Monday, was quite likely to further intensify questions about what prompted Mr. Nunes to make the claim about the intelligence gathering and who gave him the information.

The spokesman for Mr. Nunes, Jack Langer, said the congressman met with his source at the White House because he needed access to a secure facility where people with security clearances can legally view classified information. But such facilities can also be found in the Capitol building, and other locations across Washington.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/devin-nunes-house-intelligence-committee-white-house-wiretap.html

Bonus points if you can spot the fail within the fail pic! Getting back on topic here – holy shit! I mean this couldn’t be any crazier than it already is. Everyone knows how batshit insane Putin is, but this is like cooking with onions. The more you peel back the layers of this story, the more it stinks, and the more likely you are to cry as a result of you knowing it. And we can’t help but put our finger on it, but there’s something highly suspect about a guy having ties to Russia. But there’s more!

The Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee dismissed calls for an investigation into ties between the Trump administration and Russian intelligence officials saying it would be a “witch hunt against the American people.”

Speaking at the California Republican Party’s spring convention in Sacramento, intel chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) compared accusations against the Trump White House to “McCarthyism,” reports Politico.

“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” Nunes told the attendees. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans.”

According to Nunes, he doesn’t see enough warning signs from U.S. intelligence agency investigations to warrant hearings.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/a-witch-hunt-against-the-american-people-gop-house-intel-chair-balks-at-investigating-trumps-russia-links/

Yup! Like the good republican they are, Nunes is automatically trained to play the “nothing to see here” card! But here’s the really interesting thing about Nunes – he might own a business that has actual ties to Russia. I mean is there anyone, anyone at all who’s a republican, or who is connected to the Trump administration that isn’t corrupt? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

If today’s fiasco, which came courtesy of House Intel chair Devin Nunes, wasn’t enough to convince anyone that he can’t conduct a credible investigation into whether or not Trump and his teams colluded with Russia, then this should be: Nunes has put almost his entire net worth into a winery with strong ties to Russia.

How strong? Well, the Alpha Omega Winery has distributors all over the U.S., but just a few abroad. One of those overseas distributors is the Luding Trading Company in Russia. Luding is, in fact, Russia’s largest distributor for alcoholic beverages. But they don’t just operate in Russia – they also appear to have a relationship with Vladimir Putin:

“The Luding Company and the Yerevan Ararat Brandy-Wine-Vodka factory sent greetings to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, on his 55th birthday and made a birthday present of bottles of the Noy, the Sovereign 55 cognac and the Vanatur and Varpet unique 1952 vintage wines, 1952 being the President’s birth year.”

If Russia were truly a free, democratic state, then maybe this could be overlooked as nothing more than a large company wishing the leader of a country that had given them so much a happy birthday. But Russia, under Putin, is anything but truly free. With Luding being the country’s largest distributor of alcohol, it’s highly unlikely that Putin doesn’t have his fingers in it somewhere. The fact that Nunes has his money sunk there is a pretty big deal.
http://addictinginfo.org/2017/03/22/bombshell-devin-nunes-entire-net-worth-sunk-in-company-with-strong-ties-to-russia/

And by the way in case you’re wondering if the cover up is worse than the crime, I give you this:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes’ announcement last week that officials from the transition team of President Donald Trump had been inadvertently surveilled by the U.S. intelligence community came at the behest of the White House, Rep. Eric Swalwell said Tuesday morning.

Nunes (R-Calif.) confirmed Monday that he had traveled to the White House to meet with his still-unnamed source on the day before he made his announcement but denied that the public disclosure was coordinated in any way with Trump administration officials. The White House, Nunes said in a CNN interview, simply served as a secure location for reviewing classified information and “I’m quite sure that I think people in the West Wing had no idea that I was there.”

But Swalwell (D-Calif.), also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, disputed the chairman’s argument Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s not an internet cafe. You can’t just walk in and receive classified information,” Swalwell said of the White House, adding that when a member of Congress visits, “everyone in the building knows that you’re there in the building.”

“This is done because the White House wanted it to be done,” the California Democrat said. “And this is what a cover-up to a crime looks like. We are watching it play out right now.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/eric-swalwell-devin-nunes-surveillance-white-house-trump-236577

[font size="8"]Mike Huckabee[/font]

So everybody, I think we may have found Twitter’s worst comedian. And no, it’s not Yakov Smirnov, and it’s not Sam The Armenian Comedian (inside joke for LA Top 10 readers). And it’s also not @realDonaldTrump. You know who the worst comedian on Twitter is? Why it’s @GovernorMikeHuckabee! Yes the very same Mike Huckabee who is the former governor of Arkansas, homophobe extraordinaire, and close personal friend of the Duggar family. So why is Mike Huckabee in the news this week? It’s for his comically bad Twitter feed which got roasted on Jimmy Kimmel by the great Patton Oswalt:

And then Patton doubled down shortly thereafter:

Donald Trump's frequently misspelled tweets put the increasingly fragile world order at risk. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's, by contrast, pose a far greater danger: They threaten America's comedic leadership in a world increasingly dominated by "funny" reddit photoshops and bad homemade cat GIFS.

Huckabee might have failed to secure his party's nomination for president, but he's determined to stay relevant, no matter the cost to our Twitter feeds.

Take a look at his most recent round of tweets and how viral they've become. At first, they might seem impossible to interpret — Huckabee can be inscrutable, like a Jaden Smith of the American right.

But keep trying. There are jokes there — jokes that are often so deeply bizarre we loose the will to even embed them.

What's clearis that the right is undergoing a crisis in comedy. Remember when John McCain appeared on The Daily Show in 1999 and we laughed of our own free will? (Though, to be fair, early Steve Carrell might have had more to do with that than the presidential hopeful.)
http://mashable.com/2017/03/22/mike-huckabee-worse-twitter-trump/#BJanusEvBkqa

So with that in mind, we’re going to pull a few choice Tweets here, and open up the Top 10 Conservative Idiots Chuckle Hut for business and we’re going to become roastmasters!

Hey everybody the Top 10 Chuckle Hut is open for business! I’m your host Slacker McGee, and hanging out with me on the turn tables is none other than DJ Redbone! Yes it’s time for the Slacker and Redbone Show! Wow, thanks for that! Hey don’t forget to tip your waitress! So our first comedian tonight is the former governor of Arkansas and close friend of the crazy Duggar family – that’s the one with 100,000,000 kids, don’t you know? So what is the governor up to this week? Let’s start with his first tweet that everybody is talking about!

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/844233855892709376

Really Mikey? You’re going with pork sausage? What a funny joke! Ha ha ha ha ha! And I’d like to pork her sausage if you know what I’m saying! Wait, that sounded wrong, didn’t it? Pork sausage is definitely tastier than beef sausage! Plus there’s the added bonus of lots and lots of sex jokes! Oh and by the way Mike, it’s the DEMOCRATIC Party, calling us the “Democrat Party” as conservatives love to do means you not only failed basic English, you make yourself look like a complete jackass!! So what else has the governor been tweeting about? Well…

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/844886038850031616

Yeah, wow! Swing and a miss! Much like the pork sausage joke, joking about being stabbed and poisoned is soooooooo 13th century, am I right?

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/844238783834963969

Well, I say, I say I do declare that after watching the Gorsuch hearings that Mr. Huckabee should really know that this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black!

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/843994279706054656

So does that mean all the news that will be from Infowars and Prison Planet? Because those are the real fake news sites! By the way, isn’t fake news an oxymoron? Well here’s Mikey going meta! As in metaphysical!

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/844002960153690113

Really? Your amusement? If you’re amused by that pork sausage joke, I’d like to tell you where you can stuff your pork sausage. And he still doesn’t get it! I mean what about his latest tweet?

https://twitter.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/846358924911620096

Something tells me I don’t want to see Mikey wearing spandex! And if I sat next to him on a UNITED flight, and he’s wearing spandex, I’d be making my way for the emergency exits! Hey o!!!

Thank you, I’m here all week! Don’t forget to tip your waitress!

[font size="8"]Fox News[/font]

Mr. President, remind me again which news outlets are real and which are fake? Can I go through the list with you? NBC News? Fake news! How about CNN? Boring! Lame! The worst! How about Washington Post? Awful. Just terrible. How about the New York Times? Failing. Awful. Worst subscriber index in history. How about Breitbart? Tremendous, tremendous reporting! Infowars? Alex Jones is a friend of mine! I respect their demographic of white males. Or how about Fox News? Fox News wins all the time! In fact they win so much we’re going to be sick of winning! So with that out of the way – Trump’s favorite news network was promoted by Trump because of a host calling “Failing” (his words” Paul Ryan to step down:

Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, whose show President Trump urged his followers on Twitter to watch earlier in the day, opened her program on Saturday evening by calling on Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to step down.

"Ryan needs to step down as Speaker of the House. The reason, he failed to deliver the votes on his healthcare bill, the one trumpeted to repeal and replace ObamaCare," Pirro said in her opening statement.

"You come in with all your swagger and experience and sell them a bill of goods which ends up a complete and total failure and you allow our president, in his first 100 days, to come out of the box like that, based on what?" Pirro said.

The Fox News host's fiery comments about Ryan came hours after Trump tweeted to encourage his followers to watch "Justice with Judge Jeanine."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/325810-fox-news-host-promoted-by-trump-calls-on-paul-ryan-to-step-down

But one of my favorite things that happened this weekend has to be when Fox News was talking about how Trump was working at the White House when he was really playing golf. Can we throw that Tweet up there?

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/846112245797007360

Sure, that’s what they want you to think. Here’s what actually happened:

Late Sunday afternoon, Fox News’s Twitter issued a “news alert” informing the public that President Donald Trump was “spending the weekend working at the White House.” It was a weird tweet for a couple of reasons: First, the idea that the president of the United States, typically a very busy person, had to keep doing his job over the weekend doesn’t exactly seem newsworthy. Second, Trump spent a significant portion of the weekend at his Virginia golf course.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/fox-news-says-trump-was-at-work-when-he-was-actually-golfing.html

Come on sing it with me!

But you know who wasn’t working for the weekend? Sean Hannity. Everyone’s favorite ruling king of the deplorables got blasted by a real journalist and guy who has faker hair than Donald Trump, Ted Koppel over the weekend.

The retired “Nightline” host told Fox News’ Hannity to his face that he is “bad for America” in a TV interview that aired Sunday.
Koppel spoke with Hannity in a “CBS Sunday Morning” segment about political polarization and “alternate universes” of facts in America.The veteran newsman showed clips of Hannity and Rush Limbaugh — as well as left-wing comedians like John Oliver and Stephen Colbert — as examples of media figures who are “driving the country further and further apart.”

But Hannity — one of President Trump’s biggest boosters at the conservative news network — got some harsh truths delivered straight to him by Koppel in an interview.Koppel was unmoved by Hannity's argument that Americans are smart enough to tell the difference between news and opinion shows.

“Do you think we’re bad for America? You think I’m bad for America?” Hannity asked.“Yeah,” Koppel calmly told him.
He noted that Hannity is “very good” at what he does and continued his argument — after calling out Hannity for repeatedly interrupting him.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ted-koppel-tells-sean-hannity-bad-america-article-1.3009777

I like that one! Ah, I miss the old Whose Line Is It Anyway. But there is one more crazy Fox News story I have to mention. You know last week, we mentioned that Sean Hannity pulled a gun on Fox News’ token liberal Juan Williams, and immediately dismissed it as fake news. Well, this week Williams fired back with this:

Juan Williams sat and listened for quite a while to his co-hosts distract from the real news of the Comey hearings. He had had enough by the time Eric Bolling asked a silly leading question.

It was evident that Fox News Juan Williams was getting ready to implode as he watched his 'The Five' in an alternate state of reality. Too many times my Panamanian compatriot seemed to forget who journalists serve. He did not, today.

https://egbertowillies.com/2017/03/21/fox-news-juan-williams-lost-co-hosts/

[font size="8"]Alex Jones[/font]

Time once again to ask:

This week: Pizzagate. How is this still a thing? So this week Alex Jones himself admitted that his own fake news story “Pizzagate” – you know the claim that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta staged a campaign event at a Washington DC pizza parlor called “Comet Ping Pong” that was allegedly running in its’ basement, a child sex slavery ring – while horrifying - was nothing more than a steaming pile of bullshit. But that didn’t stop this from happening:

Donald Trump has ushered in a whole new level of crazy in this country.

During the presidential campaign, many outrageous conspiracy theories popped up on social media and alt-right sites. Some of these stories came from Russia and some came from Hillary haters just spreading fake news. But wherever they started, Trump supporters latched on like a dog with a bone.
One of those fake stories was “Pizzagate.” The theory was that Hillary and John Podesta were running a child sex ring out of a D.C. pizza joint. Because of that absurd story a man drove across the country and showed up at the pizza place with a loaded gun to “save the children.”

And believe it or not some of Trump’s supporters still believe this nonsense is real.

One of the Kings of the alt-right movement, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, came out this weekend and apologized for pushing the fake Pizzagate story. But apparently that didn’t faze the true believers.
http://mindy-fischer-writer.com/2017/03/insane-righties-protesting-d-c-pizzagate-investigation-yes-seriously/?utm_content=bufferb8dd5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Really? You have to bring actual children into a fake news story about fake child abuse? Wouldn’t that count as fake child abuse? And you know, child abuse is nothing to joke about – especially when there’s an actual child abuse conspiracy going on at Penn State University.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Penn State’s costs related to the Jerry Sandusky scandal are approaching a quarter-billion dollars and growing, five years after the former assistant football coach’s arrest on child molestation charges.

The scandal’s overall cost to the school has reached at least $237 million, including a recent $12 million verdict in the whistleblower and defamation case brought by former assistant coach Mike McQueary, whose testimony helped convict Sandusky in 2012.

The university has settled with 33 people over allegations they were sexually abused by Sandusky, and has made total payments to them of $93 million.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/penn-state-abuse-scandal-costs-approach-a-quarter-billion/

But a bullshit conspiracy will forever live on because, bullshit. But even Alex Jones admitted that this whole story is a steaming load of bullshit, and we can thank Wikileaks for that. But of course republicans don’t take the blame for any of the havoc they caused. Instead they blame on – yep – you guessed it – the evil liberals. Because even though we saw this story as a steaming load of bullshit first – republicans are the party of “we take no responsibility.

Conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones was pressured to air an apology for his role in spreading the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which led to a Jones listener firing a gun inside a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. Jones aired a pre-taped video in which he acknowledged that he made commentary about the pizzeria owner that “in hindsight I regret, and for which I apologize to him.”

On December 4, Edgar Maddison Welch entered Comet Ping Pong during business hours while wielding an assault weapon to “self-investigate” the false conspiracy theory that the restaurant was helping the campaign of Hillary Clinton traffic children. After patrons and employees fled, Welch fired several shots. On March 24, The Washington Post reported that Welch had pleaded guilty to two violations of federal and local gun laws.

The New York Times interviewed Welch several days after the shooting, and he told the paper that he was a listener of Jones’ show and that Jones “touches on some issues that are viable,” but that sometimes Jones “goes off the deep end.” The criminal complaint against Welch alleged that he shared a YouTube video with the message “Watch PIZZAGATE: The Bigger Picture.” Alex Jones’ website Infowars published a December 1 article with the headline “Pizzagate: The Bigger Picture” which included an Infowars YouTube video.
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/24/alex-jones-apologizes-pizzagate-coverage-blames-other-media-outlets/215804

And even after a guy shot up the Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor in Washington DC, new threats continued to linger:

A Louisiana man pleaded guilty to making a threatening call to a D.C. pizzeria, federal authorities revealed in court documents this week. “I’m coming there to finish what the other guy didn’t. I’m coming there to save the kids and then I’m going to shoot you and everyone in the place,” the caller, identified as Yusif Lee Jones, said in a call to Besta Pizza, days after Edgar Welch was arrested for allegedly opening fire at Comet Ping Pong while investigating a conspiracy theory known as “Pizzagate.” The fake-news story alleged that Hillary Clinton’s closest allies ran a child-sex ring out of the popular D.C. pizza restaurant. Jones reportedly pleaded guilty to one count of interstate threatening communications and will be sentenced in April. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Louisiana-Man-Pleads-Guilty-to-Threatening-DC-Pizzeria-410617335.html

And you know the right loves to make false flag arguments. Hell, conspiracy theory radio wouldn’t exist without a false flag argument about something the evil liberals did every single day! Even Alex Jones himself admitted that his own conspiracy was a false flag:

In a February 24 article for Infowars.com, editor Kit Daniels falsely claimed that “the discussion around Pizzagate largely occurred on Reddit, 4chan and Twitter -- but not Infowars,” in an attempt to rebut claims made by former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta during a discussion with John Heilemann.

In fact, Alex Jones promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory on his radio show, urging his listeners “to go investigate it for yourself.” Jones urged his audience to “go to the report, Pizzagate Is Real,” and stated “Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated”:

Infowars has additionally published articles headlined “Pizzagate: The Mysterious Death Of A Human Trafficking Investigator,” and “Pizzagate Is Global.”

One week after Jones’ promoted the “pizzagate” conspiracy, gunman Edgar Welch told The New York Times that he listens to Alex Jones, and reportedly went to Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle to investigate the conspiracy. Days later, Alex Jones attempted to scrub pizzagate content from his website, and downplayed his role in promoting the conspiracy theory, while stating Welch was an “admitted actor,” claiming “the whole thing is classic scripting. I’m not saying it’s scripted -- it has all the telltale signs, they’ve been caught doing it before.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/24/infowars-denies-it-promoted-pizzagate-conspiracy-theory-after-deleting-pizzagate-content-its-website/215465v

So even Alex Jones admits that his own bullshit story is bullshit, and scrubbed all of his Youtube videos and deleted everything on Infowars about it. That's not suspicious or anything. Oh and it turns out - *SPOILER ALERT* - Comet Ping Pong didn't even have a basement. Yeah keep doing what you're doing, Infowars fans. That’s enough to make you ask - Pizzagate:

[font size="8"]One Million Moms[/font]

So remember everyone’s favorite-gay hating organization One Million Moms? It’s a group that should really be called “20 douchebags with 1 million e-mail accounts”. Because gay-hating homophobe conspiracy theorists thrive on bullshit, they’ve railed on everything from Kellogg’s cereals to this seemingly innocent Zales ad:

Oh two innocent women who are in love and getting married? NO! It’s an evil plot to indoctrinate your children into advancing the homosexual agenda!!! I’m sure kids couldn’t give less of a fuck about Zales commercials if they tried! And since most kids are smarter than your average One Million Moms member, they would just look at the ad and go “oh, two mommies!” and carry about their day. Because that is what you should do. I mean if you’ve got your underwear in a wad over a 30 second clip of a lesbian wedding, Gorsuch yourself. I mean seriously. And you know last season, remember we reported on everyone’s favorite gay-hating deplorable Bill Donahue railing on the Dan Savage created ABC sitcom “The Real O’Neals” for featuring – wait for it – a gay character (see: Idiots #19)? And if there’s one person on the internet who you don’t want to fuck with, it’s Dan Savage. Just ask Rick Santorum. So in case you’re wondering where I’m going with this – One Million Moms has their collective underwear in a wad over this again, seemingly innocent Disney cartoon featuring - wait for it - a gay moment!

Right-wing watchdog group One Million Moms is freaking out again ― this time over the most subtle of same-sex kisses in an animated children’s program on the Disney Channel.

“Star vs. The Forces of Evil” featured the quiet moment during a montage of diverse kisses among different concert goers ― making it the first same-sex kiss on the Disney channel in an animated cartoon.

And One Million Moms is not happy about it ― and they’re also up in arms about the apparent gay-inclusion in the upcoming Disney “Beauty and The Beast” film.

In response to the news surrounding both “Star vs. The Forces of Evil” and “Beauty and the Beast,” One Million Moms released this statement on their website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/one-million-moms-gay-kiss_us_58b84043e4b0a8ded67aed3e

And I mean come on, these people have a weird obsession with gay people don’t they? Let’s take a look at the clip in question. I mean it’s just an innocent cartoon right?

WRONG!!! This infuriated One Million Moms so much that they’re launching their own animated series:

In a call to arms today, they belateldy hit out at the cartoon, accusing Disney of “pushing an LGBT agenda on families and children” and threatening to boycott Disney “unless they produce family-friendly entertainment”.

They wrote: “Alerting all parents! In a first for the Disney Channel, a Disney XD show subtly displayed several gay kisses in an episode that aired a couple of days ago.

“This is the last place parents would expect their children to be confronted with content regarding sexual orientation. Issues of this nature are being introduced too early and too soon, and it is becoming extremely common and unnecessary.

“Disney has decided to be politically correct versus providing family-friendly entertainment.

