Initech

Initech's Journal

May 23, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-19: Too Many Exits Edition (SEASON FINALE!)

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-19: Too Many Exits Edition (SEASON FINALE!)

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Hey websites please stop asking me to review your updated privacy policy because we both know that ain't happening! We are back everybody! And I cannot wait to unveil the exciting changes coming to the Top 10 in June. Which is only 3 short weeks away. Are there any runners in this audience? I’m not exactly what one would call a “runner”. You can tell. You know we always like to report on weird shit in the introduction and if you really want to see some crazy shit head to San Francisco on May 19th. There were 40,000 that showed up to San Fran so you’re bound to see some truly crazy shit. That was last Saturday and it was the site of the annual Bay To Breakers 12K ½ marathon. And the Bay To Breakers even t is different because there’s two options for running this race. The first is that you can run in costume – and there were a lot of interesting costumes. This is San Francisco we’re talking about here. You had everything from a group of people doing their best impression of Blue Man Tobias from Arrested Development to people dressing like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to promote her new documentary called “The Notorious RGB”, to people dressed like “Team Yanni vs Team Laurel” (don’t get me started on that BS), to of course lots of Star Wars costumes. The other option is that you can run the race – ass naked. Yes like Bart in the Simpsons Movie. But my personal favorite had to be the woman who went as both – and did her own self-censoring nudity:

Yeah so that happened! Got to love creative people out there. OK that’s enough of the intro – we got a lot of idiocy to get to. But first it was also the season finale for another show, and we have to show you a clip from Saturday Night Live’s brilliant opener from Saturday:

God fucking damn it. Two months after Parkland, have we learned nothing? Because another mass shooting happened – this time in Texas. In the number slot this week of course we’re going to dedicate it to Gun Nut Apologists (1) and the resulting “same shit, different day” scenario that keeps coming up over and over. In the second slot this week is Dan Patrick (2). Yes, the Lt. Governor of Texas has quite literally shot his mouth off and we will tell you about the resulting stupidity. Taking the third slot we’re going to introduce you to a New York attorney named Aaron Schlossberg (3) who went full MAGA Trump on a group of Latino protestors in NYC. Taking the 4th slot is of course Donald Trump (4). So Trump made some shocking and horrifying comments about immigrants and was specifically referring to the violent South American gang MS-13, or was he? In slot #5 is a new installment of our weekly investigative piece “Top 10 Investigates” and this time we’re going to shock you with some (not at all surprising) statistics about America's undying love of the firearm. At number 6 is our weekly sermon of all things holy, Holy Shit, and this week our resident pastor is going to show you some of the ways that the Christian right is working hard to bring about the apocalypse through their support of the Dark One. At number 7 we have a new installment of “This Fucking Guy” and this week we’re going to profile a guy in the Trump administration who we should be paying a lot more attention to, and that’s interior secretary Ryan Zinke (7). At number 8 is Infowars (8). They are gearing up to launch a 24/7 news channel. If you think Alex Jones is crazy on a 4 hour cycle, wait until you see him on a 24 hour cycle! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!!) slot we have a new installment of our favorite segment “People Are Dumb” because well, people are dumb! Finally this week it’s the grand championship of our Stupidest State 2018 contest! I can’t wait to see what we have in store as we crown our champion! Who will it be? Will it be the almighty Florida or will it be my old Kentucky home? We have the commissioner of the NFFSA here and the champagne is on the ice! Plus we have a very special musical guest – one of the biggest bands in the world right now, and we got them for our crappy little show. I’m of course talking about the one, the only Panic At The Disco! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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[font size="8"]Gun Nut Apologists
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Excuse me a minute.

God damn it. Have we learned nothing? No, of course we haven’t. I know what country I live in, and I know what year this is. It’s not even been two months since Parkland and we’re literally starting the same cycle of bullshit over again. Another week and yet another mass shooting. This time it’s also at a high school - in Texas.

Shots were fired at a high school in Southeast Texas Friday morning, leading to injuries, school officials said. A person was arrested at the scene as authorities swarmed the campus. Several local news organizations reported multiple fatalities, citing law enforcement sources.

The shooting occurred at Santa Fe High School in Galveston County, south of Houston. There was no immediate word on how many people were injured or what their condition was. But the president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, Joseph Gamaldi, tweeted that a wounded officer was being transported to a hospital via helicopter. “Please keep the officers in your prayers,” Gamaldi wrote.

“The situation is active, but has been contained,” the Santa Fe Independent School District said shortly after 9 a.m. Central Time. “There have been confirmed injuries.” The district said law enforcement officers were securing the building.

An assistant principal at Santa Fe High School told ABC-13 in Houston that a shooter had been “arrested and secured.” The television station reported that law enforcement sources said the shooter appeared to be a student.

Students told the station that there was an evacuation at the high school as a fire alarm sounded. Some ran as the shooter began firing. There was a panicked scene as students sought to contact parents.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/05/18/reports-of-shots-fired-at-high-school-near-houston/

That’s definitely not the worst thing about this shooting that happened. Even that very day this idiot who graduated Kent State – a site where a mass shooting happened – posted this:

https://twitter.com/KaitMarieox/status/996462786027950080

I wouldn't be concerned with the fact that someone is trying to take her AR-15. I would be more concerned that someone has taken her empathy, common sense, and dignity because she is clearly lacking all 3 of these things! So getting back to the story at hand – you want to know the definition of “too soon”? Just ask this guy who was coming to the high school with a gun and a MAGA hat, because, reasons:

In a video that’s gone viral on Twitter, a man carrying an American flag and a holstered gun on his hip says he showed up at the scene of a high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, to “Make America great again.”

According to the Houston Chronicle, the man was speaking to KHOU-TV when a reporter asked him what what was going through his head when he heard about the active shooter situation at Santa Fe High School on Friday morning.

“Get to the school,” the man says in the video, tweeted by San Francisco Bay-area NBC journalist Scott McGraw. He said his plan of action was “offering support” and that “‘God bless y’all’ will go a long ways right now for a lot of people.”

The video then cuts to an unidentified man, who calls the man with the gun “an embarrassment.”
https://www.statesman.com/news/video-man-carrying-gun-flag-says-arrived-texas-school-shooting-scene-make-america-great-again/998K8WhRk5uBazKaY2bBRP/

Yeah dude you’re definitely not helping and you may want to get the fuck out. So now we’re in the “who’s to blame” phase of the mass shooting stages of grief. Of course you should know by now that the mass shooting stages of grief do not include “acceptance”. They’re pretty much “blame everyone but the gun”. And nobody does it better than the NRA’s Dana Loesch:

National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch accused the media of "creating" mass shooters by extensively covering perpetrators' identities.

"The media has got to stop creating more of these monsters by oversaturation," Loesch said on NRATV]. "I'm not saying don't responsibly report on things as they happen."

"Look, I understand it. But constantly showing the image of the murderer, constantly saying their name is completely unnecessary."

Loesch's comments came a day after a gunman opened fire at Santa Fe High School, near Houston, Texas, killing at least 10 people and injuring another 10.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/388459-nras-dana-loesch-says-media-is-creating-mass-shooters

Well, Dana, let’s extrapolate your hyperbolic rantings here for a minute. If the media really did create this monster, what does that say about our media? Well when you see what kind of person the shooter is, and who he supports, well…

Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the suspected gunman who opened fire at a Texas high school on Friday morning, apparently posted photos of neo-Nazi iconography online, according to social media accounts flagged by classmates and reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset said the suspect was a 17-year-old male student at Santa Fe High School where 10 people were killed. The suspect was taken into custody, Trochesset told reporters. Explosive devices were left inside the school near Houston, authorities said. The suspect reportedly had an assault-style rifle, shotgun, and pistol.

Pagourtzis was identified by law-enforcement officials as the suspect to CBS News and the Associated Press. Two Santa Fe students also told The Daily Beast that Pagourtzis was the gunman and they confirmed a Facebook account with Pagourtzis’ name belonged to him. Attempts by The Daily Beast to reach Pagourtzis’ family were unsuccessful.

On April 30, Pagourtzis apparently posted a t-shirt with “born to kill” printed on the front, boasting that it was custom-made.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dimitrios-pagourtzis-reportedly-idd-as-santa-fe-texas-shooting-suspect

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[font size="8"]Dan Patrick
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One guy who clearly isn’t helping is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick. So Houston is his district, and he offered some of the most asinine suggestions on what we can do to end this madness once and for all. No, he didn’t propose firearm control. No, he didn’t propose that any kind of restrictions on firearm sales or anything that might you know, save lives. What he did propose was one of the most asinine suggestions yet.

In addition to the "thoughts and prayers" pro-gun politicians dependably trot out after a mass shooting, there's usually a wealth of ass-backward logic to explain why guns shouldn't receive any blame for the bloodshed.

In the wake of this morning's Santa Fe High School shooting, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wasted no time with the contortions.

Within hours, the Republican was at a press conference ruminating on how to stop future school shootings. Apparently, limiting access to guns isn't one of the options on the table, but redesigning thousands of Texas schools sure as hell is.

“We may have to look at the design of our schools moving forward, and retrofitting schools that are already built, and what I mean by that is there are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas," he said.

"We’re going to have to be creative," he added.
https://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2018/05/18/ban-doors-not-guns-to-stop-school-shootings-dan-patrick-says

Too many exits? Here’s the thing – Dan, you know what also devalues life? Guns. Thank you! And it’s bad enough that the NRA has made us sitting ducks, let’s arm teachers, close off all the exits, and appoint wannabe Rambos as hall monitors! What a great idea! Doing something creative might be, I don’t know, actually doing your job and protecting the people who elected you! Thank you! And that wasn’t all – Dan actually made things worse by blaming everything but the gun!

The Texas lieutenant governor, speaking two days after 10 people were killed in a school shooting in his state, said abortion, divorce and violent video games and movies show that 'we have devalued life,' which he pointed to as a cause of school shootings.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday, "We have devalued life, whether it's through abortion, whether it's the breakup of families, through violent movies, and particularly violent video games."

Patrick continued, "Psychologists and psychiatrists will tell you that students are desensitized to violence, may have lost empathy for their victims by watching hours and hours of video violent games.”

He said, “the problem is multifaceted. It's not any one issue. But we, again, we have to look at our culture of violence, just our violent society, our Facebook, our Twitter, the bullying of adults on adults, and children on children. We have to look at ourselves, George, it's not about the guns, it's about us.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/guns-part-nation-texas-official-shooting-victims-dad/story?id=55300369

And we’re still not done yet! Guess what NRA approved talking point surfaced last week courtesy of Mr. Patrick? Yup you guessed it! Let’s arm teachers! And we wonder why the rest of the world is laughing at us!

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R) responded Sunday to the high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas by pushing for arming teachers and reducing school entrances.

In an interview with CNN, the well-known conservative made the case for arming teachers saying, “We need armed teachers, trained how to handle active shooters.” He continued, “We need to get down to one or two entrances into our schools.”

Patrick visited injured students Friday with Governor Abbott and Senator Cruz where students and parents told them that their teachers needed to be armed. Patrick used the example of a former Marine teacher who could only lock the door in defense of students. He said, “some feel had he been able to carry a gun, he may have been able to stop that shooter.”

In an ABC interview, the Lt. Governor referenced the Second Amendment saying, “Our teachers are part of that well-run militia.” He added, “It’s guns that also stop crimes.”

The former State Senator argued that the plague of school shooters isn’t just about guns, “it’s about us”.
https://thehayride.com/2018/05/texas-lt-governor-dan-patrick-arm-teachers/

So it’s bad enough that bullets are coming from one direction, let’s arm the teachers and have armed hall monitors patrolling the hallways of our schools. Remember when Bush famously asked the question “Is our children learning”? Uh no they are getting shot at. And our elected officials – especially in Texas – aren’t helping things. If you think what Dan Patrick is proposing is certifiably insane, wait until you see what his boss is suggesting! Think the TSA but worse!

One of the most obvious changes that Texas can bring about is to improve school safety, Abbott said, noting that many in Santa Fe had asked him for that. After laying flowers at the high school on Sunday, the governor spoke about metal detectors and screening students for mental health problems.

Abbott said schools should consider screening students' social media accounts for threats or troubling behavior.

"We need to do that," he said, adding that Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the suspect in the Santa Fe shooting, had pictures on his Facebook page of a T-shirt that read, "Born to kill."

Abbott said Friday that he'd been planning to roll out several proposals for new gun laws in Texas before the shooting, including "speeding up background checks" and keeping guns away from people "who pose immediate danger."
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/guns/2018/05/20/teachers-part-run-militia-lt-gov-dan-patrick-defends-gun-rights-after-santa-fe-shooting

[font size="8"]Aaron Schlossberg
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So our current president, or the guy who we currently call “president” has the best people who support him doesn’t he? Well there’s an attorney in New York who’s currently under fire for going full MAGA Trump Train on a group of unsuspecting Latino workers in New York City. So let’s delve into a bit the kind of character that Mr. Schlossberg is. And by the way this is the kind of thing you never want to become famous for, but we suspect that he’ll have a nice, cushy job waiting for him at Fox News or Breitbart once the dust settles on this thing.

NEW YORK – A Jewish attorney in New York City came under fire on Thursday after video showing the lawyer berate two Spanish-speaking persons inside a Manhattan restaurant went viral.

The clip shows Aaron Schlossberg scolding two employees on Wednesday for communicating in Spanish during a lunch hour rush at the Fresh Kitchen restaurant on Madison Ave.

“Your staff are speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English,” Schlossberg tells a staffer as another customer records the confrontation.

As the 42-year-old makes his way out of the restaurant, he can be seen angrily issuing a threat to call US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the workers.

“And my guess is they’re not documented,” Schlossberg told to an employee, who appeared to be a manager. “So my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country.”
https://www.jpost.com/International/Jewish-attorney-in-NYC-comes-under-fire-after-racist-outburst-goes-viral-557789

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Well guess what? If we didn’t say that was the worst thing Mr. Schlossberg has done, we’d be lying! Because of course he went full MAGA, and you never, ever go full MAGA.

Years before Manhattan lawyer Aaron Schlossberg became the internet’s current racist du jour, he was a bright-eyed student at the Haverford School, an elite private school on the Main Line, where, according to one classmate, he was not particularly well-liked.