“Disney has been under pressure from the gay community to portray openly gay relationships in its TV shows and movies.”
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/03/01/one-million-moms-furious-about-gay-kissing-in-disney-cartoon-they-definitely-didnt-watch/

And in case you’re wondering if this group couldn’t be any more despicable than they already are, remember that seemingly innocent Zales ad that I showed you just a few minutes ago? Well, they pulled it, and One Million Moms couldn’t be happier (or sadder depending on which way you look at it) :

The collection sparked calls for protest and boycott by One Million Moms. It accused the jewelry brand of ‘glorifying sin’.

This week, One Million Moms’ Director, Monica Cole, emailed a jubilant campaign update to the group’s supporters. It said: ‘Victory! A few months ago 1MM contacted Zales urging the jewelry company to remain neutral in the culture war, and we have encouraging news to report.

‘Zales has removed all of their “Love and Pride” Collection from Zales.com. The “Love and Pride” wedding band collection, designed for the LGBTQ community with rainbow and matching bands, is “promoting Equality, Diversity, and Unity” and celebrating “their Love with Pride” as stated on their website. It has all been taken down.

‘This is HUGE! The website is now familyfriendly, but more importantly neutral, which is all 1MM asks. 1MM appreciates Zales taking appropriate action to make this correction.
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/one-million-moms-gleeful-zales/

And while we’re on the subject, we do have to briefly mention the Beauty And The Beast controversy, and in case you’re living under a rock, there’s a Beauty & The Beast remake. And it’s made literally all the money. I said all!!! And this is really only a controversy if you’re a batshit crazy right wing religious zealot like Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump. But those that actually saw the movie say it’s nothing:

The "gay moment" that Condon was referring to is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot in the film's final seconds. LeFou, the villain Gaston's (Luke Evans) side-kick, dances with a man in the final ball sequence just before the credits roll. There are oblique references to LeFou's sexuality over the course of the film. He is portrayed as having something of an unrequited crush on Gaston, having euphemistic conversations about their relationship and looking longingly at him during the song Gaston.

Outside of LeFou, there is also a sub-text filled moment during the battle sequence in which the wardrobe (Audra McDonald) dresses three men in women's clothes. Two of them run away in fear, while one appears happier in his new garb. This moment, too, is so quick and insignificant in the greater plot of the movie that many audience members may have missed it.

After the film's big opening weekend, many moviegoers described the controversy as much ado about nothing.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2017/03/20/beauty-and-the-beast-gay-moment-audience-reaction/99407168/

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest Round 9: Florida Vs Texas[/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. Last week, Kansas, led by Sam Brownback, easily defeated Donald Trump stage prop Chris Christie’s New Jersey in what was truly an epic matchup that went into double overtime, but Kansas ultimately prevailed. And the Hateful 8 has been set. Florida. Texas. Missouri. Montana. Tennessee. Alabama. Michigan. Kansas. These are the elite of the idiots! These are the cream of the stupid crop! These are the states that put evil, party loyalty, greed, and corruption above the people and all over everything else. Only one of these will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State! Let’s get out our brackets, shall we?

[font size="6"]Round 9 (NEIN!!!!) : Batshit Conference Championship: #1 Florida Vs #4 Texas[/font]

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

We are back to the Sunshine State, folks! You know the Sunshine State has a lot of universities and universities that have teams in the NCAA tournament. That includes FSU, FAU, FL-Miami, Florida State, Florida (Gators), UCF, FIU, Miami-Dade, and FGCU. They are also home to the Orlando Magic, Tampa Bay Rays, Tampa Bay Lightning, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Marlins, Miami Heat, and the Jacksonville Jaguars. So in the last round, Florida Man tweaked out and freaked out, and scored a whopping 60 points all by himself. Can he repeat that feat? There’s no endless supply of Florida Man stories out there. However, one thing we had yet to touch on is Florida’s state legislature – which is almost as crazy as Florida Man. In fact, Florida’s taking Indiana’s anti-LGBT “religious liberties” laws and kicking them up a notch!

Some Florida lawmakers who think public school children need the protection of a new “religious liberties” law are drawing fire from critics who say federal and state constitutions already guarantee such freedom.

The legislative proposals would ensure that students could express their religious views in class assignments, on their clothing or jewelry or by praying during the school day, for example.

The legislators say that would prevent incidents such as the one in Broward County in 2014 when a teacher told a 12-year-old boy he could not read the Bible during class reading time. The district superintendent later apologized to the child and his family for what he called an isolated incident.

Supporters of the bills (SB 436 and HB303 ) say such things happen too often because school officials are nervous about appearing to endorse religion.

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-religious-expression-public-schools-bill-lawmakers-20170316-story.html

Why does that remind me of this clip from the Simpsons?

And speaking of public schools, how do people expect to get into Florida’s 100,000+ universities when their public schools are in such shambles? And shambles by the way is a word I never get to use.

TALLAHASSEE -- If Florida lawmakers don’t agree to borrow money to pay for school construction and maintenance projects, they will come up about $36 million short of what state education officials have requested for a key program next year.

State economists made their final estimate last week on money available in the 2017-18 fiscal year for the Public Education Capital Outlay, or PECO, program, which is funded by the gross-receipts tax on utility services, including electricity and communications. They looked at two scenarios: one without bonding and the other with bonds.

With no bonds, the economists estimated PECO would generate $337 million in cash that could be used for projects in the kindergarten-through-12th grade system, state colleges and universities. That funding could be supplemented with other revenue. But if it is not, it will fall short of the $373 million PECO request from state education officials.

Bonding would change all of that. The economists project Florida has the capacity to borrow more than $2.5 billion in the next budget year, although that is a very unlikely scenario.

Read more: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/florida-short-million-for-school-construction-unless-borrows/3f5FHj2A0cU2Y2dIruX6dP/

Florida as you can imagine is also the home of another guy who could lay claim to be a real life Florida Man, and that’s Steve Bannon. Yes, the same Steve Bannon is the racist alcoholic uncle who all racist, alcoholic uncles aspire to be, Donald Trump’s right hand. And as you can imagine, his place is about as secure as it gets.

Eleven times in one year, Miami Police received calls for help at a tree-lined, three-bedroom house in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood.

Some came from tenants in distress inside the home. Others were placed by neighbors concerned about loud arguing. All reflect back on White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who rented the house for his most recent ex-wife in 2015 and 2016.

Police reports obtained this week by New Times, which show calls for everything from domestic violence to a stolen gun, are just the latest revelation of Bannon's odd Miami connection. The über-powerful Trump adviser has had a presence here since 2013, when he first rented a home on Opechee Drive for his ex, former Irish model Diane Clohesy. The new records come from a second house, on Onaway Drive, that Bannon rented for Clohesy when the first lease came to an end. Neighbors say Bannon never resided at either home despite listing the addresses as his residence on a voter registration form.

Read more: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/steve-bannons-miami-house-site-of-repeat-domestic-violence-gun-theft-9206151

I love that scene. And you know Florida is also home to Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort, also known as the White House’s White House. But why are the residents of Palm Beach not exactly welcoming the president with open arms?

President Trump’s weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago, his country club in Palm Beach, Florida, is apparently costing the surrounding community’s economy. As the Washington Post reported, Palm Beach County will have to reorganize the budget to accommodate Trump’s costly visits to his golf club, which his administration has been calling the “Southern White House”

Politicians in the area are concerned that the current situation is not fiscally possible.

“I’m not sure that anyone understood that when the president referred to Mar-a-Lago as the ‘Southern White House’ he really intended to visit almost every week,” Rep. Theodore E. Deutch, a Democrat who represents Palm Beach. “There are a lot of people who come to Palm Beach County over the entire winter to enjoy the weather and enjoy the golfing.”

“When the president chooses to do the same thing, it raises a whole host of other issues,” he added.
www.salon.com/2017/03/20/president-trumps-visits-to-mar-a-lago-are-hurting-the-palm-beach-economy/

But we can’t do Florida again without mentioning the one, the only Florida Man. If Florida Man were a real person, he’d probably be dead by now. I could literally sit here and post a thousand pages of Florida Man stories and they’d all be crazy. And they’d all be hilarious. And they’re all real! These things really happened! So here’s a few that we happened to miss.

Oh not the puppy!!!!! I mean come on, if you get shot by your own dog, that’s on you. But what other bizarre Florida stories have happened lately? How about the guy who called 911 to say he’s very high? Yes this actually happened!

Sometimes you just need to talk things out.

According to NWF Daily News, a 35-year-old man in Holt, Fla., called 911 and made an odd admission. The man’s 911 call led authorities to his home where they say he told Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office deputies that he was “very high” on methamphetamines, according to NWF Daily News. He also informed them that he had more meth on him.

He was arrested and charged with drug possession and possession of paraphernalia.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime--law/florida-man-calls-911-say-very-high/UW4TaTifhRKqy2Q0xwvhbN/

Or how about the guy who threw an ax at his own father? I mean seriously, WTF Florida?

KEY WEST, Fla. - A Florida Keys man was arrested after he threw an ax at his father, injuring his wrist, Monroe County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Becky Herrin said.

Austin Odom, 26, faces a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Odom's 47-year-old father told deputies that he asked his son for some money to buy food, which made Odom angry. He said Odom slapped a $100 bill onto the counter, grabbed an ax and chopped the bill in half.

Herrin said Odom then threw the ax at his father, who ducked and put his hands up to protect himself.

Read more: http://www.local10.com/news/crime/florida-keys-man-throws-ax-at-father-deputies-say

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

Next up is the return of the Lone Star State, Texas. Texas is the largest state in the union and has one of the largest economies in the United States. Texas is the home of barbecue. It is also the home of lots of universities including Baylor, Texas A&M, University Of Texas, Texas Tech, Southern Methodist, UT Arlington, Rice University, I could go on and on. Texas is also the home of lots of pro sports teams including the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Stars, Houston Texans, Houston Astros, and the San Antonio Spurs. But let’s talk about Texas A&M. They recently made history by electing an openly gay man as the school’s student body chair:

An openly gay student will start as Texas A&M University's student body president in April.

Bobby Brooks, a junior from Belton studying economics, will lead A&M's student body, a milestone for the rural campus better known for its love of tradition than for its embrace of progressive social issues.

"I was an Aggie from the first day that I was born, there was no choice about it," Brooks told The Battallion, A&M's student paper. "My sexuality was a non-issue in terms of selecting Texas A&M as a university because I knew what this university could offer."

He ran on a platform of improving diversity issues at A&M, boosting student services, keeping costs low and improving relationships with faculty members.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Openly-gay-junior-to-be-Texas-A-M-student-body-11014319.php

Which we applaud the Texas A&M board for taking a bold stand on civil rights. But then again, we have to remind you that Texas is also the home of this guy:

Yes that’s former governor Rick Perry on Dancing With The Stars. The guy who couldn’t name 3 branches of government he wanted to cut, heading a branch he wanted to cut. And Rick Perry is *BACK* in the news and he can’t help but wonder about a particular election and whether or not it was rigged.

Twenty days after being sworn in as U.S. Energy Secretary, Rick Perry is weighing in on Texas A&M University's recent election for student body president, questioning the motivation behind support for the first openly gay student to serve in the position.

Former Texas Gov. Perry said he was "deeply troubled by the conduct of A&M's administration and Student Government Association" in an op-ed published online Wednesday by the Houston Chronicle following the disqualification of candidate Robert McIntosh.

The opinion piece -- which described A&M allowing an election to be "stolen -- garnered attention from media across the country, including The Washington Post and CNN. The Dallas Morning News was quick to point out that McIntosh's mother, Alison, is a Dallas-based Republican fundraiser whose other children are featured in Facebook photographs with Perry.

Before the student-led panel at Texas A&M made its election night ruling in February, the final vote count had McIntosh with 51 percent compared to his closest opponent, Bobby Brooks at 49 percent, according to SGA documents. The difference between the two was 262 ballots in the election that drew more than 12,100 students to vote in that race.

Read more: http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/perry-questions-election-of-first-openly-gay-texas-a-m/article_23a7ddaf-9dd2-57e4-9798-fca3e4df90c8.html

Really, Rick? That’s what you’re going after? Student body president elections? All of our problems have been solved? As the EPA head you solved climate change and the Flint toxic water crisis? No? Well fuck you then! If you’re so concerned about rigged elections, why don’t you start with the one in the fucking White House? Thank you! Moving on, there’s so much more we can talk about Texas. In case you’re wondering exactly how corrupt the Texas business environment is, I give you the case of an owner who spent money meant for taxes on personal travel and his ranch:

A Houston, Texas business owner pleaded guilty today to one count of failing to pay over employment taxes, announced Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez for the Southern District of Texas.

According to documents filed with the court, Richard Floyd Tatum Jr., 57, owned Associated Marine & Industrial Staffing Inc. (AMI), an industrial staffing company that provided temporary labor to businesses in Texas and other states. Tatum employed approximately 1,000 people to include internal employees, who worked for AMI, and external employees, who AMI assigned to work on-site at client locations. Tatum was responsible for collecting, accounting for and paying over to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) the payroll taxes withheld from AMI’s employees’ wages. Tatum exercised significant control over AMI’s finances to include entering into contracts, signing checks, to include payroll, and deciding which creditors to pay. Tatum also signed and filed AMI’s employment tax returns.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-business-owner-pleads-guilty-not-paying-approximately-18-million-employment-taxes

And by the way, would you be surprised that when Texas was upholding Donald Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and international treaty violating travel ban, that the meetings didn’t go well?

The revelation — made Monday in open court by U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin — conflicts with what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told local leaders after the sweep, when ICE characterized the operation as routine and said the Austin area was not being targeted. It also provides evidence after weeks of speculation that Hernandez’s policy triggered ICE’s ire.

“We had a briefing … that we could expect a big operation, agents coming in from out of town, that it was going to be a specific operation, and at least it was related to us in that meeting that it was the result of the sheriff’s new policy that this was going to happen,” Austin said.

“My understanding, what was told to us, is that one of the reasons that happened was because the meetings that had occurred between the (ICE) field office director and the sheriff didn’t go very well,” he said.

Read more: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/judge-ice-said-austin-raid-was-because-sanctuary-policy/dHWeSUd7nyp0XPJ6HcW8NP/

And then there’s even more than that. In case you’re wondering if the Texas state legislature couldn’t possibly be any more evil, I give you this:

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate on Monday gave preliminary approval to a bill that would ban parents from suing a doctor who doesn't tell them their baby has a disability or counsel them on their options, including abortion.

Sen. Brandon Creighton, the bill's author, revised the legislation after numerous media reports said a bill to ban "wrongful birth" lawsuits would allow doctors to lie to their patients. The new language doesn't relieve doctors of their duties under "any other applicable law."

Creighton, R-Conroe, told lawmakers Monday that existing laws protect parents from doctors who fail to tell them the truth, so they could file negligence or malpractice claims instead.

"This in no way allows them to get out from under their current duty or standard of care," he said. "They fall under all applicable laws that are currently on the books for any bad-actor scenario."

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas-legislature/2017/03/20/senate-oks-bill-protect-doctors-tell-womenabout-fetal-disabilities

And their bathroom bill promises to be worse than North Carolina’s. I mean come on, do they want the TSA from South Park to be a reality?

Galvanized by concern over the transgender bathroom bill, about 1,000 advocates for equal treatment rallied Monday at the Capitol to decry Senate Bill 6 as a dangerous solution to a problem that does not exist.

“Our LGBTQ-plus family is under attack, again, and it is not OK,” actress Sara Ramirez, known for a longtime role on the “Grey’s Anatomy” TV drama, told the crowd on the Capitol’s south steps.

“Loving thy neighbor as thyself means making sure all Texans have equal rights — and the same access to bathrooms,” Ramirez said.

A similar advocacy day in 2015 drew about 80 participants to the Capitol. But Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s quest to crack down on transgender-friendly bathroom policies, begun about a year ago, sparked a surge of interest in fighting for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Texans, said Chuck Smith, executive director of Equality Texas.

Read more: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/rally-draws-000-transgender-bathroom-bill-opponents/TepgnGaZet3aLtJ7BKh4PI/

And since we like to end on the lighter side, we here at the Top 10 would like to remind you that not all crazy happens in Florida. Sure they’re responsible for a good 93% (+- 7% margin of error), but not all crazy comes from Florida. There’s plenty of good old fashioned crazy in Texas.

SAN ANTONIO — A man dropped his pants at the Alamo on Saturday then rode a stick pony and swung a rubber chicken, and it almost got him arrested.

Performance artist and self-proclaimed clown Matthew Silver, 38, shared footage of the weekend incident on his Facebook page, when he dropped trou to show off his tight-fitting "Speedo" underwear.

The thick-bearded, shirtless man then grabbed a stick pony and rubber chicken and proceeded to say to the camera, “I’m at the Alamo! I’m at the Alamo!”

The Facebook video has more than 28,100 views as of Tuesday morning.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Video-Alamo-Rangers-detain-man-underwear-pony-11017106.php

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

Oh my god!!!! Holy shit!!!! Florida man attempted to score a basket by bouncing off a trampoline and pulling a Michael Jordan, and crashed into the glass and fell on the floor! He’s bleeding everywhere, folks! Oh the humanity!

And this is a shocker! Florida has lost! With their star player out for the forseeable future unless he takes crystal meth (which is strictly forbidden by NFFSA rules, though like steroids in baseball, overlooked if used) , Florida is out. Texas shocks Florida! And they will advance to the Final Four. Final score – 83 – 75. I tell you folks, anything can happen in this tournament, and we literally witnessed a bloodbath! Just look at the shocked faces on the kids in the audience! Some parents in the audience are going to have some ‘splainin to do, am I right? This is the exact same stunt that cost Florida the tournament last year, I mean fool me once… shame on you. But this is Florida we’re talking about. Next week, we’re going back to the Family Values Conference. Alabama. Tennessee. This is for all the LGBT bigotry and hypocrisy!

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

Ladies and gentlemen, this music will grow hair on your knuckles. Playing their song “A Quick Death In Texas” (speaking of Texas!), from their album “Psychic Warfare”, available everywhere music is sold, please welcome the one, the only CLUTCH!

Yeah how about that?

See you next week!

March 28, 2017

Alex Jones Is Mad Media Matters Is Tracking How His Hate Is Funded

ALEX JONES: The Democratic Party, Soros-funded Media Matters -- funded by the Nazi collaborator George Soros -- came out in two articles calling for us to be completely kicked off Google and for Google to not to let us have any advertising on YouTube. We pointed out that AdRoll, connected to them, had us kicked off, and I believe from sources that that was part of a Google move, but now I'm told it's not. And that’s why you hear, “Oh, Google lets extremists go on and Islamicists and call for violence.” And I told you they mean us. And now, sure enough, they say because we expose vaccines -- they say it’s a well-known hoax that vaccines ever hurt anybody. Now that’s part of one of the things they say we should be banned for. It’s hateful to tell you that vaccines have bad reactions.

The governments don’t get IMF, World Bank money if they don’t vaccinate the population, so they just come in, force it. And now all over Africa, you name it -- 100 years ago the Africans would run up to the doctors wanting to see the white witch doctors. Now they run because they know. But you can find this for yourself anywhere, but these type of folks they just call it hateful, disproven garbage.
https://mediamatters.org/video/2017/03/28/alex-jones-attacks-media-matters-documenting-how-google-funding-his-harassment-and-hate-youtube/215844

BTW, here's the original article in question, which is well worth reading, IMO:

Google’s promise to better ensure that ads appear only alongside content of “legitimate creators in our YouTube Partner Program" indicates that Jones’ channel is a partner. An online post by the Houston Chronicle also explained that a YouTube partner can be identified by “look[ing] for advertisements on the user’s pages."

Jones’ videos, which often violate YouTube’s policies for its advertising partners, frequently appear with ads for brands such as Trivago, Playstation, and a corporation that is contracted by the state of Hawaii to promote tourism. These ads appear on a targeted, automated rotating system, so they may alternate or change.

On March 19, Jones claimed that his website “Infowars got knocked off of Google ads through AdRoll, their subsidiary company they work with.” AdRoll -- which is actually a Google competitor, though it does use some Google technology -- did in fact cut ties with Infowars, citing violations of its policies, which require that a website’s content be accurate and verifiable and that it not have “derogatory content” about a political candidate. But it appears that Google, through YouTube, has not taken any similar action.
YouTube’s Community Guidelines And Advertising Guidance Ban Threats And Harassment

YouTube’s community guidelines include banning content creators -- and not just their advertising -- for threats, including “harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people's personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts.” Infowars is no stranger to harassment and threats. In addition, YouTube’s content guidelines, which apply to pages hosting advertisements, say that videos with “inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language” are “inappropriate for advertising.” Jones, including on his YouTube page, regularly makes vulgar and harassing comments, and his role in spreading conspiracy theories has helped incite others to commit threatening and violent acts.
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/27/google-funding-alex-jones-harassment-and-hate-youtube/215824

March 24, 2017

Putin hosts French presidential contender Le Pen in Kremlin

MOSCOW, March 24 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin granted an audience to French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen in the Kremlin on Friday, bestowing a level of international recognition that has so far eluded her in the countdown to France's presidential election.