“He was always a jerk,” Michael DiDomenico posted Thursday in the Lower Merion Community Network Facebook group.

DiDomenico claimed that he had “kicked his butt a couple times” — Schlossberg’s, that is — when they were kids and lamented that Schlossberg’s antics in New York had harmed the reputation of the prep school.

“I don’t know what his problem is,” DiDomenico said in an interview Friday, adding, “As a classmate, I’m disappointed that it hurts the Haverford School.”
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/aaron-schlossberg-lawyer-racist-rant-philadelphia-haverford-school-main-line-20180518.html

And that’s *STILL* not the worst thing Mr. Schlossberg has done! Back in 2009, he was arrested and did jail time going full MAGA before going full MAGA was even a thing!

You’ve heard a lot about a fellow named Aaron Schlossberg this week. That’s what happens when racist villains get caught on viral video ranting like some racists are wont to do.

The week in Schlossberg started with the attorney berating employees in a New York City café because, in his apparent estimation, speaking Spanish in America warranted threats of calling ICE to get them deported.

It continued with eminently watchable videos of him fleeing reporters on the streets of the Big Apple making the social media rounds.

But as the 42-year-old's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week comes to a close, there's one more nugget of interest.

When word broke that Schlossberg has local ties – i.e. to The Haverford School on the Main Line – whispers of a local arrest in 2009 also surfaced.

http://www.phillyvoice.com/racist-nyc-lawyer-arrested-disorderly-conduct-charges-2009-phillies-game/

So you know the old saying “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”. But one thing I absolutely love is creative protests, and nothing is more creative when people come together than to tell a racist to fuck off.

NEW YORK -- An online campaign was created in the wake of a lawyer's tirade against Spanish-speaking workers, with a single aim: sending a mariachi band to perform outside his Upper West Side home.

Attorney Aaron Schlossberg has come under fire for a video that shows him ranting against Spanish-speaking employees at Fresh Kitchen in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday. As the video shows, Schlossberg presumed the employees live in the U.S. illegally on welfare paid by his taxes.

After he was identified, people shared previous footage of Schlossberg engaging in xenophobic hate speech. They also changed his law office's Google listing to a Spanish restaurant and drove his firm's Yelp rating down.

If that wasn't enough, a "Mariachis For Aaron" campaign on GoFundMe raised $1,094 in two days -- more than double its goal -- to send a Mariachi band to his office for a "Latin Party" with demonstrators.

"We are countering hate and racism with the sound of music," writes Mark Goldberg, creator of the GoFundMe account. "Any leftover money will be used to send a delicious Taco Truck lunch to the staff and a copy of all federal and state statute mentioning undocumented immigrants do not qualify for welfare."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/campaign-sends-mariachi-band-aaron-schlossberg-home-racist-viral-tirade-2018-05-19/

By the way – one thing you never, ever want to do is to have the same name as someone who’s famous for all the wrong reasons. Because lost in all the news surrounding this MAGA supporter is a guy who has the same name as him.

This is life in the social media age: With every high-profile scandal comes a public shaming, and when society rolls out the online pillory, there’s a fair chance it contains an innocent person.

That’s what happened this week to Aaron B. Schlossberg — a 24-year-old beekeeper, skiier, and Ultimate Frisbee enthusiast in Burlington, Vt. — after a video went viral that showed New York attorney Aaron M. Schlossberg launch a racist tirade at restaurant workers conversing in Spanish.

The Vermont Schlossberg was at his job in a Burlington outdoor goods store when his cellphone began buzzing with Twitter notifications, he said in a phone interview Friday morning. Soon, his name was everywhere — except it wasn’t really his name.

“ ‘Aaron Schlossberg’ was trending, and that’s usually not a good sign when your name is trending on Twitter,” he said
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/05/18/vermonter-with-same-name-notorious-lawyer-mistakenly-attacked-social-media/xmFI5qbvJzxk7aitceezxH/story.html

[font size="8"]Donald Trump
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You know there’s times when you just can’t help not making Nazi comparisons. Especially when the guy who you currently call “president” literally dehumanizes an entire group of people! Seriously, remember when the worst thing we had to worry about was what brand of mustard Obama used on his hot dog? Oh how I missed those times! Of course that’s what they won’t tell you, sir! Yeah sure they kind of tried to help calm down the inevitable shit storm that followed when Trump made one particular comment about a group of people trying to cross the border, and if there’s anything that could possibly be considered the most sensitive subject among MAGAholes is the border. Well let’s explain.

Tripling down on its efforts to prove that President Donald Trump was only referring to members of the MS-13 gang as “animals” — not all undocumented immigrants — the White House released a statement Monday morning explaining the origins and crimes of the “violent animals of MS-13.”

The statement — titled “What you need to know about the violent animals of MS-13”—outlines some of the horrific crimes committed by members of the gang in the suburbs of New York City and Washington, D.C. in the past two years. The statement called MS-13 members “animals” nearly 10 times.

During a panel discussion with California officials who oppose the state’s sanctuary immigration policies last week, Trump appeared to refer to immigrants who have been taken out of the country for attempting to illegally enter the U.S. as “bad ” people and “animals.” Trump later clarified — both to reporters and on Twitter — that he was referring to members of the MS-13 gang. Read a transcript of the conversation in question here.

In the new statement, the White House repeatedly referred to the group as “the MS-13 animals” as it outlined the brutal rapes and murders the group is believed to have committed in recent years, as the gang has risen to national notoriety for its violent attacks in the U.S.

“MS-13 is a transnational gang that has brought violence, fear, and suffering to American communities,” the statement said. “MS-13, short for Mara Salvatrucha, commits shocking acts of violence to instill fear, including machete attacks, executions, gang rape, human trafficking, and more.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/wh-still-trying-prove-trump-animals-ms-13

Yeah you know what? Let’s roll back a bit! Did Trump say those extremely horrible things about MS-13, did he mean it about all “illegal” immigrants, or was Fox News just feeding him some bad intel? Well no matter which way he said it, it is absolutely terrible no matter what context its’ in.

WASHINGTON — President Trump used extraordinarily harsh rhetoric to renew his call for stronger immigration laws Wednesday, calling undocumented immigrants "animals" and venting frustration at Mexican officials who he said "do nothing" to help the United States.

“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we're stopping a lot of them, but we're taking people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are," Trump said.

"These aren't people. These are animals."

Trump's comments came in a freewheeling, hour-long White House meeting with local California leaders opposed to so-called "sanctuary city" policies. "California's law provides safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth, like MS-13 gang members putting innocent men, women, and children at the mercy of these sadistic criminals," he said.

His comment about "animals" came after Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims complained that state law forbids her from telling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about undocumented immigrants in her jail — even if she suspects they're part of a gang.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/16/trump-immigrants-animals-mexico-democrats-sanctuary-cities/617252002/

But Trump might actually be wrong about MS-13. Yeah some of the things that they’re saying are extremely horrible crimes and there’s no way that anyone should get away with them. This is why media deregulation is dangerous, and why Trump will only make things worse.

President Trump claimed Tuesday night in the State of the Union address that the changes he wants to U.S. immigration laws are needed to keep Americans safe. The central piece of evidence in his argument was MS-13, the deadly gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha.

“Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13 and other criminal gangs to break into our country,” Trump said. He also invited the parents of two young women killed by MS-13 members in Long Island to be his guests at the speech.

But in pointing to MS-13 to try to scare Americans into harsh new immigration restrictions, Trump is overstating the danger the gang poses here in the United States. Worse, by using the gang to demonize all Latino immigrants, Trump is building inner-city walls that alienate communities and risk making criminal organizations more powerful, both here and overseas.

Things are different in the United States. According to Justice Department estimates, MS-13 is a small gang, compared with the Bloods, Crips and Almighty Latin King Nation. The estimated 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the United States account for less than 1 percent of the estimated 1.4 million total gang members in the country. According to CNN, 104 of the 1,300 gang members arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweep last May — 8 percent — were linked to MS-13.

And the gang did not come from south of the border. MS-13 is as American-made as Google — or, for that matter, as Trump. MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by children of Salvadoran immigrants who fled a brutal civil war, a war which was substantially funded by the United States. The early members were teenagers who hung out on street corners and bonded around reefer and rock concerts, not unlike thousands of other kids living in Southern California’s underprivileged communities.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/31/trump-is-wrong-about-ms-13-and-his-rhetoric-will-make-it-worse/

[font size="8"] Top 10 Investigates: Responsible Gun Ownership
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It’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates.

America has the highest concentration of guns in the entire world. It also has the highest concentration of mass shootings in the world. Every time a mass shooting occurs, we have the same dialogue coming from conservatives and members of the National Rifle Association about “responsible gun ownership” but when you look beyond the headlines, there really is anything but responsible gun ownership. And we will take this time to show you a heap of responsible gun owners.

A country where one in three households owns guns is a country where a lot of children grow up alongside deadly weapons. New calculations indicate just how many of those kids live in homes where adults fail to safely store their firearms.

According to the analysis, an estimated 4.6 million American children reside in a household where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked. The study’s authors also determined that the share of child-rearing gun owners who don’t secure all their firearms has more than doubled since the last time similar research was conducted.

The findings were published online on May 10 in the Journal of Urban Health, a little more than a week before a gun rampage outside of Houston provided a horrific illustration of the dangers that arise when firearms are left accessible to children and teens.

Kids find guns and unintentionally shoot themselves or others. Unsecured firearms are a leading means of youth suicide. As the nation was reminded last Friday, children also sometimes use their parents’ or caregivers’ guns to commit homicides or mass murders: The 17-year-old student charged with fatally shooting 10 and wounding 13 more at his high school in Sante Fe, Texas, on Friday reportedly carried out his attack with a shotgun and revolver belonging to his father. A federal analysis of school shootings released in 2004 found that 65 percent of perpetrators used a gun owned by a relative.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/study-46-million-american-kids-live-in-homes-with-unlocked-loaded-guns

Yes, there are more unsecured guns than there are school children in this country. So if you’re sitting at home and you are wondering how did we get to this point, well that might be one of your answers right there. But the solutions to gun violence aren’t just obvious – they’re staring us right in the face, yes, just picture that image for a minute!

Mass shootings actually make up a small fraction of America’s gun deaths, constituting less than 2 percent of such deaths in 2013. But America does see a lot of these horrific events: According to CNN, “The US makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but holds 31% of global mass shooters.”

The US also has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. Estimated in 2007, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 88.8 guns per 100 people, meaning there was almost one privately owned gun per American and more than one per American adult. The world’s second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 54.8 guns per 100 people.

Another way of looking at that: Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet own roughly 42 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms.

These two facts — on gun deaths and firearm ownership — are related. The research, compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center, is pretty clear: After controlling for variables such as socioeconomic factors and other crime, places with more guns have more gun deaths. Researchers have found this to be true not just with homicides, but also with suicides (which in recent years were around 60 percent of US gun deaths), domestic violence, and even violence against police.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/21/17028930/gun-violence-us-statistics-charts

Yes America owns so many guns that it eclipses the next 42 countries combined. That is an absolutely shocking statistic and one you should definitely take away from this week. But it gets worse – so much worse. We’ve been having this same conversation about guns more or less the last 40 years and it’s always the same thing. But it seems it’s got progressively worse in the last

Today, 19 children will die or receive emergency treatment for a gunshot wound in the U.S. And tomorrow, another 19 will. And then another 19 the next day. In fact, 91% of all children who die from firearms in high-income countries across the world come from the United States, and guns are the third leading cause of death for all children between ages 1 and 17. Those are a handful of the sobering statistics reported in a new study on gun violence in Pediatrics.

Yet the myth persists that the freedom to own a gun without a universal requirement of background checks or a legal requirement to store those guns safely and out of children’s reach supersedes the lives of American children. Until the U.S. as a whole decides to recognize and accept what the tremendous cost of current lenient gun laws is, more than 1,000 more children will die next year. And the year after that. (Read here how to reduce your child's risk.)

Deaths of children and teens under 18 years old had been declining from 2006 to 2013, but they have increased over the past two years, just as the number of guns owned in the U.S. have dramatically increased.

One in ten children’s deaths in 2014 and 2015 resulted from a gunshot wound, noted Eliot Nelson, MD, a professor of pediatrics at University of Vermont Children’s Hospital in Burlington, in a commentary about the new study.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2017/06/19/american-denial-about-facts-on-guns-continues-to-kill-children/#5f3b34584a9a

Yes holy shit indeed. But as has already been pointed out, America loves guns and death machines more than it loves its’ own children. But denial is definitely one of the most powerful drugs known to man – and America is in deep denial about guns. But never mind that Americans think that the solution to a gun problem is more guns.

Gun control is still going nowhere in Congress. And in fact, with every major mass shooting in America, gun-rights supporters seem to be digging in even further -- and bringing the rest of America along with them.

It's an echo of a familiar theme from NRA head Wayne LaPierre. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre said frequently amid the more recent gun-control debate.

And most Americans agree with this logic, according to a 2014 Pew Research Poll. Since the 2012 Newtown, Conn., massacre of 26 people, including 20 school children, the poll found a nine-point rise in the number of Americans who think gun ownership could "protect people from becoming victims of crime."

Increasingly, Americans see guns as the answer -- not the problem -- to mass shootings.

In fact, the pro-gun-rights lobby is so powerful and its voters so active that Democratic senators who support gun laws tend to reverse their positions before reelection, a 2014 research paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/07/27/gun-control-americans-increasingly-see-more-guns-as-the-solution-not-the-problem/

There you have it. That is one of the biggest problems in America today. Denial and more guns. That is it for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters! It is time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate, for the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it is our weekly duty to remind us that the holiest among us are the most full of:

So… my fair congregation, since the election of the Dark One, the holiest among us on the extreme far right are working hard to bring about the end of days! If you haven’t noticed this, you are not paying attention, and I suggest you should. After the US moved the embassy in the holy land of Isreal to Jerusalem, the proverbial shit hit the fan! But there are other ways did you know – you all know this – that the Christian right is trying to bring about the end of days! Like the Royal Wedding for instance!

Religious Right activist Dave Daubenmire said on his “Pass The Salt Live” webcast this morning that the royal wedding this weekend between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was a “psy op” intended to promote “the blending of the races.”

Daubenmire, who has declared that he is “proud to be white” because “white, heterosexual, Christian” men represent America’s only hope for survival, has fretted about the threat of white genocide, and has fumed that interracial marriage weakened this nation “because multiculturalism is spiritual AIDS [that] has brought an infection into what was once a great Christian American culture,” said that the marriage of Prince Harry to a woman of “mixed blood” is an attempt to corrupt the pure bloodline of House of Windsor.

“Let me just lay it out there, because most people won’t say it because they don’t want to sound racist,” Daubenmire said while wearing a literal tinfoil hat. “Prince Harry’s wife is half-black. Now, wait a minute. That ain’t that royal bloodline lineage there, is it fellas? Isn’t there a little bit of mixed blood coming in there?”

Daubenmire also took issue with the fact that Bishop Michael Curry, a black Episcopal pastor, delivered an address during the ceremony.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dave-daubenmire-the-royal-wedding-was-a-psy-op-to-promote-the-blending-of-the-races/

You know there may not be the blending of the races, but there is definitely integration of complete dumbasses in our society! Can I get an amen??? Now did you know that banning something that should be considered a crime against humanity will also result in the inevitable apocalypse?

Gordon Klingenschmitt and Matt Barber, anti-LGBT activists and co-founders of Christian Civil Rights Watch—“the civil rights cause of our day” according to Barber—posted a conversation last week criticizing a California bill targeting so-called conversion therapy and celebrating a new high-profile spokesman for the “ex-gay” movement.

Luis Ruiz, a survivor of the shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, was a speaker at the “Freedom March” organized earlier this month by “ex-gay” activists and “Activist Mommy” Elizabeth Johnston.

“I love this story,” said Barber, “because it’s a story of redemption and freedom from demonic oppression and persecution and a sin lifestyle that I believe frankly is spiritual in nature.”

Barber also loves the “ex-gay” story because, he says, it is “a clear and present danger to the born-that-way myth.”

Like many “ex-gay” activists, Ruiz describes an unhappy gay life of drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex..
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/matt-barber-says-proposed-conversion-therapy-ban-would-ban-bible-criminalize-christianity/

Yes this is only the most epic of fails! So apparently banning an evil practice is going to lead to Christianity being banned! Do these morons even hear themselves talk? Or do they say the most horrible thing they can think of to intentionally piss us off?

During a “Ministers and Leaders Conference” at his Florida church yesterday, right-wing pastor and radical conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard-Browne declared that the world is controlled by blood-drinking Luciferians and that many members of Congress are involved in pedophilia.

Howard-Browne, who laid hands upon and prayed over President Trump in the Oval Office last year, asserted that Trump has been obligated to withhold information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy because otherwise “they would have to pick up George Bush senior in his wheelchair right now and stick him in Guantanamo prison because the Bush family is a crime cabal.”

Howard-Browne said that despite the fact that Republicans currently control all the levers of power in Washington, they still can’t get anything done “because the whole thing is controlled through the Luciferian structure of the globe.”

“At the highest level, the people that rule the planet worship Lucifer,” he said. “These people perform human sacrifices and drink blood.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rodney-howard-browne-the-people-that-rule-the-planet-worship-lucifer-and-perform-human-sacrifices-and-drink-blood/

Well, Pastor Browne is right about one thing – the people who rule the planet do in fact worship Lucifer, and right now Putin is the man who rules the planet, and he has a rocket called “Satan 2” that he can wipe out entire civilizations with!! So Lucifer really is running the planet and he is bringing about the end of days!!! Can I get an amen??? But apparently we have a savior folks! Yes, a savior and son of the almighty who can vanquish these demons!!!

Monday morning’s “Prophetic Insight” newsletter from Pentecostal media operation Charisma highlights a blog post claiming that God has “released a flaming torch” over President Trump to push Trump’s enemies into “retreat and defeat.”

Christian media outlets’ relentless cheerleading for Trump, and their constant portrayal of Trump as carrying out a divine mission, certainly helps explain Trump’s sky-high approval among conservative white evangelicals, and his repeated efforts to keep that core of his base support happy.

Today’s post by author and preacher Andy Sanders includes a disclaimer that his article “is not intended to be political.” No, not at all:

Over the past several weeks, God showed me numerous attacks that the enemy is attempting to make against our president, Donald Trump. As I was praying about the attacks against our president, the Lord began to connect the dots. He started showing me how this person was connected to that group, and that group was connected to another group; and how particular events weren’t accidents, but rather planned out; and also how particular statement weren’t just comments blurted against him, but were strategic in nature.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/prophetic-insight-from-charisma-god-has-given-trump-flaming-torch-to-defeat-his-enemies/

Yes, what is wrong with these people? He gives you a real godly man, you repay him by electing the dark one and telling America to go fuck itself! But… be forewarned, my fair congregation! That although things may seem peachy now, DAYMONS and DEVILS wait in the wings!!

Wednesday’s CrossTalk program on VCY America featured a conversation about the danger of Catholicism merging with Islam to create the false one world religion warned about in the biblical book of Revelation. VCY America is a Milwaukee-based Christian broadcasting operation that owns 25 full-power radio stations, mostly in the Midwest, and reaches others through affiliate stations and online.

The featured guest was Mike Gendron, described as a former Catholic and the founder and director of Proclaiming the Gospel ministry, which is dedicated to trying to rescue Catholics who are “victims of deception” and convert them to “biblical Christianity.” Gendron’s group also sells an audio recording of his one world religion warning.

As RWW has reported, major Religious Right figures have said that Islam is not really a religion but a totalitarian ideology and therefore not worthy of First Amendment protection. Gendron has similar thoughts about the Catholic Church. He says that Catholicism is, like Islam, not only a religion but a political identity, and says that “they share a similar political ideology.”

On the Crosstalk page promoting the show, they list what Gendron calls the “common bonds” between the two religions, and he and host Jim Schneider talked through them. He says Catholicism and Islam both.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-radio-show-warns-of-satanic-merger-of-catholicism-and-islam/

There you have it, folks! A satanic merger awaits us, and that will signal in the end of days! Although it was really the election of the Dark One! I hope that is the take away you get this week. Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]This Fucking Guy: Ryan Zinke
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It’s time for a new installment of:

This week’s This Fucking Guy is a guy in the Trump administration who you may not be familiar with but should definitely get yourself more familiar with. He’s the interior secretary of the Trump administration – Ryan Zinke. In case you haven’t noticed, nearly *EVERYONE* connected to the Trump administration has been involved in some sort of scandal, and Zinke is no different. In fact he’s been abusing his position as the head of this department for quite some time.

The Trump administration on Monday proposed rolling back a 2015 rule that bans aggressive predator control tactics in national preserves in Alaska, including shooting bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens ― a move immediately blasted by environmental groups.

The proposal, slated to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register, would amend the National Park Service’s current regulations to again allow for controversial sport hunting and trapping techniques on roughly 20 million acres of federal lands in Alaska. The park service, part of the Department of the Interior, said lifting the prohibitions would increase hunting opportunities on national preserve land, as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called for in a pair of secretarial orders last year.