Opinion polls show Le Pen, who has said she admires Putin, getting through to the second, decisive round of France's presidential election on May 7 but then losing to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.
Le Pen backs the lifting of the European Union's economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict - a stance she reiterated on Friday.

"We attach great importance to our relations with France, but at the same time we try to maintain equal relations both with the current authorities and with representatives of the opposition," Putin told Le Pen at their meeting.
"We do not want to influence events in any way, but we reserve the right to talk to representatives of all the country's political forces, just as our partners in Europe and the United States do."

<snip>

She said if elected, one of her first steps would be to think about lifting sanctions, provided Moscow lifted its own restrictions on imports of some European food.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-hosts-french-presidential-contender-le-pen-in-kremlin/ar-BByGDc1?li=AA4Zpp&ocid=spartandhp

Great - another Putin stooge we have to watch out for.

March 23, 2017

Juan Williams Destroys Trump On Fox News

March 22, 2017

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-17: The Worst Day Since Yesterday Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-17: The Worst Day Since Yesterday Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! For more information, consult your doctor and please see our ad in Golf Digest Magazine! We are back everybody! You know… you know… do we really need “perfect bracket” contests anymore? And what’s the point? There’s people out there who calculate your odds of actually getting all 64 teams correctly at “next to impossible” and “infinity times a billion”. Yes, we’re bringing kindergarten logic to the March Madness tournament. Even the odds makers in fucking Vegas know your odds of getting a perfect bracket are next to nothing. Shit, even President Obama (see what I did there?) has ZERO chance of getting a perfect bracket! And perhaps my favorite thing about the March Madness tournament is that ESPN always manages to find that one person in all of America that has that magic perfect bracket up until the moment it busts. Yes, they do this every year. You always see that story – “tracking the last perfect bracket in America!”. And I’m sure even his has gone bust by now. I mean come on! Who’s bracket had last year’s champion Villanova to go all the way? Or maybe you had Duke picked to win the whole tournament? Well the answer to that is “nope” and “nope”. Or maybe your team is still in it like Kentucky or UCLA. That will be a crazy game, am I right? So let me check out my bracket… fuck it, I’m already out! Damn you Middle Tennessee! 2nd year in a row!!!!! And what happens if you actually get a perfect bracket? What happens if you get a Triple Crown? Well we already found out one. You just get a nice trophy and a pat on the back. The horse gets laid by all the best horses in the world, and the owners get a nice fat paycheck. Do the same rules apply if you get a perfect bracket? I want to know! All right, that’s enough of the intro. But first John Oliver is back, and he destroys Trump’s insane budget plan!

So where do we begin this week? Donald Trump is going to take up the first 3 slots this week. In the first slot we’re going to talk about how he’s been threatening nuclear war with North Korea. Did we say nuclear? We meant clear war! Yeah that’s it! Taking the second slot, we’re going to be delving into some failed adventures in diplomacy starring of course, our 45th president, Donald J. Trump (2). In the third slot, we’re going to talk about what the FBI hearings and what easily has to be Donald Trump’s worst day since yesterday. In the fourth slot, is Ann Coulter (4). So did you know that the Russian hockey team in the 1980 “Miracle On Ice” was all murdered? Neither did we! At number 5, is part time White Goodman stand in Paul Ryan. Easily the most punchable face of the US Congress has a very dark and disturbing past we feel you should be made aware of. And it gets even more disturbing than that! In the number 6 slot, is Sean Hannity (6). He is really proving himself to be the king of the deplorables, and he has come out strong and bringing the batshit crazy extra hard this week. Taking the seventh slot, we’re going to talk about Donald Trump supporters (7) who got screwed and conned into voting for the man and it turns out that he’s a big fat liar. At number 8, we’ve got another edition of “How Is This Still A Thing?” for you . This time we’re going to ask “The Flat Earth Society – how is this still a thing?” At number 9 (NEIN!!!!), we’re going to bring back the Trump effect. Specifically there was a story out of JFK (that’s in New York, don’t you know?) where a man got indicted for harassing and assaulting a Muslim Delta employee, while a man in New York got busted for attacking two trans women. Finally this week we’re hitting the final matchup of round 1 of our Stupidest State Contest. But don’t be sad! There is plenty of tournament to go around! This time it’s going to be a fun one as we’re delving into Chris Christie’s New Jersey against Sam Brownback’s Kansas. Plus this time we have some live music for you, this time from Germany’s Milky Chance. They have a great new album out called “Blossoms” and they’re going to be stopping by to play something from it! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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

So we start this week with President Donald Trump. Something that will never sound right no matter which way you look at it. Like “turn left on the red light”, or Ryan Adams singing a cover of Rick Ross’ “New Bugatti”. I’ll just let you contemplate that image for a minute. It’s what we do! But anyways, Mr. Trump this week may have threatened North Korea with the possibility of a nuclear war. Let’s roll the tape first and then let’s discuss.

Now let’s not forget what he said at this time last year when asked about the assassination of North Korean leader and guy who looks like a rejected Harry Potter character, Kim Jong Un:

So what would a Trump war with North Korea look like? Well let’s look at this story and contemplate for a minute that this guy is our president. This guy has the power to declare war.

Should Americans be more concerned about North Korea?

President Trump told reporters Sunday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was "acting very, very badly" hours after the rogue state test-fired a new type of high-thrust rocket engine.

The president made the remark on board Air Force One as he prepared to return to Washington from a weekend at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Trump said he had "meetings on North Korea," but did not specify with whom or what was discussed.

"I will tell you he is acting very badly," Trump repeated before departing the press cabin.

In a statement issued Sunday, North Korea claimed the test was a success, with Kim calling it "a great event of historic significance" for the country's indigenous rocket industry, a report from the official Korean Central News Agency said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/19/trump-says-north-korea-dictator-is-acting-very-very-badly.html

Holy shit! He literally described the behavior of third world dictator Kim Jong Un’s behavior the same way two valley girls described their drunken prom experience! “Sally drank too much of the Pinot Grigio and passed out in the limo after the dance, that was behaving very, very badly!”. This is presidents behaving very very badly! And you don’t want presidents behaving very very badly, because these people have the power to declare war. And if war is declared on North Korea, we all lose. I mean seriously Trump’s vocabulary is so limited that he talks like a valley girl! And here’s how badly Trump’s diplomacy is going if this possible war scenario is to be believed:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that “all options are on the table” to deter the threat from Pyongyang. What does that really mean? Is the use of military force really an option?

How to interpret that depends on who you are. Is that comment just a part of a continuing pattern of the U.S. response to escalation of both North Korea’s capability and rhetoric for the past two administrations?

What usually follows now is North Korea will conduct another ballistic missile test, or even a nuclear test — either way, we can expect a response from Kim Jong-un to these remarks by Secretary Tillerson. Countries in the region will respond and have — the Japanese are taking about developing first strike weapons; South Korea is pushing the U.S. to return tactical nuclear weapons to their military capability; the Chinese hold a key leverage with their economic lifeline to the regime, all in spite of UN sanctions.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/324527-what-would-war-with-north-korea-really-look-like-trump

Holy fuck!!!! Now where have I heard those words “all options are on the table” before?

Yeah that sounds about right! It must be standard operating procedure for all world leaders to say “all options are on the table” at this point if any serious diplomatic endeavor fails. And this one well, may have actually failed. Which literally means all options are on the table! And if you live on the west coast like I do, or know anyone who lives on the west coast, this should scare the living shit out of you!

The statement said: “The Korean People’s Army will reduce the bases of aggression and provocation to ashes with its invincible Hwasong rockets tipped with nuclear warheads and reliably defend the security of the country and its people’s happiness in case the US and the South Korean puppet forces fire even a single bullet at the territory of the DPRK.”

The menacing talk came as South Korea warned that its northern neighbour’s latest rocket-engine test showed “meaningful” progress.

The North’s KCNA news agency said on Sunday the engine would help the country achieve world-class satellite-launch capability – indicating a new type of rocket engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3131278/kim-jong-un-nuclear-weapons-donald-trump-north-korea/

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

You know there’s only 10 slots in these things, and we have to limit it to 10 each week. That’s why it’s called the Top 10 Conservative Idiots, not the top 12 or top 13. So we have to limit these to 10. Because I’d love to talk about the disaster that is the Trump budget, and I would also like to talk about his failed adventures in diplomacy. I’d also love to talk about his misadventures and secret golfing at Mar-A-Lago over the weekend. And I’d love to talk about Rachel Maddow’s tax flub. But we have to adhere to a strict 10 entries per week, and these things have a shelf life, damn it! We live in a world where facts don’t matter and batshit crazy stuff happens on an almost minute by minute basis. It’s impossible to keep up! But we have to talk about his cast of characters. And we’ve met a lot of the strange sketch comedy characters that make up the Trump administration. Like Melissa McCarthy impersonator Sean Spicer. White House Barbie doll Kellyanne Conway. Or part time Hannibal Lecter stand in Stephen Miller, who occasionally reminds Trump that he forgot to put the lotion in the basket. Or guy that would sell out his own grandma to make a few extra bucks, Stephen Mnuchin. But there’s one we haven’t introduced you to yet, and that’s Mick Mulvaney.

WASHINGTON ― White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney threw cold water on the promise that “everybody” would get health insurance under GOP legislation ― a promise that was made by none other than President Donald Trump himself.

“We don’t have universal ― the only way to have universal care, if you stop to think about it, is to force people to buy it under penalty of law,” Mulvaney said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

The expectation of everyone in the nation getting health insurance if Trump took office came from promises he himself made.

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said in January. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” In 2015, Trump similarly told CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “Everybody’s got to be covered.”

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-admits-trump-insurance-for-everybody-guarantee-isnt-going-to-happen/ar-BByo3Nf

And another Trump campaign promise……………… gone!!!! Outta here!!!! And speaking of things failing, did you know that Trump dropped a whopping 220 spots on Forbes’ annual list of people who have more money than you?

President Donald Trump is the nation's first billionaire president -- but he's not as rich as he used to be, according to the Forbes 2017 Billionaires List published Monday.

The magazine put his net worth at $3.5 billion, down $1 billion from the rankings it issued a year ago.

As a result, his position on the Forbes' ranking dropped 220 spots, leaving him tied with 19 others as the 544th richest person in the world.

Forbes said that much of the decline in Trump's net worth is due to softness in the midtown Manhattan real estate market.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/20/news/companies/trump-forbes-net-worth/index.html

Ooh I like that one! But one of the things we have to talk about is Trump’s strange and bizarre meeting with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Which, by the way he previously said this about her just a mere two years ago (which seems like 20 years in internet times, am I right?) :

Ooooooooooooooooh, Donald do you take cold showers in the morning? Because that is about as cold and mean spirited as it gets. And this isn’t the first time he attacked Merkel either. Just remember - this guy is the president. This guy is dictating diplomatic poilcy. This guy gets to decide who the allies are to the United States. Which right now, is pretty much Russia and Trump International Brands. And by the way lets’ show that image of their meeting, shall we?

Those two just look like they want to be in the same room, don’t they? But oh no! After the meeting Trump took to his usual punching bag the “FAKE NEWS” media.

President Trump on Saturday followed up what he called a "great" meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by blasting her country for what he said were unpaid bills for NATO defense.
On Twitter, Trump reiterated a point he made at his joint news conference Friday with Merkel that many NATO nations owe money to the alliance and the U.S. because they haven't paid their fair share.
This time, he chastised Germany for not paying enough "for the powerful, and very expensive, defense" NATO and the U.S. provide.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-says-merkel-meeting-was-great-1489845711-htmlstory.html

Can we throw those tweets up there?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843088518339612673
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843090516283723776

“It’s fake news, OK?”. Sheesh, could the guy be any more predictable? But even people who are supposedly on his side are turning against him because of his buffoonery… and that includes people like Morning Joe:

President Donald Trump earned widespread derision for his botched meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, especially after the president lashed out at a German reporter for supposedly spouting “fake news” at the two leaders’ joint press conference.

Via Mediaite, the panel at Morning Joe on Monday hammered Trump for his handling of the meeting, as co-host Joe Scarborough described it as “spectacularly clumsy, short-sighted, some might even say stupid.”

Co-host Mike Brzezinski helpfully chimed in to say that Trump’s performance during the joint press conference — and in particular, his refusal to shake Merkel’s hand during a photo op — was “buffoon-like.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius didn’t go that far, but he did agree with the Morning Joe hosts that Trump did not handle his first face-to-face meeting with Merkel well.

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/morning-joe-panel-crushes-buffoon-like-trump-for-botched-meeting-with-angela-merkel/

And once again Trump fails to understand things that make the world work. You know, like diplomacy, and not pissing off your allies. I mean he’s just enacting Hitler’s wet dream here – the demise of NATO, and even he’s wrong on that:

On the heels of a visibly awkward visit from German chancellor Angela Merkel, Donald Trump said on Saturday that Germany owed “vast sums of money” to Nato and the US, even though the alliance does not stipulate payments to America.

His remarks prompted a former US permanent representative to Nato to reply “that’s not how Nato works”, and to add that increased European spending on defense was not a “favor (or payment) to the US”.

Trump, who was at his Mar-a-Lago estate for the weekend and spending the morning at Trump International Golf Course, sent two tweets early in the day. The first denounced “the FAKE NEWS” for what he said was mistaken coverage of a “GREAT” meeting with Merkel.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/thats-not-how-it-works-trumps-grasp-of-nato-questioned-after-merkel-tweets/ar-BBylgoJ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp

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

We need some appropriate music for this entry. Can we get that please?

Yeah I love me some Flogging Molly. I saw them on St. Patrick’s Day, that is how you celebrate that holiday!

We’ll have to get them on the show after their new album comes out in June. But seriously, the reason I bring that song up is that we have to talk about what was easily Donald Trump’s worst day since yesterday. And that’s saying a lot because in the Trump administration, every day it seems is the worst day since yesterday. In fact according to one scholar, some “treason may be in the air”. Um… define the word “some” here!

Monday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing with FBI Director James Comey is still causing shock waves throughout the political world, and historian Douglas Brinkley believes that it’s an unprecedented moment in American politics.

Speaking with the Washington Post, Brinkley said he could not ever recall a time when a senior federal law enforcement official publicly confirmed a major criminal investigation into the campaign of a sitting president.

“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” Brinkley said. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-boggling event.”

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/theres-a-smell-of-treason-in-the-air-historian-douglas-brinkley-analyzes-mind-boggling-comey-hearing/

So let’s walk through what happened, shall we? This is like peeling an onion – the more layers you peel off of this act of treason, the smellier it gets, and the more you are likely to cry as a result:

On Monday, FBI director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee. In the widely anticipated hearing, the head of the FBI confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Russias role in the election.

As you know it is our practice not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. In unusual circumstances, that might be appropriate, Comey said. He then noted that these are unusual circumstances.

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to disclose that the FBI is investigating the Russian governments interference in the US elections, Comey said.

Earlier in the morning, Donald Trump took to Twitter to make his case.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/comey-confirms-trump-campaigns-ties-to-russia-are-being-investigated-and-if-possible-prosecuted/

Swing and a miss strike one! So Trump is up to bat again, he’s taking time to scratch his armpit and belches, but here’s the pitch… And…

FBI Director James Comey confirmed to the House Intelligence Committee Monday morning that his agency was conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including allegations that members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign were in contact with the Russian government during the campaign.

"As you know, our practice is not to confirm existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters," Comey told the committee. "But in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so, as Justice Department policy has recognized. This is one of those circumstances."

"I've been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI as part of our counterintelligence mission is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election," he continued. "That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/comey-confirms-trump-russia-investigation

Swing and a miss! Strike two! What else could Trump be hiding? This might be ball one, we’re not sure:

FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged on Monday the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into the Russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, and said that probe extends to the nature of any links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.

Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey said the investigation is also exploring whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the Kremlin.

The acknowledgment was an unusual move, given that the FBIs practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. But in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest, Comey said, it may be appropriate to do so.

Comey said he had been authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the wide-ranging probes existence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-testify-on-russian-interference-in-the-presidential-election/2017/03/20/cdea86ca-0ce2-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?pushid58cfeb5c3a93043c0000001a&tidnotifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term.6078f47fa5d2

Yup! Ball one! And then there’s another pitch – ball two. So with a 3 and 2 count here’s the payoff pitch:

Turns out there was a wiretap at Trump Tower after all — just not the way President Trump has said.

The FBI had a court-sanctioned warrant for two years to monitor a Russian crime organization working out of a unit three floors below President Trump’s penthouse, according to an ABC News report.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/fbi-wiretapped-russian-gambling-ring-headquarted-trump-tower-article-1.3004226

STRIKE 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU’RE OUTTA HERE!!!!

And the reviews are in on the hearing. The critics agree – it’s easily Donald Trump’s Worst Day Since Yesterday!

People can spin it all they want. People can pretend to be lawyers and argue about “lawyerly answers.” People can shout about leaks all the want. It’s not going to matter. Today was not a good day for President Trump no matter what comes of the Gorsuch hearings.

There were two major questions at stake today, and the answers to both steamroll President Trump’s rantings and ravings about them on Twitter and in public.

The first issue deals with the FBI, and whether or not they’re investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election including links to the Trump campaign and if those links included any criminal activity. President Trump tweeted this morning.
http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2017/03/20/james-comey-testimony-was-a-disaster-for-donald-trump/

[font size="8"]Ann Coulter[/font]

That was the hockey game that will forever live in infamy during the 1980 winter Olympics between the US team and the Russian team. It’s been portrayed in countless movies, documentaries, sports shows and comedies. One of the more popular flicks was the Disney 2004 reimagining of the epic game starring Kurt Russell called “Miracle”. So you may be asking yourself “What happened to the players after this game?”. Well I answer you good sir / madam, with Ann Coulter’s batshit crazy and flat out absurd retelling of what happened exactly to that team:

They say Putin is a "thug" and a "bully" who kills journalists. Liberals never used to mind Russian leaders killing journalists. Nor millions of scientists, writers, Christians, Jews, kulaks, Ukrainians and the entire 1980 Soviet Olympic hockey team.

Have you guys heard of the Evil Empire? Now Democrats are hypersensitive to a Russian leader's flaws?

Liberals were cool with the show trials, the alliance with Hitler, the gulags, the forced starvations, the shooting down of American planes and goose-stepping through Eastern Europe.

But that was when the Russian leader was Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev -- not the beast Putin!
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-03-15.html

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! You know what Ann? I think you need a refresher course in modern history. It wasn’t the “liberals” who were cool with this stuff. It was conservative American businessmen who helped install Hitler in office and helped funnel the rise of the Nazi party, and contributed heavily to advance Hitler’s agenda. I mean really, Ann? You think we’re OK with mass murder and Hitler? You think we’re cool with gulags and forced starvations? Hell no! Where on earth would anybody think that is OK? Um, nobody ever in the history of mankind! I have two words for you: fuck you! Wait, that felt good. Let me say that again: fuck you! And by the way in case you’re wondering what actually happened to the “Miracle On Ice” team, I give you this:

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team recently gathered to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their glorious victory over the Soviets in Lake Placid, New York.

It is one of the great sports upsets of all time: a ragtag group of Americans, mostly college students, beat the powerful Soviets, full-time players who dominated Olympic hockey for decades.

The footnote is that America beat Finland a few days later to win the gold medal. But it was that "Miracle on Ice" 4-3 upset on Feb. 22, 1980, that lives on forever in Al Michaels' call for ABC ("Do you believe in miracles? Yes!&quot

, books, TV specials and the 2004 movie "Miracle," with Kurt Russell as U.S. coach Herb Brooks.

The story is exceedingly well-documented except for one thing: Whatever happened to the Soviet team? Were they all shipped off to Siberia for daring to disgrace the motherland by losing to a bunch of cocky capitalists?

Gabe Polsky has some answers. "Red Army," his enlightening and entertaining documentary about that Soviet team, traces the post-war political and social structure that made international athletics a top priority in the old U.S.S.R.

From Stalin to Khrushchev to Brezhnev, the hockey team became a national symbol of strength. It was run by the military with security handled by the KGB. Training was arduous, with the team members sequestered 11 months of the year. When they traveled to Western countries for games, the chief concern was whether players would defect.
http://www.cleveland.com/moviebuff/index.ssf/2015/03/red_army_what_happened_to_the.html

Hmm…. Let’s think about this here for a minute – how could you possibly have a 35th reunion of both teams at the same stadium if one of those entire teams were murdered at the hands of the Soviet empire? Let’s think about this one for a minute, here, Ann!

[font size="8"]Paul Ryan[/font]

You know why is it whenever I see Paul Ryan, I can’t help but think of the opening to one of my favorite comedies of all time, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story:

&t=1s

At Globo Gym we’re better than you! So what was the Speaker Of The House and part time White Goodman impersonator up to this week? Why a whole steaming shit load of things. And it has to be a steaming shit load, am I right? Well let’s start with this disturbing revelation from Mr. Ryan’s college years. I mean seriously this is fucking disturbing on multiple levels!

Speaking to National Review editor Rich Lowry at an event hosted by the conservative magazine, House Speaker Paul Ryan made the case for the American Health Care Act by presenting it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cut Medicaid spending.

“We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan says, before interrupting himself to clarify exactly how big of an opportunity this is, “since you and I were drinking out of kegs.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/17/14960358/paul-ryan-medicaid-keg

No seriously. If you masturbate while you’re reading Atlas Shrugged, these are the kinds of fantasies you get. And if we extrapolate this, this means that Paul Ryan graduated from drinking out of kegs (did he drink straight from the tap?) to drinking the tears of poor people in high ball glasses! I mean come on if you’re going to drink the tears of poor people anyways, you got to class it up a bit! Just as a way to say fuck you. Add a little salt in the wound. I mean come on, if you’re a rich guy, and you’re going to say fuck you to poor people, go all the way, damn it! Shit, when I’m getting shitfaced, the last thing I think about is what I’m going to be doing 30 years from now! But I can guarantee that I am not thinking about fucking over poor people! But what else has Mr. Ryan done this week? He’s playing the “move along, nothing to see here” card in regards to Trump’s insane health care proposal:

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday said he’s “not that concerned” about criticism of the wealthy getting a tax cut under the GOP’s new health care bill.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Ryan it’s “kind of a hard sell” to argue the wealthy should get a tax cut under the American Health Care Act. Ryan brushed it off.

“I’m not that concerned about it, because we said we were going to repeal all the Obamacare taxes,” Ryan said. “This is one of the Obamacare taxes.”

Ryan also argued that getting rid of those taxes would help with the GOP’s tax reform efforts later this year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-tax-cut_us_58c1632be4b0ed71826a773d?

And you know there ain’t no party like a Paul Ryan party because a Paul Ryan party stops at 11:00PM, with no after party! You non-tax paying leeches know where to stick it! No after parties for you! And yes there is tape of this!

But here’s probably the most interesting thing about Paul Ryan that was out this week – his closed-meeting denial of everything having to do with Donald Trump that was taking place behind closed doors during the Trump campaign.

Conservative website Breitbart continued their war on House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), releasing audio taken just prior to the election saying he had no interest in sticking up for Donald Trump.

Bretbart.com has long been known for attacking Ryan on orders from chairman Steve Bannon, with the current senior adviser to Trump once telling his staffers Paul Ryan is the enemy.

Monday evening, as Ryan was fending off a CBO report stating his health care plan would leave an additional 14 million Americans without health insurance in 2018, the website chose to create friction between the House Speaker and President Trump.

In the audio taken during a private October conference call with House Republican members, Ryan has few kind words for then-GOP presidential nominee Trump.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/i-wont-defend-trump-not-now-not-in-the-future-paul-ryan-caught-on-tape-trashing-trump-before-election/

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

So King Deplorable, Sean Hannity has been in the news an awful lot this week. And he really is the king of the deplorables and he doesn’t even need a Jethro Tull song for that! “I walk through the valley to get to the castle, where I lay sitting at the feet of the king of the deplorables! For I am not worthy to stare at his throne! He’s the king of the deplorables!” Thank you! That is my Jethro Tull impression. I need some more pan flutes and guitars for that one. Well, so what was the King Of The Deplorables up to this week?

The Wall Street Journal columnist who called Hannity the "dumbest anchor" on Fox News is a "jackass," according to Hannity. The forensic psychologist who suggested a blood vessel had popped inside Hannity's brain is a "jackass." Even the conservative MSNBC host who sometimes criticizes President Donald Trump is a "jackass."

If you criticize Hannity, or the Trump administration, there is a fair chance he will call you a "jackass" on Twitter. The chances of being called a "jackass" by Hannity are significantly higher late at night. Of the 21 people Hannity called a "jackass" in the last year, nearly half were told off between 9 p.m and 2 a.m.

Hannity, Trump's biggest backer on television, has said this is entertainment for him: "I am a counterpuncher," he told one Twitter user who asked why he was so antagonistic. "I do not start fights but I finish them. This is pure entertainment for me. If people take cheap shots I hit back."

Still, Hannity's version of entertainment can go too far. Last year, after ending one of his many spirited on-air arguments with liberal contributor Juan Williams, Hannity pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Williams, according to three sources with knowledge of the incident. He even turned on the laser sight, causing a red dot to bob around on Williams' body. (Hannity was just showing off, the sources said, but the unforeseen off-camera antic clearly disturbed Williams and others on set.)
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/16/media/sean-hannity-juan-williams-gun/index.html

Dude, did he just go full Jules Winnfield on Juan Williams? You know what’s a guy doing in journalism who hates journalists? What are people doing in government who hate government? That would be like me showing up at a Justin Beiber concert. And I hate Justin Beiber! Oh and like the good Trump supporter is, Hannity rejected the story as “fake news”. Gee, what a shocker!

Sean Hannity and Juan Williams are rejecting the context of a CNN report saying the Fox News host "once pulled a gun" on his colleague and pointed it at him while the two were off-camera.

“While discussing the issue of firearms, I showed my good friend Juan Williams my unloaded firearm in a professional and safe manner for educational purposes only," Hannity said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

"Every precautionary procedure that I have been trained in since the age of 11 was followed. I’ve had a conceal carry permit in five states for all of my adult life. Any other interpretation of this is outright false reporting.”
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-march-sean-hannity-juan-williams-reject-1489763895-htmlstory.html

Ooh, I like that one! Well as if Hannity couldn’t be more despicable, he is actually suggesting that the Hawaiian judge who lifted Trump’s travel ban did “a little blow”

In this case, Hannity suggested that U.S. District Court of Hawaii Judge Derrick Watson decided to block President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban because Watson graduated Harvard Law School a year before Barack Hussein Obama (as Hannity was once fond of calling him).

But that’s not all. Because they share an alma mater, Hannity suggests that Obama and Watson were smoking weed and snorting blow together. Hannity, who recently has taken to peddling Deep State conspiracies and pushing WikiLeaks agendas, wondered aloud if Watson was a part of Obama’s storied “Choom Gang,” a group of friends in Hawaii who would hang out and smoke together, saying:

By the way, this judge who issued the travel ban ruling is an Obama law school classmate. Maybe he should have recused himself from the case. Just a maybe. Were they best friends in Hawaii, were they part of the Choom Gang, smoking pot and hanging out and doing a little bit of weed and maybe even a little blow?
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/03/sean-hannity-suggests-travel-ban-judge-from-hawaii.html

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/file.php?2,file=247048,filename=3qwyep.jpg

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

So by now you know what a danger the GOP’s proposed “Trumpcare” bill is. And stories like this definitely aren’t helping. I mean Trump is a guy who lies on an almost hourly basis. So you see a story like this about how Trump lied and manipulated people over the big lie that ACA isn’t Obamacare. It is! It is literally the exact same thing! Republicans made up the term “Obamacare” as a way to discredit Obama and the ACA – which is yet another thing the GOP created! Yet you still see stories of people being manipulated by Trump over this shit!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled many rural Georgians who stand to lose if the president signs Trumpcare.

Kenneth Peek, a Georgia farmer, who is now on Obamacare, thought Trump would get things “straightened out.” However, he’s now understanding things might get worse. Under the proposed law, thousands of rural Georgians, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, stand to lose their health insurance or their hospitals and, for many, their costs will increase.

Peek currently pays $281 a month for his Obamacare policy, which is $3,372 a year. He gets $11,172 in government tax credits, while his wife is on disability. Under Trumpcare his tax credit would drop 64 percent to $7,172 and there’s no real way of knowing how insurance companies will drop premiums or continue the upward climb. While Obamacare gave subsidies based on need, Trumpcare will give tax credits based on age. So, a 50-year-old CEO who makes $850,000 each year would get the same amount as a 50-year-old teacher who makes $35,000 each year.

During the 2016 campaign, however, Trump promised voters “good coverage at much less cost” and “a much better health care plan for much less money.” This week, Trump was singing a different tune.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/rural-georgia-trump-voters-railed-against-obamacare-but-just-realized-trumpcare-will-be-worse/

But this wasn’t the only story like this this week. There were lots and lots of them. So much that we cannot contain them all in this one segment. In fact, what about one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters – the gun industry? I mean after the NRA aired attack ads against Hillary Clinton left and right, would you be surprised to learn that Trump has also thrown *THEM* under the bus?

The gun industry and NRA are quickly learning that they should have been careful what they wished for:

Unfortunately, Trump’s win has had the unintended consequence of throwing the firearms industry into a deep slump, forcing major companies to lay off workers, driving prices deep into the red, and forcing some gun dealers out of business. While the Obama years might have been a dark time for gun rights, the Democrat president was a boon for gun retailers and manufacturers (a fact Obama has admitted himself). Each time the needle ticked further in the direction of gun restriction, Americans flocked to their local gun store and plunked down cash for more irons.

The industry swelled because of the “panic buying,” with new manufacturers popping up, old names in the industry swelling their ranks, and more new gun owners pushing into demographics with previously tepid interest.

In the Trump era, however, that fear is gone, and with it the market’s urgency to beat the clock on the next “commonsense” gun ban. That’s helped nudge iconic gunmakers Colt and Remington to lay off hundreds of workers and shut down entire divisions of their companies, forced manufacturers to close their doors, and prompted retailers and distributors to offer deep discounts on firearms, with one offering an AR-15 rifle at prices below even the cheapest handguns.

“The combination of increased inventory in the channel and a likely decrease in consumer demand for the near term has made for a more challenging sell-through environment,” said a top executive with gunmaker Ruger during a February 23 investor call.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/17/donald-trump-shot-gun-industry-gut/?ref=yfp

But they wont care. All that matters is that the Trump administration has the Magic R next to their name, and they could get away with murder and robbing them stupid, but never mind! They’ll continue to vote for them because the evil liberals want to take their guns away!!! You know – it’s kind of like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there’s just one degree, and the liberals are coming to take your guns away. My this coffee is good! Oh my god it’s a false flag to make liberals take your guns away! Hey Suzie that’s a nice dress you’re wearing. Oh wait, it’s evil and the liberals want to take your guns away! This is fun! I mean we live in a country now where this happens:

https://twitter.com/MMASOCCERFAN/status/842526725468798977

You know if I walk into a store and I see two guys posing with giant assault rifles, guess what? I’m immediately walking out of that store!

I’m getting off topic here. What else were Trump supporters up to last week? You know who Trump’s biggest supporters really are? Why it’s the billionaires, of course! And some very reclusive and secretive ones.

When President Donald Trump toured a Boeing aircraft plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, he saw a familiar face in the crowd that greeted him: Patrick Caddell, a former Democratic political operative and pollster who, for forty-five years, has been prodding insurgent Presidential candidates to attack the Washington establishment. Caddell, who lives in Charleston, is perhaps best known for helping Jimmy Carter win the 1976 Presidential race. He is also remembered for having collaborated with his friend Warren Beatty on the 1998 satire “Bulworth.” In that film, a kamikaze candidate abandons the usual talking points and excoriates both the major political parties and the media; voters love his unconventionality, and he becomes improbably popular. If the plot sounds familiar, there’s a reason: in recent years, Caddell has offered political advice to Trump. He has not worked directly for the President, but at least as far back as 2013 he has been a contractor for one of Trump’s biggest financial backers: Robert Mercer, a reclusive Long Island hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the Trump Presidency.

During the past decade, Mercer, who is seventy, has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trump’s rise. Among these efforts was public-opinion research, conducted by Caddell, showing that political conditions in America were increasingly ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House. Caddell told me that Mercer “is a libertarian—he despises the Republican establishment,” and added, “He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that they’ve ruined the country.” .
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

But you know – we’re going to end this entry on the lighter side here. Seriously, what strand of marijuana is Rick Wiles smoking? I mean really I should listen to conspiracy theory radio more often. These guys are fucking insane!

Rabid conspiracy theorist and End Times radio host Rick Wiles dedicated his “TruNews” radio program yesterday to delivering an extended warning that the government will soon dispatch an army of flesh-eating robots to devour uncooperative human beings.

Wiles and Steve Quayle, who is a frequent guest on his program, spent nearly two hours discussing the existence of giants, the prevalence of cannibalism and the looming Tribulation, with Wiles at one point warning that “the hatred of Christians will become so great in the Last Days that people will be encouraged to kill and eat them.”

To this end, Wiles cited a 2009 Wired magazine article that reported that a company was working on developing robots that could refuel themselves by ingesting biomass from the environment. Despite the fact that the company itself stated that the robots would rely on plant matter, Wiles remains convinced that they will in fact fuel themselves by feasting on human flesh.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-wiles-the-government-is-going-to-send-a-robot-to-your-house-to-eat-you-for-lunch/

[font size="8"]The Flat Earth Society [/font]

Time once again to ask:

This week – “The Flat Earth Society” – how is this still a thing? And how is this even more of a thing among NBA players? So this week Shaq, along with a bunch of current and former NBA players came out saying the earth is flat. Making the rest of us wonder – “what the fuck are you smoking?”. In fact, Mr. O’Neal’s claim for the earth being flat is about as absurd as you might imagine. And Shaq has a PH.d in education. That’s the really bizarre thing about this! Let’s roll the tape first and then discuss:

Shaquille O'Neal has a strong reputation as a bit of a jokester and a prankster, so we need to take his latest comments with a grain of salt. But based on his tone and his argument, it would seem that he is serious on this one — Shaquille O'Neal seems to believe the Earth is flat.

On his latest podcast, Shaq was asked what he thinks about Kyrie Irving's recent comments saying the Earth is flat. To the shock of co-host John Kincade, Shaq flat-out says, "It’s true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is."

Shaq's evidence for the flat-Earth theory is that he can drive from one side of the United States to the other side and that he doesn't "go up and down at a 360-degree angle." He also cites Columbus not discovering America and that there is no way China "is under us."
http://www.businessinsider.com/shaquille-oneal-says-earth-is-flat-2017-3

So what strain of marijuana must you smoke in order to believe the earth is flat after acquiring a PH.d in education? It must be a pretty potent one! I’m guessing OG Kush? Maybe some Mamawana? Or maybe it's Headband or White Rhino? Or maybe some Girl Scout Cookies? Yes that's an actual strain of marijuana. Or maybe too much edible chocolate or pot candy? Well, Dude, we just don’t know! But Shaq’s claim is even far more absurd than he leads on. In fact, if you read the actual transcript, he comes off looking like an Infowars fan who’s smoked way too much of the strongest brand of weed available while listening to Alex Jones:

"It’s true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is. Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mind — what you read, what you see and what you hear. In school, first thing they teach us is, ‘Oh, Columbus discovered America,’ but when he got there, there were some fair-skinned people with the long hair smoking on the peace pipes. So, what does that tell you? Columbus didn’t discover America. So, listen, I drive from coast to coast, and this s--- is flat to me. I’m just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me. I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity, have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings? You mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat."

Thank you Master Yoda! That is indeed why you fail. Let’s attempt to extrapolate Mr. O’Neal’s logic, or lack there of for a minute. First off, fuck that. Let’s explain math to him first. You don’t go up and down at a 360 degree angle. You would go “around” in what’s called a “circle”. And that’s something that they teach you in, let’s say second grade. And have you ever looked at the moon or the sun? you are aware that they are both round, am I right? And have you ever seen satellite images? Or know anything about human history? The mere thought of this would be enough to make your head explode. Well, for any sane person anyway. But Shaq isn’t the only NBA player who has bought into this nonsense. He’s commenting on something that the Cleveland Caviliers’ Kyle Irving said last week:

In another apperance on the “Road Trippin’” podcast, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving addressed the fallout from his the-Earth-is-flat nonsense. Irving, Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye and Allie Clifton talked about it for a while, and Irving didn’t exactly walk his comments back.

“I found it somewhat hilarious just by the reaction it got,” Irving said. “That right there, before we went into All-Star weekend, we talked about this. Because we were like, ‘This is gonna be crazy, going into All-Star weekend, flat Earth, round Earth conversation. Aliens. No conspiracy theories. So as I’m at All-Star weekend, I’m starting to see different news channels, different people pick it up. And it almost felt like I was standing on top of a pendulum and I was like swinging back and forth and then it gave everyone a chance to just look at me and then, if they didn’t agree with me, kind of like throw rocks at me. Just like, ‘no, he can’t believe this.’

“And then you got all these science experts, guys that have been studying the space, the earth, everything for so many years,” Irving continued. “And I’m sitting back and I’m like, OK, the fact that, you know, that this is opening up conversation, I’m happy with that. The fact that it became a conversation starter and honestly people were asking me questions and they were looking at me like I didn’t have a brain on, or my parents didn’t raise me the right way, or something like that, there’s something definitely wrong with this kid -- that’s when I started to kind of, I took a step back and I was like OK, this is more than just what I just said. This right here opened up a whole bunch of things. A whole bunch of information as well.”
http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/cavs-kyrie-irving-on-flat-earth-backlash-its-ok-to-have-your-own-thoughts/

So Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are really no different from any other conspiracy theories. Like the people who believe that a pizza parlor in Washington DC ran a child sex ring under its’ basement when it didn’t even have a basement. Or the people who believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a false flag operation and the kids murdered were paid child actors. So you can explain it to them, and you can show them pictures like this:

Actual NASA satellite image by the way. But nope. They won’t have any of it!

Dr. Shaquille O’Neal is no longer a professional basketball player, he’s a podcaster. That means he has unlimited opportunities to stick his size 22 foot in his mouth. On the latest episode, he threw his support behind the ridiculous belief that the world is flat. Why? He drives, and when he does, it’s flat to him.

Speaking with his co-host of The Big Podcast, John Kincade, Shaq addressed the controversy over the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Kyrie Irving insisting that the Earth is flat. Without missing a beat, Shaq said, “It’s true. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yes, it is.” Kincade immediately started laughing. The small part of me that still has fond memories of wasting afternoons playing Shaq-Fu perked up. Maybe he’s just screwing around, right? There’s no way he really believes that, right? I don’t know.
http://gizmodo.com/some-photos-of-earth-for-shaq-who-thinks-the-earth-is-1793422926

Now you may be asking yourself at this point “Well it’s all well and good, but what does Neil DeGrasse Tyson think about all of this?”. Why that’s a very oddly specific question! And we do have an answer for you!

Now it's time for Neil deGrasse Tyson, a man who was named as one of the 10 most influential people in science by Discover magazine in 2008, to weigh in on Irving's theory. While chatting with TMZ, Tyson said in the nicest way possible he has no problem with Irving believing the earth is flat as long as he sticks to his day job as a killer of dreams in the basketball realm.

"Let me be blunt," Tyson said in an interview with TMZ. "We live in a free country, so you ought to be able to think and say whatever you want. If he wants to think earth is flat, go right ahead – as long as he continues to play basketball and not become head of any space agencies. My point is if you have certain limitations of understanding of the natural world, stay away from jobs that require that."

Tyson then suggested we launch everyone who is on the same page as Irving into space and only allow them back once they all agree they were wrong. The Golden State Warriors would probably sign off on that idea as long as the expedition takes place in the first couple weeks of June.
http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/neil-degrasse-tyson-on-kyrie-irvings-flat-earth-claims-w468751

So even Dr. Tyson says that the people who believe that the earth is flat should be shot into space so that they can see for themselves that the earth is round. That’s enough to make you ask: The Flat Earth Society:

[font size="8"]The Trump Effect [/font]

Sigh, Trump fans keep doing what you’re doing. Of course I say that in the upmost sarcasm because the Trump effect once again reared its’ ugly head this week. If you don’t know what the Trump Effect is by now, you absolutely should. Essentially, to the deplorables, they think that just because Donald Trump is an asshole and he’s the president, that gives them a free pass to be assholes. Uh, it doesn’t. Not by a long shot. I mean we can talk about all the shit going down as a wave of hate crimes sweep across the US. Like this:

Vandals targeted Casa Ruby, an LGBT social services center in Washington, D.C., in an apparent hate crime on Sunday.