The proposed rule would allow hunters to lure brown and black bears with bait, hunt black bears and their cubs using artificial lights, shoot bear cubs and wolf and coyote pups in their dens, and use dogs to hunt black bears. It would also allow hunters to shoot swimming caribou from motorboats.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alaska-preserve-predator-hunting-interior-proposed-rule_us_5b032131e4b0a046186ecabe

Yeah unfortunately it’s not a cartoon there guys. This is quite possibly one of the worst things the Trump administration has done and they’re going to get away with it. But this fucking guy Ryan Zinke is once again one of the worst things to happen to the Trump administration. And if they get their way on this “extreme hunting” tactic this is not going to be good for anyone, especially the bears!

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens.

The National Park Service issued a notice Monday of its intent to amend regulations for sport hunting and trapping in national preserves to bring the federal rules in line with Alaska state law.
Expanding hunting rights on federal lands has been a priority for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.

These and other hunting methods — condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates — were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comment on the proposed new rules.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/interior-department-moves-to-reverse-obama-era-rules-on-hunting-bears-wolves-in-alaska

Oh come on, Mr. Zinke, what did bears do to you? I mean despite that they are godless killing machines, don’t deserve this kind of cruelty. Are they after your picnic baskets? What fresh hell could await us if this is unleashed? Well besides the fact that we’re living every day in this nightmare of an administration!

The Trump administration on Monday proposed rolling back a 2015 rule that bans aggressive predator control tactics in national preserves in Alaska, including shooting bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens―a move immediately blasted by environmental groups.

The proposal, slated to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register, would amend the National Park Service’s current regulations to again allow for controversial sport hunting and trapping techniques on roughly 20 million acres of federal lands in Alaska. The park service, part of the Department of the Interior, said lifting the prohibitions would increase hunting opportunities on national preserve land, as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called for in a pair of secretarial orders last year.

The proposed rule would allow hunters to lure brown and black bears with bait, hunt black bears and their cubs using artificial lights, shoot bear cubs and wolf and coyote pups in their dens, and use dogs to hunt black bears. It would also allow hunters to shoot swimming caribou from motorboats.

Environmental groups voiced disgust at the attempt to strip away protections.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/05/trump-is-trying-to-make-it-legal-to-shoot-hibernating-bear-cubs/

Oh and in case you’re wondering – not only does Trump plan to roll back yet *ANOTHER* Obama era protection, he’ll do it with a big shit eating grin on his face! And he’ll have this guy to do it, who will once again abuse his position like everyone else in this administration has.

(CNN)In September, women gun owners and enthusiasts from the National Rifle Association headed to a plush Four Seasons resort in Texas for an annual retreat and clay shooting at the Dallas Gun Club with one of the weekend's headliners: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke went to target practice with the women, posting about their marksmanship on Twitter -- #GalsWithGuns -- as part of his two-night stay. He also stopped at a posh office park in Dallas to meet with a small group that included wealthy Republican donors who raised money for Trump's presidential campaign. The meeting appears on the secretary's official schedule as an informal luncheon with community leaders focused on sporting and conservation.

Zinke's choice to meet with donors in the midst of official business is one of several travel decisions during his first year as secretary that have some critics questioning his priorities, even if they don't necessarily violate agency rules. Zinke's travel habits have already spawned two investigations, including one looking into whether his activities are in violation of the Hatch Act, which limits the political activity of federal employees.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/politics/ryan-zinke-nra/index.html

So there you have it, another instance where the right to own a gun is more important than your right to live. That’s Ryan Zinke, this week’s:

[font size="8"]Infowars
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This is 2018. We live in an era where we are constantly just bombarded with one clusterfuck after another with this train wreck of an administration. So the last thing you need to stop a train wreck is another train wreck! I’m of course talking about Alex Jones. So what batshit crazy thing is Alex up to this week? And you know it’s going to be certifiably insane. So Infowars is gearing up to launch its’ own 24 hour a day news network. Think of it like Fox News but with more stories of celebrity spirit cooking and satanic pedophiles!

Infowars creator Alex Jones said that he was looking to hire “around 15 people, maybe even more” in order to transform Infowars into a 24-hour live television broadcast.

A video uploaded this morning advertises the network’s new recruitment drive, which Jones told viewers is aimed at taking Infowars live to television for 24-hours a day, a major expansion from the network’s current weekday programming from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

“We are launching our biggest recruitment and hiring operation ever in our 23-year history as we prepare to go 24 hours a day live on TV and radio from the Infowars news center here in Austin, Texas,” Jones said.

He added, “We’re looking to hire around 15 people, maybe even more, as we take the information war to the next level in the face of the globalists.”

So it seems that we may soon be subject to even more hours of the debased conspiracy theories, misinformation, anti-LGBTQ comments, violent rhetoric, unhinged ranting, and absolute meltdowns we can expect from Infowars.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/infowars-is-hiring-up-to-launch-24-hour-broadcasting/

And in case you’re wondering, Alex Jones is already batshit crazy on a 4 hour cycle. Imagine how he will be on a 24 hour cycle! Ooh, think of the products Infowars will be able to hawk! The lead industry must be loving this! Well here’s the kind of quality rant you’ll be able to expect!

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist heading up Infowars, assured his listeners in a minutes-long screaming diatribe that he didn’t think they were stupid. He said that he could “feel the spirit rising” and that “the tide turned” so much that Infowars is breaking the backs of its enemies.

During today’s broadcast on Infowars, Jones said that he believed that Infowars viewers were intelligent, unlike liberals, who Jones said “think you’re a goldfish.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid. I’ve been betting on you my whole life. I believe in you,” Alex Jones screamed. “And we got Trump elected. And we got the economy coming back. And we’re kicking these traitors’ asses, politically, and we’re not backing down ever,” Jones said.

He screamed and snorted.

“I want to get these people,” he continued to scream. “We’re winning. I can feel the spirit rising, can’t you? The turning point was yesterday. I was sick all day, spiritually. I could feel the enemy launching with all its hate. But now, the tide turned today.”

Jones declared, “The tide turned on the 22nd day of May. We have broken their back. Yes! I can feel it.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-can-feel-the-spirit-rising-and-hes-not-talking-about-his-supplements/

I have to say I love it when Alex gets that crazy because he really does grunt and groan like a baboon on safari. When he does that I say grab a bucket of popcorn and a beer and enjoy the show! So picture Alex Jones ranting like this 24 hours a day. Go on, do it. Do it now! It’s gonna be a train wreck. Especially when things like this get said.

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist heading up Infowars, told listeners today that Democrats use members of the violent gang MS-13 as its personal “meth-dealing army.”

Jones was reacting to remarks House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi made yesterday in response to President Trump describing MS-13 gang members as “animals.” Jones claimed that Pelosi criticized Trump because MS-13 is secretly used by the Democratic party to kill people.

“The Democratic party uses MS-13 to kill people. I have confirmed this with our law enforcement and Army sources. I’ve confirmed it with CIA sources, that the Democratic party uses MS-13 nationwide from Chicago to Dallas, Texas, from Austin, Texas, to LA. They use them as their secret army and they know Trump’s got a war going against MS-13 and has wiped thousands of them out, arrested thousands more,” Jones said.