The center reported on Facebook (above) that a "transgender hater" vandalized the building and assaulted a staff member, noting that the incident occurred just days after Mayor Muriel Bowser reported a significant increase in hate crimes against trans people in the District.

Casa Ruby also pointed out that at least seven trans women have been murdered nationwide in 2017, adding that "this is how it begins and we refuse to be the next ones."

Last year, a black trans woman who'd been involved with Casa Ruby, Deeniquia Dodds, was fatally shot in D.C.

Read more: http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/johnwright/vandals_strike_yet_another_lgbt_community_center_as_wave_of_hate_crimes_continues

Yes holy shit indeed. There’s a wave of this going on, and not a word from our favorite president Donald Trump. Instead, he’s too busy attacking Snoop Dogg:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/841967881516679168

And never mind when an incident like this happens. Gee, I wonder what this guy’s political affiliation might be?

A traveler has been indicted on charges of unlawful imprisonment and aggravated harassment, after he went on a racist tirade, yelled threatening slurs and even kicking a Muslim Delta employee in the leg at the at John F. Kennedy Airport.

Robin Rhodes, 57, who was returning in January from a trip to Aruba, also faces hate crime charges, reports CNN. He was released on $50,000 bond and ordered to return to court in June. He faces up to four years in prison.

Rhodes was waiting for a connecting flight to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he entered the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK. He came up to the office of the employee, who has not been identified, and said, "Are you (expletive deleted) sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?", said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

The criminal complaint states that Rhodes punched the door, which hit the back of the employee's chair. The employee then asked Rhodes as to what she had done to him and he replied, "You did nothing but I am going to kick your (expletive deleted) a**," the complaint said.

Read more: http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/jfk-airport-man-attacks-muslim-woman-yelling-trump-will-get-rid-of-all-of-you-117031700087_1.html

But then there’s this out of New York City. I won’t say whether or not this guy voted for Trump, but you can draw your own conclusions. There’s nothing funny about this and so I will refrain from doing so:

JACKSON HEIGHTS — A Long Island man attacked two transgender women on Friday afternoon, shouting anti-gay slurs as he beat them outside a fast-food restaurant in what police have charged as a hate crime.

Patrick O'Meara, 38, started yelling at the women as they tried to enter McDonald's on 82nd Street, near Roosevelt Avenue, around 4:30 p.m. Friday, according to police.

He called the women "b--ches" and "f-ggots" and attacked them, pushing one woman to the ground and punching and kicking her, police said.

He briefly left the scene and returned with a cane, hitting one of the victims in the left hand, which caused a laceration, authorities said.

One of the victims also had a fractured ankle from the assault, and was taken to Forest Hills Hospital for her injuries, according to the criminal complaint. The other woman was treated at the scene, police said.
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170318/jackson-heights/jackson-heights-hate-crime-trans-women-82nd-street

Shit is getting ugly out there folks. So ugly in fact a guy whose two sons died of heroin overdoses in Ohio received an ugly and hateful letter from what we can obviously assume is a Trump supporter:

An Ohio father who lost two of his three children to heroin overdoses said he received a letter celebrating their deaths that was postmarked from a condominium complex owned by President Donald Trump.

Roger Winemiller shared his family’s story earlier this month with the New York Times and WCPO-TV, and he got an anonymous letter about a week later that called for the repeal of Obamacare and referred to Trump, the TV station reported.

“It’s wonderful that junkies overdose and die,” the letter reads. “That is the only way we can rid America of all those low-life scum. I am so happy that your children did their part in reducing the drug population.”

“We should look forward to the repeal of filthy Obamacare,” the letter reads. “When we reduce mooching, those thieves will quickly die when they lose medical access.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/ohio-farmer-loses-two-kids-to-heroin-overdose-and-obamacare-hating-trump-fan-celebrates/

Fuck these people!

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Round 8: #7 Kansas Vs. #8 New Jersey [/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. Last week, the heavily armed police in Missouri brought their big guns out against the Confederacy in South Carolina, and easily won that contest. This week it’s the final matchup in round 1 and it’s going to be a good one. We’re going back to the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference where Sam Brownback’s Kansas is taking on one of the Layover League’s best in #8, Donald Trump stage prop Chris Christie’s New Jersey. This is the last team needed to enter the Hateful 8, but don’t worry – there’s going to be plenty of tournament left. We still have the conference finals, the final four, and the NFFSA (National For Fuck’s Sake Association) championship. So let’s get out our brackets, shall we?

[font size="6"]Round 8: Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference: Round 2: #7 Kansas Vs #8 New Jersey[/font]

[font size="4"]New Jersey [/font]

Next up in our Stupidest State contest is none other than Donald Trump stage prop Chris Christie’s New Jersey! The Garden State is none other than the setting for the very popular movie “Garden State”. It’s also the home of famed movie director and guy who got kicked off Southwest for being too fat to fly, Kevin Smith. Yes, that really happened. It’s the home of the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, Rutgers University, and the Meadowlands – the home of the NFL’s New York Giants, and their much less successful brother, the New York Jets. And most everybody here has probably passed through Newark Airport on their way to or from some place at some point. The Garden State is also the home of Atlantic City – the basis for the popular HBO show “Boardwalk Empire”, and the center of bootlegging in the 1920s. And it also the business home of one Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States. Which brings me to why they’re here. What else is New Jersey the home of? It’s the home of the Bridgegate Scandal, which places them high in the running for Fiscal Irresponsibility superiority. Let’s delve into this quite a bit more, shall we?

NEW YORK - Two former allies of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were convicted on Friday for their roles in the "Bridgegate" lane closure scandal, following a six-week trial that served to further tarnish the Republican's damaged reputation.

Bridget Kelly, the governor's former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, were found guilty in Newark federal court on all counts, the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey said on Twitter.

Kelly and Baroni were convicted of fraud, conspiracy and depriving the residents of Fort Lee, New Jersey, of their civil rights.

Christie, who has repeatedly denied any advance knowledge of the scheme, is a top adviser for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-christie-allies-convicted-in-nj-bridgegate-trial/ar-AAjU7Vs?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp

Just two allies were convicted? That’s it? And it didn’t bring down one of the most powerful republicans in the country? There’s got to be more to this, am I right?

A judge has found there is probable cause to charge Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal. Bergen County Superior Court Judge Roy McCready cited prior testimony from a federal trial of the New Jersey governor's top aides, who were convicted.

McCready agreed with a criminal complaint that "accuses the governor of failing to stop subordinates from purposely creating traffic jams to punish a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse him," WNYC reports.

The complaint "was brought against Christie by William Brennan, a Bergen County activist who is now running for governor." Brennan is "arguing that testimony during the Bridgegate trial last fall provided probable cause to charge the governor with official misconduct."

A statement released by Christie says the judge "has once again violated the Governor's constitutional rights," and "is violating the law, pure and simple."

"This concocted claim was investigated for three months by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, which summarily dismissed it, after concluding that the very same evidence relied upon again by this judge was utter nonsense," the statement adds.
http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/judge_probable_cause_to_charge_chris_christie_in_bridgegate_scandal

So what does this have to do with New Jersey’s unparalleled corporate greed you might ask? Well to go beneath the headlines, as we often do on this show, and encourage you to do as well, let’s take a look at the Chris Christie – Jerry Jones connection. You know Infowars fans, this is what a real conspiracy looks like! Just so you’re aware!

Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey, a former Republican candidate for president and a noted Dallas Cowboys fan.

He's also been hard at work aggravating Philadelphia sports fans.

Earlier this year, Christie tweaked Eagles fans during an appearance on WFAN's "Boomer and Carton Show" by calling them "generally angry, awful people."

Well, Christie reprised his role as perhaps the region's most notable Philly sports troll during an appearance on SportsNet New York on Thursday. Christie and some panelists were discussing the Phillies' use of Tug McGraw's "Ya Gotta Believe" slogan -- which the late closer popularized with the New York Mets -- in their spring training stadium during a segment called "Let's Overreact."

And Christie pretty much reiterated his comments from January about Eagles fans:

"The Phillies suck. Let's just start with that. They're from Philadelphia. They're an awful team. They're an angry, bitter fanbase, and it's not safe for civilized people to go to Citizens Bank Park if you want to root for the other team. Ya gotta believe what? Ya gotta believe we're awful people. That's what ya gotta believe."
http://www.pennlive.com/sports/index.ssf/2017/02/chris_christie_says_philadelph.html

Allow me to channel my inner football commentator for a minute - Oh come on, if there’s one group of people you don’t want to piss off, it’s football fans. These are the most passionate fans in sports, just ask Patriots fans. And your own state has two football teams! Did you forget that? Or are you in too much of a bromance with Jerry Jones? I mean you know how the conservatives are always railing about how celebrities should stay out of politics? That’s especially ironic when you think about the fact that they want to run Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent. And their favorite presidents are, ironically, celebrities! The party that thinks celebrities should stay the fuck out of politics, sure has a lot of celebrities representing them, don’t they? Well, I could counter that with this: maybe conservative politicians should stay out of sports, how about that?

This week gave us three prime examples of why loudmouth lawmakers should stick to politics as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott all came across like extreme jerks when they blurted out unfortunate things connected to the world of sports.

On Monday, Adams attempted to win cheap political points by getting involved in the feud between Knicks owner James Dolan and Charles Oakley. Adams, whose borough wasn't involved at all in the situation, held a press conference outside the Garden, made inflammatory accusations against Dolan (really, is there an easier target?), played the race card by comparing Oakley to Eric Garner, and called on Rev. Al Sharpton, who has made a career out of this stuff, to join him in what looked like it was going to become a racially charged political gong show in a hurry.

"Every time I fly first class, someone stops me to see my ticket over, and over and over again," Adams said before the Oakley ban from MSG was lifted. "It sends the wrong message to black boys and black leaders. Even when you sit in the most expensive seat in Madison Square Garden, you are treated in that manner. This would not have happened to Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere."
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/hey-politicians-stop-chiming-sports-topic-article-1.2975546

I like that one! And in case you’re wondering how Chris Christie got to be the Donald Trump stage prop that he is, look no further than what happened to the Trump organization when Chris Christie first took over as governor of New Jersey. As they say in “The Hangover”, “Quid Pro Quo, douchebags!”

By the time Chris Christie became governor of New Jersey, the state’s auditors and lawyers had been battling for several years to collect long-overdue taxes owed by the casinos founded by his friend Donald J. Trump.

The total, with interest, had grown to almost $30 million. The state had doggedly pursued the matter through two of the casinos’ bankruptcy cases and even accused the company led by Mr. Trump of filing false reports with state casino regulators about the amount of taxes it had paid.

But the year after Governor Christie, a Republican, took office, the tone of the litigation shifted. The state entertained settlement offers. And in December 2011, after six years in court, the state agreed to accept just $5 million, roughly 17 cents on the dollar of what auditors said the casinos owed.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-casinos%E2%80%99-tax-debt-was-dollar30-million-then-chris-christie-took-office/ar-BBvHIH3

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

Finally, we come to the last state, but certainly not least, in our Stupidest State contest that we have yet to cover – Kansas. The Sunflower State is home to some of college basketball’s best teams. This includes the Witchita State Warriors and the Kansas University Jayhawks. It’s also the home of America’s largest water park – called Schlitterbahn. Kansas is also the road trip capital of America and the home to such weirdly interesting tourist attractions such as the Barbed Wire Museum and the Underground Salt Museum. Interstate 70 stretches across Kansas and is home to some of the weirdest and most unique roadside attractions that make Route 66 one of the best road trips in the world. And what else is Kansas the home of? It’s the home of Tea Party darling Sam Brownback! In fact he’s so insane that the Kansas house is declaring war against him.

The House struck back at Gov. Sam Brownback on Wednesday, voting to override his veto of a massive package of tax increases to fill the states budget shortfall. Brownback vetoed House Bill 2178 in a news conference Wednesday morning after announcing his veto plans Tuesday night.

A little more than an hour later, the House voted 85-40 to override, clearing the minimum threshold of 84 votes. The Senate must also vote to override the veto with a two-thirds majority before the bill can be forced into law.

Brownback slammed the tax bill as a “punitive” increase. He called on lawmakers to work with him to find a solution and said his budget proposal offers a structurally-balanced budget by 2019 – a contention some lawmakers reject. He also called for lawmakers to look for savings.
http://cjonline.com/news/state-government/2017-02-22/house-votes-override-brownback-veto-tax-bill

Yes I’m in the “WTF” category on this one. So let’s go back and retrace our steps and I think we’ll need a flow chart for this one. So Sam Brownback proposes a budget. It passes the house and the senate and lands on his desk where all he has to do is sign it. Then he vetoes his own legislation. Then the house overrides his own veto. Then he overrides the house and vetoes his own legislation. Yeah that sounds about right. So what else happened in the world of Brownbackistan?

Gov. Sam Brownback’s office announced $97 million in budget cuts on Wednesday, with more than half of that coming from the state’s Medicaid system.

Most state agencies will have a 4 percent cut. The governor exempted the Department of Corrections, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the Kansas Highway Patrol and state hospitals.

Public K-12 education, which represents half of the state’s general fund budget, also was shielded from cuts. Lawmakers had written that provision into the budget bill.

Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income Kansans, accounts for 20 percent of the state’s general fund budget and shouldered the brunt of the budget cuts. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, the two agencies that administer the program, saw $57.4 million in combined cuts.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article78450362.html#storylink=cpy

Why do GOP spending programs remind me of that clip on the Simpsons? And now here’s the easiest part of any governor’s job – the cuts. Social security, you’re cut. National Endowment For The Arts? You’re cut. Medicare? You’re cut. Military? You stay. Higher education? You’re cut. State department? You’re cut. Look, there’s so many cuts here I’m just going to post your names on this board here. Energy department? You’re cut. And so on. But getting back to Sam Brownback… what else has he been involved in? He’s also been cutting $54 million to the state’s public school system!

Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s aggressive tax cuts have come back to haunt him. In the latest move to make up for a massive state deficit caused by his economic policy, Brownback plans to cut nearly $45 million in funding for public schools and higher education in his state by March.

Brownback shared his plans for the current budget cycle on Thursday ahead of a Senate vote on a bill aimed at eradicating a $344 million deficit projected for the end of June. More than half of the money would be taken from funding for K-12 schools, and take place as soon as March 7, The Associated Press reported. The cut would also affect Kansas colleges and universities. Top Republicans said lawmakers need to agree on a solution to fix the budget by Feb. 13 to make sure the state pays its bills on time through the summer months.

Brownback spent his first term slashing taxes for the rich, promising it would lead to boom times for everyone else. Brownback’s “real live experiment” was supposed to lift Kansas out of the recession and into economic prosperity. The tax breaks instead led to debt downgrades, weak growth, and left the state finances in shambles. The Republican-led legislature in his state previously celebrated his massive tax cuts, but his action landed the state’s budget in shambles when it didn’t boost the economy like he’d hoped.

The governor, along with the state legislature, cut budgets for schools so much in the past that the Kansas Supreme Court last year declared school funding levels unconstitutional.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/kansas-gov-sam-brownback-cut-45-million-public-school-funding

And in case you’re wondering about the kind of caliber a person like Sam Brownback really is, I give you this:

PARKER — Undulating fields of crops and livestock-dotted pastures are the domain of a trigger-happy bully who brags about a political cloak of invincibility keeping him beyond reach of the law in faithfully conservative Linn County.

Adversaries say he has woven a liquor-infused tapestry of fear colored by intimidation, abuse and lies. The saga features stalking, death threats, trespassing, drive-by gunfire, massive explosions, cattle theft, loan defaults, hit-and-run driving and marital strife. Linn County Sheriff’s Department files bulge with complaints about him.

There is trepidation among acquaintances to speak freely, a point accentuated by the number expressing nervousness about reprisal if they were candid. There is genuine fear.

Descriptions of events offered by those willing to speak out converge to reveal a potentially lethal menace. Neighbors allege some in law enforcement responded to cries for help with degrees of indifference or favoritism.

http://www.gctelegram.com/news/state/gov-sam-brownback-s-brother-accused-of-terrorizing-rural-neighbors/article_34f155b4-1ad8-5731-9a91-05851efdd899.html

And in case you’re wondering about the Tea Party’s class, or complete lack thereof, look no further than last year when Sam Brownback just killed a report that said that the Tea Party’s policies effectively destroyed Kansas. Which, well, which it did!

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback enacted his grand “tea party experiment” of Republican government, where he and his Republican-led legislature cut taxes and significantly reduced spending. The result has been catastrophic for the state’s economy and for jobs, but a report that would detail just how catastrophic is now being censored by the Brownback administration.

According to a shocking Kansas City Star report, Brownback set up a group in 2011 that would put out quarterly reports showing the impact of Brownback’s economic laws. His problem, of course, is that the reports don’t show what he hoped they would. Instead, they reflect the downward spiral of the Kansas economy thanks to Brownback’s failed policies.

Last January, Brownback tried to hide the report when it showed something he didn’t like. Now, they’re going a different route and killing the report entirely. Brownback had hoped that the report would reflect a sudden jolt of economic excitement with the tax cuts. Now, they show that “Kansas sometimes was faring worse than it had before Brownback became governor.”

The administration flatly rejects this account of where the report went, claiming it was always too complicated for people to understand.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/sam-brownback-kills-report-that-would-show-how-his-tea-party-policies-destroyed-the-kansas-economy/

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

This was an extremely good and very close matchup, but sadly, only one team can advance to face Michigan in the next round. This game went into double overtime. But... we do have a winner! Kansas has propelled past New Jersey to the top of Fiscal Irresponsibility superiority! They will move on to face Michigan in the conference finals. Final score 101 - 97. Both teams were very evenly matched, but there's no mistake that Sam Brownback is the reigning king of Fiscal Irresponsibility! This may be the end of round 1, but don’t worry – there’s plenty of tournament left! We still have four matches in round 2 and 2 matches in round 3, plus the championship round. Next week – it’s the first round of the conference finals! And to kick things off in our quest to find the final four we’re going to start in the Batshit Conference – Florida. Texas. This is for all the marbles to win the coveted Batshit Crown!

[font size="8"]And now this:[/font]
[font size="8"]Milky Chance[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, playing their song “Cocoons” from their new album “Blossom”, please welcome Milky Chance!

Yeah how about that?

See you next week!

March 20, 2017

America, We Need To Have a Talk.

Honey, we love you. But it's high time you realized something. And that something is that the people who claim to love you, actually don't love you. See, you're in what's called an "abusive relationship". And the person and people who you have in power actually are not looking out for your best interests. See, we have been doing research. And that research shows that your lover(s) are actually in reality, not loving you. In fact, they secretly hate you. And they're doing everything they can to dismantle and destroy your sense of self worth and make you feel worthless. In fact, you're not just experiencing one of these signs, you're experiencing all of them. So let's run through them, shall we?

1. He pushes for quick involvement - Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson are doing everything in their power to get America involved in a war with North Korea. Despite having not actually tried to do any actual diplomacy. They want war so bad they can taste it. Never mind the other two wars we're already in.

2. There's constant jealousy - The republican party, for 8 years, was consistently jealous of everything that President Obama had achieved and worked to destroy it. They worked to destroy his legacy through bullshit conspiracy theories, Fox News, and constant lying and undermining of authority.

3. They're controlling - The GOP doesn't just want total dominance, they want complete and total dominance with an iron fist. In fact republican supporters in Arizona were calling for genocide of the other party last week.

4. They have very unrealistic expectations - Mitch McConnell and Matt Bevin were in Kentucky saying that Obamacare was a complete and utter failure. They signed up 500,000 who previously didn't have insurance. They could have signed up 2.5 million and McConnell and Bevin would still call it a failure.

5. There's isolation - The GOP wants NATO gone. They want America cut off from the rest of the world, and they're working at a rapid pace to achieve that because, globalism.

6. They blame others for their own mistakes - the GOP is doing this to Obama on an almost daily basis.

7. He makes everyone else responsible for their feelings. - Donald Trump consistently blames the "fake news" media for consistently reporting the truth about his administration.
http://www.amny.com/news/politics/trump-tweets-about-angela-merkel-snoop-dogg-his-tax-return-the-media-more-1.12652941

8. He's hypersensitive.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/841967881516679168

9. He's cruel to animals and children.

10. His uses "playful" force during sex. - Trump has regularly bragged about his abuse of women, and was found to like golden showers. But it's just locker room talk.

11. There's verbal abuse. - Donald Trump regularly abuses just about anybody and anything that doesn't kiss his ass 100%.

12. There are rigid gender roles in the relationship. - Just ask Melania.

13. He has sudden mood swings. - Most of Trump's tweets occur at 3:00 AM when he's regularly on the toilet. That is usually when he's at his angriest.

14. He has a past of battering.

15. He threatens violence. - See #1.

So America, isn't it time you realized what these horrible people are doing to you and isn't it time you kicked them to the curb? I hope so. I'm glad we had this talk.

March 16, 2017

We're teetering on the edge of Civil War.

We're more divided now than we were during the 1860s. The deplorables don't just want us gone, they want us dead. If you dare voice opposition to Trump you get called a libtard, a Marxist, and run out of town. I've never seen a political climate like this before, and if anything happens to Trump, that might be the straw that broke the camel's back.

March 15, 2017

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-16: Wheel Of Corruptions Long Halftime Walk Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #2-16: Wheel Of Corruption’s Long Halftime Walk Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Holy shit, this whole thing keeps getting weirder and weirder doesn’t it? I’m of course talking about Mama June: Hot Or Not. Really, could these not be the most disgusting people on the planet? That guy who they call “Sugar Bear” – what’s his deal? And how has this guy been married 3 times? Who would date these people? And how are these people still on TV? Why won’t they go away for good? Nobody gives a shit! I don’t even know why I’m talking about them! It’s a train wreck – you don’t want to stare, but you can’t look away.

Thank you Deadpool! You know let’s change face and talk about something much better – Deadpool and Logan! Yeah now we’re talking! So I saw Logan over the weekend and I have to say wow. Holy shit, that is quite a movie. It’s easily one of the best super hero movies since The Dark Knight, and hell, really, it’s Marvel’s Dark Knight. It’s proof that you can make a really good, dark, dramatic, R-rated super hero movie and it’s the antithesis of Deadpool. Hell, it’s light years above the last time a movie of this caliber was attempted – Watchmen. But the intro to Logan with Deadpool is hilarious and alone worth the price of admission. And I will say for as dark as this movie is – watch it in the daylight. Because, trust me, you will want to see sun after you come out of that movie theater. And now that it’s Daylight Saving Time, you have more hours during the day to see it! Enough of the intro. Let’s get right down to it shall we, because we have a lot of idiocy to cover. But first John Oliver is back and so is the discussion about the ACA, or as I call it “TrumpDon’tCare”. #TrumpDontCare

So where do we begin this week? Number one is easily going to go to House Republicans (1) and their justifications for ending ACA and replacing it with the AHCA. And really, can we punch Paul Ryan in the face for this one? In the second slot is Rep. Steve King. Not to be confused with *that* Stephen King, but Steve King is under fire for going full Hitler. And if there’s one thing I’ve been trying to teach you on this show is that you don’t go full Hitler. Never, ever go full Hitler. President Trump is going to take up just two slots this week – in the number 3 slot, we’re going to talk about a few truths vs. reality when it comes to Trumpcare. At number 4 we’re going to talk about Donald Trump (4) and the firing of US DOJ attorney Preet Bharara. Taking the number 5 slot is Kellyanne Conway – who made an absurd claim about microwaves. At number 6, we’re going to talk about Donald Trump Supporters (6). So there was a Trump rally in one of our favorite punching bags – Maricopa County, Arizona (that’s Sheriff Joe territory don’t you know?) – and yes, they went there. If you don’t know what I mean, you will. At number 7, we’ve got yet another installment of “People Who Somehow Got Elected”. This week we’re going to my home state of California and we’re going to discuss state representative Dana Rohrabacher (7). How does this guy keep getting elected? In the number 8 slot, we’ve got another installment of “How Is This Still A Thing”. And this time we’re going to talk about fundamentalist Christians thinking that they’re being persecuted. Yeah…. How is this still a thing? In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot, we talked about this in the monologue last week but we’re going to expand on it, and see if former Texans running back Arian Foster can indeed fight a wolf. Spoiler alert! Probably not. And finally this week we’ve got another entry into our Stupidest State contest. This time we’re going to the Gun Nut Conference where #3 Missouri and #4 South Carolina are going to bring their big guns out to see who can out duel the crazy and move on to face Montana in the conference final! Plus we’ve got some more live music for you. This time from a band who just released a new album this week! I’m talking about The Shins and their great new album “Heartworms”. Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

[font size="8"]Congressional Republicans[/font]

Come on everybody say it with me. It’s time for the WHEEL OF CORRUPTION!!!! Yayyyyyyyyy!!!

The wheel is back everybody! And of course if we had a bigger budget we’d have our own graphics and theme music. Yes just like last time I’ll talk about whatever the wheel lands on. But remember that if it lands on the Guacamole option that it costs $1.50 extra. So this week the items on the wheel will be:

- Gun Nuts
- Go Directly To Jail
- Clip Without Context
- Guacamole
- 5,000
- Dating
- Whammy
- Community Chest
- Bankrupt
- Voter Fraud
- Nazis
- Booze
- Chance
- Sports
- Buy A Vowel
- Donald Trump
- My Wife
- Seinfeld
- Bathrooms
- Double Whammy
- A Recent Study
- Guns
- Stupidest State Contest
- VR Headset
- Twitter
- Whammy
- Remix
- People Who Somehow Got Elected
- 10,000
- How Is This Still A Thing?
- Talk Shows
- Golf
- Twitter
- Surveillance
- 15,000
- Hate Crimes
- A Random Tweet
- Conspiracy Theories
- Russia
- Something random in the news
- VR Headset
- ??? (Mystery)
- Florida (Obviously)
- Infowars
- Lightning Round
- Bonus Spin

Let’s get this going! Give the wheel a nice strong spin to start things off! Ooh, that was a nice spin! And it lands on... Community Chest!

Shit, I don’t exactly have $100. But I do have a wheel! Spin it again! And it lands on… are you kidding me? Bankrupt? But I’m already $100 in the hole!

Dude, is the wheel stuck? I mean seriously! Well I say that because we’re going to talk about the GOP health care plan this week. Which is why we brought out the wheel because we need to lighten things up. And I mean, I say this with all my deepest, purest darkest heart – go fuck yourself, Paul Ryan!

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday that House Republicans’ proposal to replace Obamacare was something conservatives had “been dreaming about doing.” In a press conference with House Republican leadership at the Republican National Committee's headquarters, Ryan described the American Health Care Act as “a conservative wish list.”

“Look at what this bill does,” he says. “It repeals Obamacare's taxes. That's a trillion dollars in tax relief for families that will help them with the cost of health care. It repeals Obamacare spending: Medicaid expansion and the Obamacare subsidies. It repeals the Obamacare mandates on individuals and businesses. Ends the funding for Planned Parenthood and sends that money to community health centers, which there are more of. It has a Medicaid per capita block grant. That's the biggest entitlement reform anyone here has seen. It nearly doubles the amount of money people can put into health savings accounts."

Ryan described one aspect of the proposal, providing tax benefits to those who purchase insurance individually versus those who receive it through their job, as “the crown jewel of conservative health care reform.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ryan-gop-health-plan-press-conference

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! So let's put it this way - the Obama healthcare plan was like flying business class on Singapore Airlines. Everything is nice, you've got a nice waiting room, there's a big screen TV, plenty of food and drink, you don't have to pay to check any bags, and there's a nice destination waiting for you when you arrive. But the GOP plan is like flying Spirit or Allegiant Airlines - it's going to cost a hell of a lot more for a really shitty product, you have to pay to check everything, there's no TVs and a big fat guy sitting next to you, you know where you're going sucks, and you'll probably wind up fighting someone by the time its' all over. But it’s led GOP Congressmen to say ridiculously stupid shit like this:

A first-term congressman who spent three decades as a physician — and is now part of a group of Republican doctors who have a major role in replacing Obamacare — is facing backlash after saying that poor people “just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”

Rep. Roger Marshall, (R-Kan.), a member of the GOP Doctors Caucus, said comments he made to Stat News were not meant to suggest that poor people take health care for granted. The comments were published in a story last week about his burgeoning role in the fight to replace the Affordable Care Act.

“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’ ” Marshall said in response to a question about Medicaid, which expanded under Obamacare to more than 30 states. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-poor-%E2%80%98just-don%E2%80%99t-want-health-care%E2%80%99-republican-congressman-faces-backlash-over-comments/ar-AAo4yzX?li=BBnb7Kz

No, they’re booing you. Because you were elected to do a job, and you clearly don’t give a flying fuck about doing that! But you know who is going to be affected by TrumpDontCare the most? If you guessed Trump supporters, you are correct sir / madam! You get points! I mean… Jesus. These people couldn’t be any more stupid.

Would President Trump have lost the election if voters knew what the GOP actually had planned for Obamacare? In 2016, voters had to take Donald Trump at his word that he would replace Obamacare with something better. He did not offer a specific proposal during the campaign, but now the House Republican leadership has a concrete proposal. Under their legislation, health care coverage for many Americans will be worse than under Obamacare.1 But how much worse?

Third Way estimates that 2.2 million low-to-moderate-income Trump voters would lose the financial assistance for their health care coverage, which they receive today from Obamacare.2 The large group of Trump voters hurt by the GOP plan exceeds Trump’s margin of victory in key states.

This memo explains how the House GOP health care plan will affect Trump voters, presents estimates of the number of Trump voters affected in each state, and shows how the number of Americans hurt by the plan compares to Trump’s margin of victory in closely fought states.
http://www.thirdway.org/memo/the-impact-of-house-gop-health-care-efforts-on-trump-voters

So what are they blathering about? Is it cost? Nope!

https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/new-poll-shows-canadians-overwhelmingly-support-public-health-care/

A new poll conducted by the Toronto-based Nanos Research points to overwhelming support — 86.2 percent — for strengthening public health care rather than expanding for-profit services.

“With more than 8 in 10 Canadians supporting public solutions to make public health care stronger, there is compelling evidence that Canadians across all demographics would prefer a public over a for-profit health care system,” said Nik Nanos, president of Nanos Research.

Nanos Research was commissioned by the Canadian Health Coalition (CHC), a nonpartisan group that supports Canada’s public health system, to conduct a random telephone survey of 1,001 Canadians between April 25 and May 3. The margin of accuracy for a sample of 1,001 is ±3.1 percentage points.

Is it that poor people have a greater health risk? Nope!

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/03/15/dont-let-the-talking-points-fool-you-its-all-about-the-risk-pool/

Most people are healthy most of the time, and as a consequence, health care expenditures are heavily concentrated in a small share of the population: about 50 percent of the health care spending in a given year by those below age 65 is attributable to just 5 percent of the nonelderly population. The lowest spending half of the population accounts for only about 3.5 percent of health care spending in a year.

Deciding how much of total health care expenditures should be shared across the population and how to share it is the fundamental conundrum of health care policy. There is more risk pooling the larger the share of health expenditures included in the insurance as covered expenses (i.e., the fewer benefits excluded and the lower the out-of-pocket cost requirements), the larger the number of both the healthy and the sick insured, and the lower the variation in premiums across different enrollees. Sharing the costs of the sick across the broader population (a.k.a., risk pooling) increases costs for the healthy to the benefit of those with health problems; this creates more financial losers than winners at a point in time, since there are many more healthy people than sick in a given year. Segmenting risk pools has the opposite effect, savings for the currently healthy while increasing costs for those with health problems.

How about the number of people insured? Or should I say uninsured? We could seriously devote all 10 entries this week to the health care bill but there’s a lot more idiocy to cover here.

Twenty-four million people would lose their insurance over the next 10 years under Republican legislation being pushed to repeal Obamacare, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

"In 2026, an estimated 52 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law," the CBO said.

Many of the provisions in the Republican bill, the American Health Care Act, would not take effect until 2020. But according to Monday's CBO score, its effects on coverage would be felt almost immediately. The agency projected that in 2018, just in time for mid-term elections, 14 million more people would be uninsured than under current law, if the GOP bill was implemented. The difference would grow to 21 million in 2020, which is when the Republicans' massive overhaul of Medicaid would kick in, and then to 24 million in 2026.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/cbo-coverage-numbers

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

Spin it to win it! And it lands on………… tick tick tick tick… Clip without context!

Finally some truth in advertising! Spin it again! And it lands on… A Random Tweet! Well this one isn’t really so random as it’s a Congressional representative who is one of the more batshit crazy ones. I am of course talking about Iowa rep Steve King. Can we throw that Tweet up there?

https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/840980755236999169

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! And this isn’t the first time Steve King has been caught saying racist bullshit… this week. Can we throw that other Tweet up there?

https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/832207902752571392

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! And he also recently praised the Trump administration rescinding Obama-era executive orders on clean water. I mean Jesus. If we liberals endorsed clean air, republicans would endorse carbon monoxide! There was also this!

https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/836674154392870912

But oh wait, it’s the Washington Examiner. Hey it’s almost a newspaper! Wrong! Fake news, OK? Sad!

Today people are apparently finding out and being terribly surprised that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is a white nationalist and racist and has been that more or less openly for years. Before yesterday's paean to "culture and demographics", Steve King was saying that for every Dreamer who's a valedictorian there are a hundred running drugs. The list of similar statements is all but endless.

We've been on the King beat for years. You can go through our archives and find dozens of offensive, stupid and frequently outright racist comments from King. But there's something more specific about King. King frequently speaks in the language of white nationalists and neo-Nazis who speak of "white genocide" and America being overrun by non-whites.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/--100931

But Steve King isn’t just your average run of the mill racist anymore. He’s Trump’s base! He says what your racist uncle is thinking! This guy couldn’t be any more of a gigantic racist asshole and he’s the reason why we can’t have nice things! But he didn’t just let up or use the usual republican “get out of jail free” card, he doubled down on the racism!

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Monday morning doubled down on his Sunday tweet saying that "civilization" will not be restored with "somebody else's babies."

During an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, King said that he "meant exactly what I said" in the tweet.

"I've been to Europe and I’ve spoken on this issue and I've said the same thing as far as ten years ago to the German people and to any population of people that is a declining population that isn't willing to have enough babies to reproduce themselves. And I’ve said to them, you can't rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies," King said on CNN. "You've got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values."

King then lamented that the U.S. has "aborted nearly 60 million babies" since 1973 and claimed that there is an effort to "replace that void with somebody else's babies."

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-king-doubles-down-somebody-else-babies

And as if Paul Ryan couldn’t be any more of a gigantic asshole, he actually defended Steve King’s racist tweet. I mean really? Usually when someone takes the low road like that, you go higher. And when you’re in a hole, stop digging! But not with the GOP, they’ll gladly double down on the assholery displayed here! This is who Steve King is – he just says what your racist uncle is thinking!

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Monday distanced himself from Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) comment that "civilization" can't be restored with "somebody else's babies," and said that he hoped the Iowa congressman "misspoke."

"I’d like to think––and I haven’t spoken to Steve about this––I’d like to think that he misspoke and it wasn’t really meant the way that that sounds, and hopefully he’s clarified that," the speaker said in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier.

However, it does not appear that King misspoke at all. After sending the initial tweet, the Iowa congressman doubled down on his remark in a Monday morning interview on CNN and said he "meant exactly what I said" in the tweet. King claimed that there is an effort to fill a "void" left by abortion with "somebody else's babies."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/paul-ryan-steve-king-disagree?utm_content=buffer527c1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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

Entering the spin zone! Because unlike Bill O'Reilly, we actually support spinning here! It's what we do. And it lands on…. Wait for it… cool, I win 10,000. Of something, what that is, I still don’t know. Could be 10,000 tutus. Could be 10,000 molotov cocktails. Could be 10,000 Pink’s chili cheese dogs. We just don’t know. Spin it again! Donald Trump! ugh… as if this whole mess couldn’t get any uglier this week, our favorite punching bag, Breitbart, or as Trump calls them “the real news”, dropped the big one in regards to TrumpDon’tCare. It turns out Ryan trashed Trumpenfuror behind closed doors in a conference call last year:

But you know like I said we could have easily devoted all 10 slots to covering TrumpDontCare, but we won’t do that. But we could instead post some facts vs reality in regards to TrumpDontCare and let you draw your own conclusions, because once again, Trump is wrong on, well, everything!

Myth #1:

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party’s congressional majorities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-vows-insurance-for-everybody-in-obamacare-replacement-plan/2017/01/15/5f2b1e18-db5d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.0dd03e489b91

Reality:

House Republicans’ proposal to rewrite federal health-care law would more than reverse the gains the Affordable Care Act has made in the number of Americans with health insurance, while curbing the federal deficit, according to a widely anticipated forecast by congressional analysts.

The analysis, released late Monday afternoon by the Congressional Budget Office, predicts that 24 million fewer people would have coverage a decade from now than if the Affordable Care Act remains intact, nearly doubling the share of Americans who are uninsured from 10 percent to 19 percent. The office projects the number of uninsured people would jump 14 million after the first year
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/obamacare-revision-would-reduce-insured-numbers-by-24-million/2017/03/13/ea4c860a-0829-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?utm_term=.495bb1460d81

Strike one! Myth #2:

DES MOINES, Iowa—Donald Trump says if he runs for president he’ll make sure entitlement programs aren’t touched.

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told The Daily Signal. “Every other Republican is going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do.”

Trump, the successful businessman who has flirted with a political career in the past, spent time in Iowa recently to talk about the issues at the top of his agenda.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/21/why-donald-trump-wont-touch-your-entitlements/

Reality:

As a candidate, Donald Trump promised that he wouldn’t cut Medicaid. He’d “save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts,” he pledged during his announcement speech. “Have to do it.”

The House Republican health care bill doesn’t just break that promise — it makes a mockery of it.

According to the Congressional Budget Office estimate released Monday, the American Health Care Act would slash $880 billion in federal funds from Medicaid in the next 10 years. As a result, 14 million fewer people would have Medicaid coverage in 2026, the agency estimates.
http://www.vox.com/2017/3/13/14914812/trump-ahca-medicaid-cuts

Strike two! And finally myth #3:

President-elect Donald Trump says he will not throw out all parts of the Affordable Care Act he said he would do away with before the election. In his first post-election television interview, he said he will keep the portions covering people with pre-existing conditions and children living at home under the age of 26.

Trump also said Hillary and Bill Clinton called him separately to offer congratulations, characterizing the former president as “gracious” in his call and his former opponent in her call “couldn’t have been nicer.” The interview, in which Lesley Stahl also speaks to the Trump family, including Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany, Eric and Donald, Jr., will be broadcast Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Excerpts of the interview appeared on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. Transcripts of the excerpts are below.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-to-keep-some-obamacare-says-clintons-gracious/

Reality!

The Republican-backed American Health Care Act would be totally devastating to older Americans who rely on the individual market for insurance, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The bill does bring down overall premiums in the individual market by about 10 percent by 2026 compared with what they would be under current law, the CBO found. But the CBO includes a big caveat: This would greatly differ based on age and income.

The CBO offers an example of a single individual with an annual income of $26,500.

If that person is 21 years old, he’ll largely benefit from the Republican health care bill. Under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), he would on average pay $1,700 in premiums for insurance. Under the Republican plan, he would pay $1,450.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/13/14914596/ahca-cbo-premiums-age

Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike 3! You’re out, assholes!

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

Let’s spin it to win it! Ooh that was a good spin there! And it lands on… Conspiracy Theories!

Planet Tranny… I don’t think I’ve seen that one. I don’t suppose you have a copy of that, do you, Alex? I mean since you’re so obsessed with “trannys”…

Spin it again! And it lands on golf. So you know the Trump sons Uday and Qusay have been busy setting up Trump branded properties all over the world right? And would you be at all shocked to learn that the Trump brothers have been boasting about getting rich off the presidency? I am!

WASHINGTON — It is a golden age for golf — at least as far as the Trump Organization is concerned.

On Memorial Day weekend, the Senior P.G.A. Championship will be held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington. In July, the company’s course in Bedminster, N.J., is hosting another major event, the United States Women’s Open. The company is also bidding to host the Scottish Open or a half-dozen other possible professional tournaments at courses it owns in spots around the world from Miami to Dubai.

“The stars have all aligned,” Eric Trump, who as executive vice president of the Trump Organization oversees all its golf properties, said on Thursday morning, while sipping an iced tea at the restaurant inside the Trump International Hotel before appearing at a promotional event for the Memorial Day tournament. “I think our brand is the hottest it has ever been.”

What he did not mention at the news conference, while the cameras were rolling, is the product placement of incalculable value that is helping boost the Trump Organization’s golf courses: his father.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/us/politics/trump-golf-courses.html?_r=0

But let’s switch subjects now and briefly talk about the firing of, and I hope I am pronouncing this guy’s name correctly – Preet Bharara. So let’s go through the chain of events to show how it all got started and it’s not going away any time soon!

Preet Bharara, the Manhattan federal prosecutor who was told to submit his resignation along with 45 others on Friday, has no plans to do so — forcing a potential showdown with President Trump and the Department of Justice.