He continued: “When MS-13 fights back, they’re getting smoked by the U.S. military all over this country right now and this Democrat dirtbag is pissed. Her meth-dealing army is in the crosshairs, you dirty, old, evil, globalist whore!”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-the-democratic-party-uses-ms-13-to-kill-people/

I didn’t know we had a personal meth-dealing army. If so can I have some please? I may need some to get through the next two years! Preferably some from the Heisenberg signature blend. Alex must definitely be smoking some if he can’t even handle his own fans!

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist leader of Infowars, lashed out at viewers who doubted his claims that President Trump has ordered an Israel-Iran conflict media blackout and told them that they “don’t want to be helped” because they’d rather just “drink fluoride” and die.

Jones was streaming live video to his fans while driving yesterday and lashed out at the “dumb bastards” who doubted Jones’ claims that Trump has used executive wartime powers to order a media blackout regarding the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict. As he fumed, he told his critics that he is “not salmon shit,” whereas they are “squirting out the end of a salmon.”

“God, you libtards are dumb. You think because the big tech giants let you promote yourselves that that means you’re the leaders? I know I’m swimming upstream here because I’m not salmon shit. I’m a salmon. You’re squirting out the end of a salmon,” Jones said.

“Jesus, God,” he sighed. “The globalists told me a long time ago when [David] Rothkopf and [Henry] Kissinger group tried to hire me, they said, ‘Alex, you can’t get the public to wake up. They’re animals. We tried to help them. They only tear you apart.’ And it’s true.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/im-not-salmon-shit-im-a-salmon-alex-jones-lashes-out-at-skeptical-fans/

And by the way in case you’re wondering the caliber of person that Infowars is looking to hire, they recently interviewed a renowned, full blown 1488 white nationalist. So yeah forget MAGA, they’re going MAWA – Make America White Again! With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Faith Goldy, a white nationalist activist “journalist,” appeared on Infowars after anti-fascist protesters surrounded her at an event and knocked her phone out of her hand. Infowars, of course, never bothered to mention her extremist beliefs.

Over the weekend, Goldy went to a right-wing protest at the Quebec border at which antifascism counter-protesters surrounded her and knocked the cell phone she was using to record the encounter out of her hand. Infowars and other right-wing outlets have been able to build significant followings by pushing stories about violent anti-fascism protesters who supposedly terrorize all people who hold conservative views, so some outlets have booked Goldy to recap the violent encounter for their audiences. But none of the outlets featuring Goldy, such as Infowars, bother to mention her white nationalist beliefs and her resulting inflammatory rhetoric.

Goldy is a red-pill overdose victim who was fired from Rebel Media after she appeared on a podcast associated with the neo-Nazi blog Daily Stormer after she attended the alt-right “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year where counter-protester Heather Heyer was murdered. She has sworn-off so-called “civic nationalism” in favor of white supremacist “ethnonationalism” because “there is still a white majority” in the United States and she believes the government should work to maintain it. Last year, Goldy happily recited the “14 words,” the world’s most famous white supremacist slogan, and said she didn’t think it was controversial. Goldy is a semi-regular guest on white nationalist radio station Red Ice and was recently banned from crowdfunding site Patreon for violating its guidelines against hate speech.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/infowars-hosted-a-14-words-reciting-white-nationalist/

[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
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Let us hit that shit!

Of course you know by now that people are people and people are dumb. So I want to start with this story out of Colorado and it’s good to know that Florida Man has relatives in every single part of the country. If you’re trying to beat a drug test, maybe one thing you shouldn’t do is use a microwave to try to heat up your urine. Yes, this is a thing that was done!

A Colorado woman has been cited by police after a container of what appeared to be urine blew up as she was heating it up in a microwave at a 7-Eleven.

Police say the incident occurred in the convenience store chain’s Aurora location last week when the clerk heard a loud bang and saw 26-year-old Angelique Sanchez take a white plastic bottle out of the microwave.

A police report says when confronted by the clerk, Sanchez wiped a yellow liquid that smelled like urine onto the floor and walked out.

Police located Sanchez at a nearby clinic where she had planned to take a urinalysis test for a potential employer.
https://nypost.com/2018/05/06/woman-blew-up-microwave-at-7-eleven-with-urine-sample-cops/

Next up we’re going to where else but our favorite state of Florida. You know if you look like this guy, you should probably not be giving advice to underage kids about sex education. In fact you should probably be kept 500 feet away from schools and playgrounds.

Clearwater Beach Police say a Florida man climbed on top of playground equipment and yelled a vulgar explanation of where babies come from as the children played.

An officer said he watched 30-year-old Otis Dawayne Ryan climb on top of a piece of equipment where children were playing Sunday and start shouting that babies come out of women. The officer said Ryan used inappropriate language. Parents rushed to remove their children from the busy playground.

Earlier in the day, police said Ryan approached tourists and made inappropriate comments to women in an effort to get their male partners to confront him. An officer was watching him at the time.

Ryan was charged with disorderly conduct, found guilty and fined $118.
http://www.wpbf.com/article/lava-bombs-damaging-windows-property-kilauea-erupts-again/20873812

Yeah no you’re just a creep. Next up – we’re sticking with creeps but we’re going to the state of Iowa for this one. You know one thing you don’t do in a public restroom? Have a literal penis measuring contest!

A man who was arrested for measuring his penis with a ruler while at a urinal inside a University of Iowa bathroom has struck a plea deal that will spare him jail time, but which requires completion of a sex offender treatment program, according to court records.

Thomas Morgan, 44, was arrested on multiple indecent exposure counts following a bizarre incident inside the school’s Main Library in Iowa City.

Police reported that Morgan “partially turned his body towards the victim/witness,” who was using a urinal at the time. Morgan, seen at righ, then “measured his penis against a cardboard ruler,” according to a criminal complaint.

The victim told cops that Morgan “made a comment regarding his size,” adding that he “felt weird and uncomfortable” seeing Morgan’s “semi-erect penis.” The man added that atop two of the urinals were cardboard rulers with “dark sharpie markings regarding penis size.”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/revolting/golden-rules-ruler-759236

Yeah you would think Batman’s would be bigger wouldn’t you? Next up we’re going to go to South Carolina in this story. Just… how… who.. what… I can’t even. Look, I don’t want to know what the clerks who were making this cake were thinking, but it’s very interesting that their mind went there when making a cake for her son’s graduation accomplishment.

A mother who wanted to celebrate her son in epic fashion for a 4.79 GPA upon graduation says a regional grocery chain refused to ice the words she requested because it considered "Summa Cum Laude" to be profanity.

Cara Koscinski, of South Carolina, wrote in a weekend Facebook post that she ordered a cake online from Publix. The confection was supposed to say "Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018."

She says the online message box took issue with the phrase. The computer marked the "cum," a Latin word meaning "with" in English, in "Summa Cum Laude" as a naughty word and substituted three hyphens.

Koscinski said she then filled in a box for special instructions, explaining the meaning of the Latin word and placed the $70 order. Another family member picked up the cake, not knowing what it was supposed to say.

It came with the hyphens.

"How utterly ridiculous ... Shame on you Publix for turning an innocent Latin phrase into a total embarrassment for having to explain to my son and others (including my 70 year old mother) about this joke of a cake," Koscinski wrote on Facebook. "My son was humiliated!!!"