Mr. Bharara, whose office is overseeing a case against a top aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and an investigation into people close to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, has told several people that he did not hand in a resignation on Friday, as he was ordered to do by the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente.

He also does not intend to do so over the weekend, he said in conversations with associates, a move that could force the hand of the Trump administration.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/us/politics/preet-bharara-us-attorney.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

And then there’s more. So why did he get fired? Let’s go over some cases he had working in the books prior to his firing:

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara happened as Bharara’s office was reportedly probing Fox News over its alleged failure to inform shareholders about repeated settlements for allegations of sexual harassment and assault by former Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and other executives against female employees. Reports indicate Trump may pick one of Ailes’ former lawyers to replace Bharara.

Ailes Left Fox News Amid Flurry Of Sexual Harassment Allegations. In early July, former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson sued the network’s CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Carlson’s attorney told The Washington Post that 25 women had “come forward with what they describe as similar harassment claims against Ailes that stretch across five decades back to his days in the 1960s as a young television producer.” 21st Century Fox tasked a law firm with conducting a review of Ailes' conduct and “the initial findings were damaging enough that the Murdochs decided they had to escort Ailes out,” according to CNN’s Brian Stelter. New York national affairs editor Gabriel Sherman reported that sources briefed on the investigation said former Fox News host Megyn Kelly told investigators that Ailes had also sexually harassed her.
https://mediamatters.org/research/2017/03/12/us-attorney-preet-bharara-was-investigating-fox-news-when-trump-fired-him/215644

Yup! There it is! Emperor Palpatine was firing the lead investigator on Jabba The Hutt’s, er, Roger Ailes, sexual harassment claims! God, how deep does this go? In fact Trump may have done more damage to his presidency by firing Bharara than he would have had he let him stay!

But a US attorney being fired instead of resigning? That's a big difference. It's also very rare. Sometimes there's a good reason to fire a US attorney. Like if he leaks information about an undercover investigation ... to the person being investigated.

In the late 2000s, there was a huge controversy when the George W. Bush administration summarily dismissed eight US attorneys, with no allegations of serious misconduct.
In the politically-charged aftermath, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned, and this remains a rare instance of a mass dismissal of US attorneys by a President, without any concrete grounds.
So a firing like Bharara's is unusual.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/12/opinions/bharara-clever-move-cevallos/index.html

[font size="8"]KellyAnne Conway[/font]

Spin that shit! Wheel goes ‘round, wheel goes ‘round, wheel goes ‘round, where does it land? It lands on… REMIX!!!!!!!!!!!

Spin it again! And it lands on… surveillance. You know we love ragging on ultra far right conspiracy theorists here on this show – doesn’t matter if its’ Alex Jones or Steve Bannon. In fact one of these days I want to do a special “THIS IS WHAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY THEORISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE” edition of this program. Because when you amp the crazy up to 11, as Trump has done, you get something like this:

Tyranny surveillance agency? Does he even know what tyranny is? Oh, and Alex – they *DO* monitor and control all airport travel! Something tells me Alex doesn’t leave his studio much. Well, there’s that level of crazy and then there’s KellyAnne Conway:

ALPINE, N.J. — The White House is offering yet another wrinkle in its attempt to support President Trump’s allegation — unfounded, so far — that his campaign headquarters in Manhattan was wiretapped by the Obama administration. The latest comes from Trump’s senior counselor Kellyanne Conway.

She says the “surveillance” may be broader than even Trump suggested.

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday at her home in Alpine, where she lives with her husband — a possible nominee for U.S. solicitor general — and their four children, Conway, who managed Trump’s presidential campaign before taking the job as one of the president's closest advisers, suggested that the alleged monitoring of activities at Trump’s campaign headquarters at Trump Tower in Manhattan may have involved far more than wiretapping.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said as the Trump presidency marked its 50th day in office during the weekend. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.”

Conway went on to say that the monitoring could be done with “microwaves that turn into cameras,” adding: “We know this is a fact of modern life.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/12/kellyanne-conway-surveillance-trump-campaign-wider/99109170/

Yes – conservative conspiracy theorists are so over the top paranoid about government surveillance (despite that they created most of these programs), that they actually think their microwave ovens might be listening in on them. I’ve never seen any evidence that shows they didn’t. Or did they? You know if you need any further proof just how out of touch Trump fans are with reality, Amazon put out a fake radio station to promote season 3 of “The Man In The High Castle”, and well, as you can guess the proverbial shit hit the fan:

An ad campaign for a dystopian television show has some Trump supporters seeing red.

Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle,” loosely based on a Philip K. Dick novel, is ramping up for its third season. The thriller, set in 1962, imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II and America is controlled by fascist leaders. The East Coast belongs to Nazi Germany; the West Coast is in the clutches of Imperial Japan.

At SXSW in Austin last week, as part of a marketing campaign for “The Man in the High Castle,” Amazon launched “Resistance Radio,” a fake Internet-based radio station broadcast by the fictional American “Resistance” from the show.

“Hijacking the airwaves, a secret network of DJs broadcast messages of hope to keep the memory of a former America alive,” the website said. Click through, and an interactive image of an antique, dual-knob radio appears while mod tunes drift through your computer’s speakers. In between songs, DJs on three different stations speak about how to fight the “Reich” in America.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/amazon-launched-a-fake-radio-station-to-promote-%e2%80%98the-man-in-the-high-castle%e2%80%99-angry-trump-supporters-thought-it-was-real/ar-AAofhCl?li=BBnb7Kz

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

Spin that shit! Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy…. Stop!!! And it lands on A Random Tweet! And we get to use actual Trump Tweets now! No more Fake Trump Tweet generator! Ah, don't be sad! Because Trump's madness does not stop. And just this morning he tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/841967881516679168

First off, Trump, I hope you realize that you just boosted the sales numbers for both Snoop Dogg and BADBADNOTGOOD, right? And his net worth was $143 million, and he still tours and sells out large venues, hardly what I would consider to be "failing". But I have many questions. The first is - really, Trump? Snoop Dogg is who you decide to go after? I mean first off – Snoop Dogg is 1,000,000 times cooler than you will ever be. Second, his career is definitely not “failing”. Third, I mean, really, Trump? you know what let’s play the video here in question:

And let’s not forget that Snoop Dogg actually attended Comedy Central’s Roast Of Donald Trump:

So really, Donald, before you attack someone, you should know what you’re getting into! Spin it again… and it lands on Donald Trump. Sigh… this next entry is proof of why we can’t have nice things. And I bet if Jesus sees what Trump fans are doing in his name, he’d tell his dad… “No, dad, fuck it! I’m not going back down there! I mean look at who their leader is!”. But seriously Trump fans, keep doing what you’re doing. Because while last week I did a deep dive into the threats on Jewish cemeteries and man that got dark, and they’re not letting it up even slightly. WTF is going on in this country? I remember a time was when there America were the good guys, but now the bad guys are taking over at an alarming rate.

Several hundred people gathered to rally in support of President Donald Trump on Saturday at the state Capitol. Carrying signs and waving American flags, the boisterous crowd gathered in solidarity in the wake of protests following Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

Phoenix's "March 4 Trump: Spirit of America Rally" was part of a nationwide campaign that, according to an organizer's website, included more than 50 marches, including in Berkeley, Calif., Denver, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.

Numerous state and local officials attended the Phoenix rally, including state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, state schools Superintendent Diane Douglas and former Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. The Arizona Department of Public Safety reported attendance was at about 300 people midway through the event. A group of about a dozen counterprotesters was also there, wielding signs and cellphones as attendees approached them arguing politics.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/03/03/hundreds-expected-phoenix-pro-trump-rally/98713666/

Ooh, I like that one! But they buried the lead here. What really happened at that Phoenix rally? I mean we had 3 and a half million people around the world join in the women’s protest last month. But this week? A few hundred Trump fans show up and all hell breaks loose. But then again this is Maricopa County – the county that elected and continued to reelect Sherriff Joe Arpaio for decades, but now that is no more! So should we really be *THAT* surprised?

Maricopa County burnished its reputation as the Trumpiest in America last weekend as hundreds of locals, including heavily armed militamen, white nationalists and even a few elected officials, gathered to support the 45th president. The ensuing "March for Trump" was as horrifying as it sounds.

Some even dared to tell Dan Cohen of the The Real News Network how they'd make America great again now that Trump was in office. And Muslims weren't the only religious minority unwelcomed.

"If she's Jewish, she should go back to her country," a 13-year-old Trump supporter said of a protester.

The day's proceedings would grow uglier still.

"I just want to let them know that I can't wait for the liberal genocide to begin," an Oath Keeper shouted at a small group of protesters.

"That's the way to make America great again," he later told Cohen. "Liberals are destroying the country."

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-supporters-call-liberal-genocide-and-deportation-jews-arizona-rally

What are these “oath keepers” and who are they swearing an oath to? It certainly isn’t the constitution because killing people who you don’t agree with, definitely isn’t an amendment last I checked! In fact if you guys had actually read the constitution, you would know that the first amendment guarantees both freedom of speech and freedom of religion! And little secret – it’s not us liberals who are destroying the country! You’ve been brainwashed by AM hate radio to believe that!

And in case you’re wondering if Trump fans couldn’t be any more classier than they are, I give you this incident from George Washington University. Just because Trump is in office, that does not under any circumstances give you a free pass to be an asshole! Stay classy, Trump fans! :

Signs promoting America as “a white nation” were posted on the campus of George Washington University, shocking and upsetting some students.

The signs mirrored those found on many other campuses in recent weeks. Groups that the Anti-Defamation League, which seeks to document and prevent bigotry, identifies as white supremacist have been pushing to spread their message on campuses and recruit college students, according to a recent analysis by the ADL. The report said the groups have been emboldened by current politics, and called it an unprecedented outreach to American college students. The ADL says more than 100 such incidents have happened this academic year, with more than half of them since January.

Corey Garelick, a law student, said he and his friends had seen the signs all over campus. “I cannot believe this is taking place today in the U.S., let alone on a college campus in a liberal city like D.C.,” he said. Garelick said other students are outraged, and many, including a friend who is an immigrant and a Muslim, are scared.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/13/white-supremacist-signs-posted-at-george-washington-university/?utm_term=.6ebb060d9d5b

[font size="8"]Dana Rohrabacher[/font]

Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin, shall we? Ooh, that felt good! Where does it land, nobody knows! And it lands on… clip without context!

Let’s omit the word “opponent” from that sentence and I will agree with you, Pat!

Spin it again! People who somehow got elected! Hit it! 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 – California state representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Obviously). You might remember Mr. Rohrabacher from his name being floated about as a possible candidate for Donald Trump’s Secretary Of State position. Which we all know now is being run by a guy who was the former CEO of Exxon and poster boy for greed, Rex Tillerson. But who is Dana Rohrabacher? Well, he’s a guy who openly supports the Taliban – and even did so on his own Congressional page!

Jan 24, 2012
Washington, Jan 24 - The Obama administration's plan for building peace in Afghanistan involves reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight, says a political resolution with the radical Islamist group, which ruled Afghanistan when U.S.-led forces invaded in 2001, would be a "betrayal." Last week, the 12-term Republican from California's 46th District led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Berlin to meet with a group of Afghan politicians opposed to involving the Taliban in a coalition government. He spoke with U.S. News about the meeting and what he thinks is driving the policy. Excerpts:

What's wrong with the current strategy in Afghanistan?

People are talking about trying to include the Taliban in the coalition government. That's a declaration of failure for the policy we've had for the past 10 years.
https://rohrabacher.house.gov/rep-dana-rohrabacher-white-house-wrong-taliban

Yes, WTF lol. We have an American politician who actively supports the Taliban and says that Obama’s policies were flat out wrong. I mean come on , even in the GOP’s crazy upside down world, up is down, black is white, good is bad, and so on. Mr. Rohrabacher is also a member of the GOP House Science Committee. And in typical GOP I mean who knew the GOP embraced science?

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a longtime member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, recently brushed aside concern that the wildfires currently scorching across his state and causing millions of dollars of damage have anything to do with climate change. In fact, he told constituents at a town hall that "global warming is a total fraud," employed by liberals to "create global government."

In a video captured by Lee Fang of The Nation, Rohrabacher laughed off a claim made last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that the unusual intensity of this year's wildfire season should give rise to a more serious debate about how climate change is affecting the temperature and length of the dry season.

"Just so you'll know, global warming is a total fraud and it's being designed because what you’ve got is you’ve got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions," Rohrabacher said. "Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/dana-rohrabacher-global-warming_n_3743390.html

And what happened this week, you may ask to get Mr. Rohrabacher a place on our ever-growing list of “People Who Somehow Got Elected”, you may ask? Well specifically this happened:

For opposing democracy and oppressing its citizens' freedom, China's leaders are "foreign thugs" and "jackboots" worthy of contempt, according to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

But Russia's authoritarian practices, including a habit of using assassination to quiet government criticism, gets a weird pass in Rohrabacher's brain, which surely digested ample legitimate reports of Vladimir Putin's corruption and campaign to erode all civil liberties.

Nonetheless, over the last decade, Orange County's senior career politician repeatedly praised Putin and even wept at a conservative political forum about what he sees as callous American abuses of Russia.

Rohrabacher quadrupled down this week on his sentiment during a telephonic town hall meeting after one caller expressed dismay about Russian intelligence hacking operations and advocated for an independent prosecutor to investigate.
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/new-headline-7953950

Yeah because… fuck freedom! Fuck the notion that everyone should be free! Martin Luther King? Susan B. Anthony? Who are those people? You know Rohrabacher could easily have made a case that he could be Trump’s secretary of state – I mean he loves Russia almost as much as Tillerson does!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/secretary-of-state-candidate-rep-dana-rohrabacher-defends-russia-denounces-china-201557094.html

“If it’s right for us to join in and cooperate and have a better relationship with Russia in order to defeat radical Islam and to pull China back a bit,” said Rohrabacher, “well that’s a good thing, and that’s what this is all about. Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. There’s a bunch of people here who want to treat it like it’s still the Soviet Union and get in the Cold War. That’s not what Donald Trump wants, it’s not good for America, and it’s better to cooperate with them to actually take on real enemies.”

The California congressman has been rumored as a candidate to lead the State Department in the Trump administration. Rohrabacher has been referred to as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “favorite congressman,” and he said that while most of his colleagues may view that as a negative, he doesn’t mind advocating it. Rohrabacher was a speechwriter for the Ronald Reagan White House and arm-wrestled Putin at a Washington, D.C., bar in the 1990s, when the Russian president was just a deputy mayor.

And then there’s also this:

Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California is proposing a law that would only allow states to determine marijuana policies, resolving the current conflict between state and federal marijuana laws. Four states — Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — have laws that allow the production and sale of marijuana for adult use. Four additional states — California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — are in the process of establishing similar regulations. Under federal law, marijuana is a schedule 1 drug, meaning it “has a high potential for abuse . . . has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States (and) there is a lack of accepted safety for use of drug or other substance under medical supervision” (21 U.S.C 812(b)(1)). Thus, a conflict.

“This is commonsense legislation that is long overdue,” Robert Capecchi, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a press release. “It is time to end marijuana prohibition at the federal level and give states the authority to determine their own policies.”

“States throughout the country are effectively regulating and controlling marijuana medical or broader adult use,” Capecch said. “Federal tax dollars should not be wasted on arresting and prosecuting people who are following their state and local laws.”
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/09/republican-congressman-introduces-legislation-that-would-take-marijuana-out-of-the-hands-of-the-federal-government/

Yes so they have absolutely no problems with the federal government taking Mike Pence’s horrifically unconstitutional “religious freedom” law national, but they would let the states determine marijuana prohibition? Get the fuck out of here! That’s representative Dana Rohrabacher, yet another one of the:

[font size="8"]The Christian Persecution Complex[/font]

Let’s spin it to win it! And it lands on… wait for it… booze!

Your days of sipping adult beverages from a Solo cup could be making a comeback, specifically at some of Boston’s high-end bars.

Following a string of local bar assaults involving glassware, the city’s Liquor Licensing Board is moving to crack down on establishments where patrons have suffered injuries related to glasses holding drinks. Watering holes with repeat offenses could have to use plastic barware in lieu of the real deal — no matter how upscale the joint.

“If we see a pattern of glass as a weapon it will no longer be allowed,” Christine Puglini, the board’s chairwoman, said at a hearing yesterday, addressing representatives of Minibar, a Copley Square Hotel bar. “You may be high-end, but you’re not acting high-end.”
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_politics/2017/02/glasses_may_get_banned_at_boston_bars_after_assaults

Boston, keep doing what you’re doing! Spin it again! And it lands on… wow, How Is This Still A Thing and People Who Somehow Got Elected in the same week! Well, hit it! It’s now time for another installment of:

This week: The Christian Persuection Complex. How is this still a thing? Because we live in uncertain times, and the majority religion in this country is Christianity. Yet, with this religion making up over half of the 320 million Americans in this country, the majority religion still feels a need to say that they are being persecuted. In fact Bill Maher pointed this out in a new rule from last year that everyone should see if they haven’t already:

But Christians still think they’re being persecuted. In fact our “esteemed” president Trump reiterated this fact a few weeks ago:

The United States could prioritize the resettlement of Christian refugees over members of other religious groups, President Trump said on Friday.

“They’ve been horribly treated,” Trump said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network anchor David Brody. “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough, to get into the United States?”

“If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

When asked by Brody if he saw helping persecuted Christians abroad as a “priority,” Trump promptly replied, “yes.”

Trump’s comments come as the president considers an executive order that would ban refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries from coming to the U.S., and would suspend the country’s refugee resettlement program for 120 days.

As a presidential candidate, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., arguing that terrorists were entering the country by posing as refugees. He also called for the creation of a Muslim registry.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316586-trump-persecuted-christian-refugees-are-priority

So this begs to ask the question how is this still a thing? Because the majority religion claiming a persecution complex is almost as old as the majority religion itself. Even this week, legislation has been creeping up that would put this practice into theory. Let’s explain further:

The degree to which discrimination exists in American society is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. According to the latest poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, a white evangelical in the U.S. is more likely to think that Christians experience a lot of discrimination compared to Muslims.

The survey found that 57 percent of white evangelicals believe that Christians face a lot of discrimination in America, while only 44 percent recognized that same level of discrimination for the Muslim community. White evangelicals were the one major religious group to indicate that Christians faced heavy persecution. In contrast, roughly 75 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans and non-white Protestants agree that Muslims face the most discrimination, according to the poll.

Perceptions of discrimination is stark in America. Nearly half of white Americans said they believe that black Americans experience racial discrimination, while 87 percent of black Americans have come to that same conclusion, the poll found.

Christian persecution and religious freedom is a legitimate concern for the Republican Party. They recently crafted the First Amendment Defense Act, federal legislation mirrored after the “religious freedom” laws that have popped up across the country, including in Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana.

President Donald Trump’s executive order, which barred entry of travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, failed its judicial test in part because the ban excluded religious minorities in those countries, also known as Christians. The administration appeared to have a preference for a certain religious group, a court found. Meanwhile, the GOP has long focused on the plight of Christians in non-secular countries in the Middle East.
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/10/white-evangelicals-say-christians-face-more-persecution-than-muslims-poll/

And you know what, while we’re at it, let’s discuss “The First Amendment Defense Act” which might be one of the most unconstitutional pieces of legislation ever proposed. It’s essentially the national, nuclear version of Indiana’s pro-discrimination “religious discrimination” act, and you know that President Trump wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to sign it into law:

The First Amendment Defense Act is the nuclear version of the so-called “religious freedom” laws that have appeared across the country, most infamously in Mike Pence’s Indiana. The Republican House will surely pass it, the Senate will pass it unless it’s filibustered by Democrats, and President-elect Trump has promised to sign it.

If it becomes law, FADA will be the worst thing to happen to women and LGBT people in a generation.

Like state “religious freedom restoration acts,” FADA’s basic principle is that it’s not discrimination when businesses discriminate against LGBT people if they have a religious reason for doing so. The most famous situations have to do with marriage: wedding cake bakers who say that if they bake a cake, they’re violating their religion; Kim Davis, the government clerk who said that signing a secular marriage certificate was a religious act that she could not perform.

But those stories are a red herring. The more important cases are ones like hospitals refusing to treat LGBT people (or their children), pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses refusing to offer health benefits to a same-sex partner, and state-funded adoption agencies refusing to place kids with gay families. Underneath the rhetorical BS, that’s what FADA is all about.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/16/the-gop-s-anti-lgbt-anti-women-religious-freedom-law-on-steroids.html

And it’s not the bakeries that are just the target here. In fact we here at the Top 10 are starting to think that the GOP would be better off if we were all dead. Because just as their horrifying anti-Islam ban would mean that a lot of people are going to die, this will also mean that a lot of people are going to die when hospitals start refusing LGBT people on religious grounds. Yes, this is a thing now. In fact I think we liberals are missing out on a monetary opportunity here. While companies can shut out gay couples based on religious grounds, we should start companies that cater *EXCLUSIVELY* to gay couples and their forthcoming weddings. But Louisiana’s former governor Bobby Jindal spells it out for you:

Now that the firestorm regarding Indiana’s “Religious Freedom” law has died down, attention is shifting to the next battleground state: Louisiana, where the “Marriage and Conscience Act” is supported by Governor Bobby Jindal, but opposed by leading pro-business Republicans in the state legislature.

This dynamic is familiar by now. It began in Arizona, continued in Georgia and Texas, and reached fever pitch in Indiana. But it is still quite new, and activists on both sides of the issue are trying to come to terms with it even now. There are two key points to bear in mind: First, the backlash to the backlash is now in full effect, and second, these “religious freedom” laws are actually much worse than anyone is saying.

So far, we’ve all been arguing about the very best cases for Christian conservatives: small, expressive businesses, like the photographers, bakers, and florists you’ve heard about. By now, most of us know the fundamental question they put forward: Should such businesses be able to opt out of same-sex weddings for religious reasons?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/15/bobby-jindal-is-doubling-down-on-rfra.html

But in case you’re wondering where this is going, the fact that a KKK rally gaining no attention shouldn’t be the new normal. In fact if this isn’t terrifying to you, you’re either not paying attention, or you just don’t care. Move along, nothing to see here! It’s just a bunch of Christian racists pretending to be persecuted! Because being superior to minorities is fun!

In Upstate New York, the home of a Jewish man was spray-painted with swastikas. In Virginia, fliers were distributed in several neighborhoods with the words, “Make America WHITE again-and greatness will follow.” In Colorado, two typewritten notes that read “WERE GONNA BLOW UP ALL OF YOU REFUGEES,” were left at a community center serving mainly Muslim immigrants. Now whatever was happening in other parts of the country seemed to have arrived in Dahlonega.
The mayor got dressed and headed for the square. The reverend called the sheriff. Fambrough recalled how she hurried over to see for herself, saying “No, no, not here,” the whole way, and “Hell,no,” until she was there, alone, staring at the banner.
She was a white 37-year-old mother of two, a program specialist in the biology department at the University of North Georgia who called Dahlonega a “sweet, loving town” and had never protested anything in her life. Now she felt her anger rising. She remembered the flip-chart paper in her trunk left over from a presentation a month before and made two signs — “Not in my town,” she wrote, and “Love Lives Here” — then got out and stood in her sandals holding them.
She was freezing. The square was still quiet, with all the shops closed. She scanned the windows across the street to see if someone was watching. She planned which way she would run if something happened. Cars passed, and she scrutinized each face.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-georgia-reaction-to-kkk-banner-is-a-sign-of-the-times/ar-AAoccgl?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

And in fact Pat Robertson even reiterated this fact when he was talking about a group of witches laying a spell and cursing President Trump:

&t=19s

We have to say that we’re with the witches on this one! Yes, just ignore the racist trolls. Never mind that hardcore racism and Christian superiority is becoming the new normal. That’s enough to make you ask – the Christian Persecution complex:

[font size="8"]Arian Foster Vs. The Wolf [/font]

Let’s spin the wheel, shall we? And it lands on…. Wait for it…. Infowars!

Tell me again why we’re supposed to take these people seriously? And judging from his diet (or lack thereof), Alec Baldwin could probably take Alex Jones in a single choke hold. Just sayin’!

Spin it again! Sports! Now it’s time for:

Yes, I need a fucking drink my loyal Top 10 fans! Ah where you been, man! Thank you. While I’m enjoying this nice glass of Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels, you know there’s been some really dark shit the last couple of weeks. And it got real dark real quick when we were talking about the desecration of cemeteries by Trump supporters. So all I have to say is, fuck it. Let’s throw out whatever we were going to talk about and talk about something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. And that something has to do with football. Specifically, retired football player Arian Foster. Now we live in a world where batshit crazy stuff happens on an almost minute by minute basis, and as a semi-professional armchair journalist, when something like this happens, it’s one of those things that causes both sides of your brain to shut down and go “WTF”! I mentioned this in the monologue last week but it gets weirder!

If Arian Foster ever runs into a wolf, he likes his chances.

No, we aren’t kidding.

The former NFL running back thinks that he would come out victorious in a one-on-one encounter with a wolf, and he went on a tweet storm to explain his belief.

Foster’s logic behind this assertion is that he weighs more, has thumbs and has “studied the wolf.”

A few of Foster’s followers tried to make him see reason, but it was to no avail.

While there are too many tweets to post all of them, here are a few of the highlights
http://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/arian_foster_outlines_how_he_would_fight_wolf_in_hilarious_tweet_storm/s1_8626_23388226

Strap in, because this is the stuff of magic here folks. I mean what…how… why… who… what the… what the serious fuck? Let’s go through some of these!

https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/838441373195853824
https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/838442483344236546
https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/838446303302438914
https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/838450577738612736

And I love where he gets questioned on what kind of animals he could fight and then this comes up!

https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/838496564943323136

Although you got to love a guy who has this as a pinned tweet.

https://twitter.com/ArianFoster/status/839224382052392960

And then there’s more! Apparently some network, let’s call them “CBS”, asked actual wolf experts if Mr. Foster could fight a wolf or not! This is real! This actually happened!

Over the weekend, former NFL running back Arian Foster drew headlines when he went on a long, fascinating Twitter rant about fighting a wolf. Foster firmly believes he would badly beat up a wolf , using only his bare hands.

Foster, who retired from the NFL in the middle of 2016 , made some good points, including his weight advantage (at least 30 pounds, maybe 50 pounds) and the lack of thumbs on wolves.

The International Wolf Center, which is a thing apparently, responded to Foster’s statements with a press release declaring that Foster, basically, is a crazy person for wanting to fight a wolf.

The weight advantage, it turns out, might not be an actual advantage:
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/wolf-experts-suggest-arian-foster-would-get-annihilated-if-he-decided-to-fight-a-wolf/

So that’s one for nay! How about one for aye?

Aaron Rodgers has taken a side in the whole Arian Foster vs. Wolf debate ... and it's man over beast.

Foster got EVERYONE talking this week when he tweeted out reasons why he truly believes he could take a wild wolf in a 1-on-1 fight.

He even laid out his arguments as to why he thinks he has a legit advantage ... including thumbs and ability to strategize.

Well, outside Catch in L.A. ... Rodgers told us he sees it Foster's way.
http://www.tmz.com/2017/03/08/aaron-rodgers-arian-foster-wolf/

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Round 7: #3 Missouri Vs. #4 South Carolina [/font]

Let’s give the wheel a final spin for this week! And it lands on… Another clip without context!

Pat can’t really believe everything he says, can he? I mean this is too crazy even for him! Well spin the wheel again! Stupidest State Contest… hit it!

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. Last week, it was a Family Values face-off to see who would face Alabama in the conference championship, and it was a nail biter but Tennessee prevailed with a last second 3 pointer to advance against North Carolina and seek the conference crown against Alabama. This week, we’re headed back to the Gun Nut Conference, you know – states where it’s perfectly acceptable to take your AK-47 on a dinner date to Chili’s, while the cops look the other way with your racist bumper stickers on the back of your car. This time it’s a central showdown as gun-happy police in #3 Missouri are going to take on the Confederacy in #4 – South Carolina! Let’s get out our brackets, shall we?

[font size="6"]Round 7: Gun Nut Conference: #3 Missouri Vs #4 South Carolina[/font]

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

Next up in our Stupidest State Contest is none other than the Show Me State, Missouri. Missouri is home to Branson, as Homer Simpson famously called it “Las Vegas if it were run by Ned Flanders”. Yes, picture all the bland entertainment of the Las Vegas Strip, without the booze or gambling. Missouri is also the home of St. Louis and the famous, nationally recognized monument the St. Louis Arch. It is the home of the University of Missouri. And world champion sports teams including the Kansas City Royals, the St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Blues, and the Kansas City Chiefs. But what else is Missouri the home of, you might ask? Well that is a good question. It’s also the home of Ferguson, Missouri. Yes, the very town where Mike Brown was murdered by police and it sparked the political movement known as Black Lives Matter (*BEEP!!!! CONTROVERSY WARNING!!!!*).

When Baltimore erupted into protest this April over Freddie Gray’s death, it was clear that the movement against racist police brutality that began last August in Ferguson, Missouri, had survived the winter. Baltimore, many said, was the next Ferguson.

But where, then, is the next Baltimore? Perhaps somewhere in Europe.

On May 18, hundreds of Parisians gathered to protest the acquittal of two police officers who, in 2005, allegedly did nothing to prevent the accidental electrocution death of two teenagers— one black, one of Arab descent—who had run into an off-limits power facility while being pursued by police....

At a May demonstration in London, the name on picket signs was Julian Cole, a 21-year-old black Briton who has been in a vegetative state since 2013, when police allegedly left him with spinal injuries uncannily similar to those suffered by Gray in the back of a police van.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18042/black-lives-matter-in-europe-too

Yeah so apparently… things got worse. Yeah I’ll just leave it at that. There really isn’t anything you can make funny about police brutality. But what else is Missouri the home of? You know the case of BLM isn’t just limited to what happened in Ferguson. There’s plenty of other gun madness in Missouri that has led to such crimes. Missouri is also the home of a bill that would allow teachers to have guns in classrooms. Yes, this is now a thing.

JEFFERSON CITY -- Any public school teacher or administrator with a concealed weapons permit would be allowed to carry guns in Missouri schools under a bill filed Tuesday in the state House.

Republican Rep. Mike Kelley of Lamar is sponsoring the legislation, along with Republican Rep. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville. It comes less than a week after a gunman shot and killed 26 people – including 20 children – at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Missouri law currently prohibits anyone except law enforcement from bringing a weapon into schools. But following the Connecticut school shooting, Republicans around the nation have argued that similar tragedies could be avoided in the future by arming school personnel.

"I think there is a correlation between these horrible acts of violence and the gun-free zones that have come about by the law," Republican Rep. Stanley Cox, a Sedalia attorney who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recently told the Associated Press.
http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/missouri-bill-would-allow-teachers-carry-guns-schools/

Missouri house republicans also threatened to nullify all gun laws at the federal level. Yes – all gun laws would effectively be overturned in the state of Missouri would literally present a scenario where it’s every man for himself. This is not a good thing!

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.

The law amounts to the most far-reaching states’ rights endeavor in the country, the far edge of a growing movement known as “nullification” in which a state defies federal power.

The Missouri Republican Party thinks linking guns to nullification works well, said Matt Wills, the party’s director of communications, thanks in part to the push by President Obama for tougher gun laws. “It’s probably one of the best states’ rights issues that the country’s got going right now,” he said.

The measure was vetoed last month by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, as unconstitutional. But when the legislature gathers again on Sept. 11, it will seek to override his veto, even though most experts say the courts will strike down the measure. Nearly every Republican and a dozen Democrats appear likely to vote for the override.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/us/missouri-gun-measure-pushes-nullification-boundary.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=3&

And would you be surprised at all to learn that Missouri experienced a “sharp increase in murders” after gun laws were repealed? Well if you’re shocked, you should probably go vote for Trump. If this doesn’t surprise you in the least, then you are better informed than Missouri House Republicans are!

Researchers claim a new study provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for tighter gun controls in the US.

The team followed the consequences of the State of Missouri repealing its permit-to-purchase handgun law in 2007.

“Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates in Missouri,” said Prof Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

“That upward trajectory did not happen with homicides that did not involve guns; it did not occur to any neighbouring state; the national trend was doing the opposite – it was trending downward; and it was not specific to one or two localities – it was, for the most part, state-wide,” he told BBC News.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26222578

And in case you’re wondering if Missouri’s criminals are as stupid as their state legislature, I give you the case of two guys who wanted buy guns ahead of a grand jury decision about them making homemade explosives! Just charming, lovely fellows! Man, remember the days when people used to just grow weed in their garage?

Federal law enforcement officials say two men arrested Friday, now held on gun charges, are suspected of trying to acquire pipe bombs with the intent of using them during protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Two officials say the men claimed to have affiliations with the New Black Panther Party and were trying to acquire guns and explosives. When investigators heard about their plans, they placed the men under surveillance. "We wanted to see where this might go," one official said
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/pair-suspected-trying-acquire-bombs-ferguson-protests-n254021

And during the campaign this is the sort of Southern Strategy advertising that played well to today’s active, working Missouri gun nuts:

"Missouri television commercials are suddenly full of scenes of guns being loaded, prayers being offered and big smiles being smiled. Yes, campaign-advertising season is here.

The four candidates for Missouri's Republican nomination for governor — businessman John Brunner, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, former Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder — all have new campaign ads out this week. Two of them feature firearms. One shows an explosion.

The winner of the Aug. 2 Republican gubernatorial primary will likely face Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster."
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/god-guns-and-votes-missouri-republican-governor-candidates-take-to/collection_d3d662ef-0a11-5a83-a4ef-c3c26b125088.html

[font size="4"]South Carolina[/font]

Next up in our Stupidest State Contest is South Carolina. The Palmetto State is also the home of this year’s world champion Clemson Tigers. It’s also the home of Charleston and Fort Sumter, which played a pivotal role in the Civil War. It’s also the home of surfing havens Hilton Head Island and Myrtle Beach. It’s also the home of the oyster and some of the nation’s best golf courses. South Carolina was also the first state to secede from the union in the Civil War, and the Confederacy is deeply enshrined in South Carolinian culture. But what else is South Carolina the home of? It’s the home of lots and lots and lots of gun violence! You know let’s juxtapose the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson with Dylann Roof shooting up a church meeting, which South Carolina gun nuts tried to justify as the lack of guns in church was the reason why so many people got shot.

After a gunman opened fire at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, SC, killing 9, police concluded the shooting constituted a hate crime. Twenty-one-year-old shooting suspect Dylann Roof, who was given a gun for his birthday, reportedly said, ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our county,’ before firing his gun. He has also donned shirts with country flags of racist African states in the past.

Similar to past shootings, the latest has already re-ignited the ongoing debate about gun laws in the state. After the shooting, for example, Fox & Friends advocated for more guns, arguing people could’ve defended themselves if they were armed.

“Had somebody in that church had a gun, they probably would have been able to stop him,” host Steve Doocy remarked. “If somebody was there, they would have had the opportunity to pull out their weapon and take him out.”...

Back in 2011, a state representative proposed a bill that would allow gun owners to carry firearms into restaurants, day-care centers, and churches. However, that bill was not passed, and guns are still prohibited in child care facilities and preschools, as well as churches or religious spaces, unless a church official or governing authority gives carriers permission to bring their weapons. Concealed carry is permitted, but people cannot bring guns to medical facilities, including hospitals and doctors’ offices, without authorization. Courts, law enforcement and correctional facilities, and athletic events are also off limits. And thanks to a law signed two weeks ago, domestic violence can come with a lifetime gun ban.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671110/state-gun-laws-south-carolina/

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Not only are they victim blaming, they’re using the tired, age old bullshit that more guns would stop a mass murder. And we wonder why the rest of the world is laughing at us, ladies and gentlemen. South Carolina is also the state that gave us Lindsay Graham. And while Graham is batshit crazy, the guy running against him wants teachers to – wait for it – carry machine guns! Yes, fucking machine guns in the classroom! How about less guns?

South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright (R), who is challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the GOP primary, said on Friday that school teachers should be able to carry machine guns to protect students from gun violence.

Appearing on Fox News Radio’s The Alan Colmes Show, Bright expanded on his proposed bill to create high school courses on how to use a fire arm by agreeing with Colmes that the government cannot legally restrict gun ownership on school grounds:
https://thinkprogress.org/south-carolina-senate-candidate-suggests-teachers-should-be-able-to-carry-machine-guns-in-school-dc6f4cc579a1#.oqry8suo7

South Carolina is also the state where you have to pay sales taxes on just about everything, but you don’t have to pay sales taxes on guns! Yes, this is real. This is a thing that happened!

COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina shoppers will get a second chance to buy tax-free guns.

The state Revenue Department sent out a reminder yesterday of the "Second Amendment Weekend." The 48-hour tax break begins just after midnight the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Shoppers will pay no state or local sales taxes on handguns, rifles and shotguns, which can tally 9 percent. Taxes still apply to ammunition and accessories.

South Carolina had the nation's first tax holiday on guns last year, after legislators tacked it on to a tax break on energy-efficient appliances. But the state Supreme Court threw out that law in May because of an unrelated energy amendment. Legislators restored the tax break as a one-time event in the budget this year.

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/nov/19/south-ca... /

But South Carolina makes this tournament because not only do they have tons of batshit insane gun laws, they also are home to some of the most hardcore racists in the entire country. These guys could in fact beat out Montana in their hardcore racism. So much that Hillary Clinton had to say something about it during the campaign.

Something is very wrong when we have these incidents where kids can get arrested for petty crimes and lose their lives,” Clinton said. “Something is wrong when African Americans are three times more likely to be denied a mortgage as white people are, when the median wealth of black families is just a fraction of the median wealth for white families, Clinton said.

She also had a message specifically for white Americans, calling on them to show more empathy for the problems plaguing black communities across America.

”Tackling and ending systemic racism requires contributions from all of us. White Americans, we need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers they face every day," Clinton said. "We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility rather than assume our experiences are everyone's experiences."
The five mothers praised Clinton for spending time listening to their stories, learning about their children and said they back her plans to remake the American criminal justice system.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/24/1490132/-Hillary-Clinton-s-Powerful-Statement-On-Racism-In-South-Carolina

And in case you thought the “guns will prevent gun shootings” argument couldn’t get any more batshit insane, South Carolina once again finds a way to make it even crazier. There’s a bill on the books this very week mind you, that would allow school staff to carry weapons on campus. And to pour salt on the wound – this bill was named after a 6 year old who was killed by a gun!

Just when you think there are no more ways to loosen gun laws in South Carolina, lawmakers come up with another — and another.

One bill, sponsored by then-Sen. Kevin Bryant (now lieutenant governor), is particularly reckless. If passed, school districts could allow personnel to carry weapons in their schools. In school. In classrooms. On the playground, where little children are playing chase.

Mr. Bryant named his bill in memory of Jacob Hall, a 6-year-old who was killed in a tragic September school shooting in Townville, which is in Mr. Bryant’s senate district. He defended the bill on our Commentary page on Wednesday, saying he wants to give districts the opportunity to “arrive at solutions that best fit their communities” and keep school children safe.

But data offer something else to consider. Unintentional shootings from 2005-2010 claimed the lives of almost 3,800 people in the U.S. It is not unreasonable to think that an armed teacher might be responsible for her own death or the death of a student — purely by accident.
http://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/editorials/two-s-c-gun-bills-waste-time/article_f75b37c4-f3b6-11e6-acb0-d7d04dc7d9c5.html

Oh and here’s the kicker in case you couldn’t think South Carolina’s gun laws couldn’t be any more batshit insane than they already are. They are actually proposing to legalize silencers. Yes, silencers. Something that civilians aren’t legally allowed to carry, under the guise of – wait for it – hearing protection! And not one, but two states have very similar laws being proposed! Just… what the fuck, South Carolina?

"The bill, the Hearing Protection Act of 2017, was introduced Jan. 9 by Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and John Carter of Texas, both Republicans, and has 68 sponsors in all. It would retroactively remove the $200 tax on suppressors, and remove them from regulation under the National Firearms Act, in the name of reducing shooters' hearing loss.

While a similar piece of legislation introduced in 2015 never made it out of committee, advocates say they're cautiously optimistic that the bill will pass this year"
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/22/silencer-business-booms-as-deregulation-bill-heads-for-debate.html

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

Oh this was an excellent matchup folks! But thanks to a couple of technical fouls, Missouri has pulled ahead of South Carolina, and they will easily hang on to face Montana in the battle for Gun Nut supremacy. Final score – 77 – 69. Next week, we will save the best for last in round 1 as we head back to the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference. And this is going to be a fun matchup. It’s #7 Kansas vs. #8 New Jersey. Yes, Sam Brownback will be coaching his team and going for broke against Donald Trump stage prop Chris Christie. Mano a mano! Stay tuned for more exciting action as the conference championships will be heating up!

[font size="8"]And now this:[/font]
[font size="8"]The Shins[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, playing their new song “Cherry Hearts” from their new album “Heartwroms” now available everywhere ,please welcome The Shins!

Yeah how about that?

See you next week!

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