She says the store gave her a refund and a gift card when she complained.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Grocery-Store-Censor-Graduation-Cake-Summa-483339831.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_NYBrand

Oh come on even Shaq is giving you the facepalm! Although to be fair, if I were the friends I probably would have done the same thing. Next up, we’ve probably all seen that movie Horrible Bosses, right? And I’m sure we’ve all conjured up scenarios about what we would do if we won the lottery. Well for one guy in Illinois who got arrested carrying out his Horrible Boss fantasy, worth it!

54-year old Brian Morris, from the small town of Clarendon Hills in Dupage County, bought over 20,000 tons of manure and asked for it to be dumped on his former boss’ property, pretending it was his residence.

Dozens of trucks filled with manure showed up in front of the house around 6:00 this morning and began dumping their smelly cargo over the property’s lawn.

George Fitzgerald, Mr. Morris’ former employer, was awakened by the sound of the vehicles on his property and rapidly called the police.

Unfortunately, it took the police more than 15 minutes to arrive on the site, and more than 10,000 tons of manure had already been dumped in the meantime.

Brian Morris was standing right across the street and laughing when the police arrived, and he rapidly came over to confess his responsibility and explain his motivations.
https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/lottery-winner-arrested-for-dumping-200000-of-manure-on-ex-boss-lawn/

Finally this week for People Are Dumb – maybe Stephen Colbert should change his number one threat from bears to pigs! Because pigs are dangerous and slippery characters who can follow you if you don’t notice!

Police in this Lorain County community thought they had a drunk on their hands when a man called to report a pig following him home from a train station.

A North Ridgeville officer arrived on the scene early Saturday to find the man was very sober and a pig was in fact following him.

The officer managed to get the pig in his patrol car and transported it to the station. It was eventually reunited with its owner.

Writing on Facebook, police mentioned "the irony of the pig in a police car now so that anyone that thinks they're funny is actually unoriginal and trying too hard."

At: https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/05/man_reports_being_followed_by.html

That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest: Championship
[br] [/font] [br]

16 states will enter, but only one will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State!

Welcome back! Here we go folks! This is it – ground zero! It’s the championship for our Stupidest State contest! Last week it was quite the show at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California, as Kentucky was absolutely brilliant (or not) against West Virginia, and took the Layover League, while Florida pulled off a brilliant game against Missouri and took the Flyover League. We’re here live at Staples Center in sunny (although currently cloudy) Los Angeles for all the festivities and the champagne is on ice! These two teams battled impossible odds to be here today and we will crown our champion! Will it be fan favorite Kentucky or will it be batshit crazy Florida who has been absolutely dominant throughout the tournament? Unfortunately we can only crown one winner and it’s all come down to this. Let’s find out!

[font size="6"]Championship: Kentucky Vs Florida[/font]

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

So we’ve been talking a lot about the crazy policies that the state of Kentucky has had to endure under the wrath of the Koch Brothers. Let’s explore on that a bit further. We saw what happened in Wisconsin, West Virginia, and lots of other states with the teacher strikes and how that is playing out. But what about Kentucky – a state whose primary source of revenue is agriculture? How would their reckless financial policies translate to that market?

COX’S CREEK — At Warren and Donna Cheek’s dairy farm, the clock is ticking on their way of life.

If they can’t find a processor to buy the milk produced twice a day by their remaining 42 Holsteins, they face dumping the milk and flushing away a 69-year-old family dairy.

And if Warren Cheek had his way, he’d pass away before his herd beat him to the graveyard. “I always say, ‘I just hope to milk some morning and die' … (but) this could put us out of business.”

The Cheeks and 18 other dairy farmers in Kentucky were among more than 100 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and three other states who received certified letters from Dean Foods in late February informing them that their milk procurement contracts would be terminated by May 31.

The reason: Walmart no longer will buy Dean’s milk for its Great Value house brand, cutting the production needed at the Dean’s Louisville plant. Walmart has started its own production facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2018/05/23/kentucky-dairy-farmers-uncertain-future-dropping-milk-demand/621118002/

And then remember all the hoopla surrounding Jesus loving psychopath Kim Davis and her challenger was a man that she had previous denied a marriage license to? Well, unfortunately this happened, and I am reminded that this is Kentucky.

MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — A gay man in eastern Kentucky has lost his bid to challenge Republican county clerk Kim Davis, who went to jail three years ago for denying him and others marriage licenses in the aftermath of an historic U.S. Supreme Court decision.

David Ermold sought the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary in Rowan County, Kentucky. His quest to challenge the woman who said “God’s authority” prevented her from giving him a marriage license inspired thousands from at least 48 states to donate more than $200,000 to his campaign.

But it wasn’t enough to defeat Elwood Caudill Jr., a 20-year veteran of the Property Valuation Administrator’s office who works just across the hall from Davis. He ran a low-key campaign and has promised not to make gay marriage an issue in the general election.

“What happened in 2015 is in the past and just as my logo says, we’re just focused on the future,” Caudill said.

Ermold didn’t speak to news outlets Tuesday. He and his now-husband were one of several gay couples who tried to get licenses from Davis after the ruling. A video of the encounter was viewed more than 1.8 million times on YouTube.
https://wtop.com/life-style/2018/05/gay-kentucky-man-loses-bid-to-challenge-gop-clerk-kim-davis/

Yeah so the bigots win again. But you know one thing – guns have been in the news a lot this week and Kentucky loves them some guns. The farmers are indeed packing some heat. But there’s an even seedier underbelly to Kentucky’s gun culture that you need to be made aware of.

It was lunchtime outside an outlet mall east of Louisville, Ky., when the deal was made for a gun that within weeks would be used to kill a 15-year-old boy in Chicago.

The 9 mm Taurus pistol was posted for sale on Armslist.com, a controversial website that helps buyers and sellers of weapons find each other without asking them to register or provide proof of identity or background checks, federal court records show.

Shortly before noon on March 16, 2017, the buyer arrived at the mall on Buck Creek Road in Simpsonville, Ky., in a white “American muscle car,” court records show. He told the seller his name was Christian Banks, handed over $300 cash for the compact black handgun and filled out a generic receipt, according to court records.

Just 42 days later, Xavier Soto was with a 16-year-old friend in an alley behind his home in the 4900 block of West George Street in Chicago’s gang-infested Belmont-Cragin neighborhood. A car pulled up and a gunman opened fire with the same Taurus pistol. Xavier was struck in the head and died two days later. His friend was shot multiple times but survived.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-guns-gangs-chicago-violence-20180517-story.html

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

So here we go it’s Florida’s turn! Florida has a long standing tradition of being America’s craziest state and last year they proved it when their star player Florida Man crashed into the glass performing an insane stunt and bled uncontrollably on the floor which got them an early exit from last year’s tournament. This year, they are angry and looking for redemption – they have fired all their coaches, changed leagues, and put Florida Man on the bench. Will it work for them? Well this is Florida we’re talking about here. So Florida’s main qualification for making the Gun Nut Conference was how poorly they handled the Parkland shooting. Well not even a month later, they have learned nothing!

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - A man suspected of trading wild bursts of gunfire with officers during a long standoff in the Florida Panhandle was found dead Tuesday in a gasoline-soaked apartment after an armored vehicle approached, authorities said.

“We were just blessed that we didn’t lose multiple officers and citizens today,” Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford said at a news conference in Panama City, a small Gulf Coast city near the state’s famous sugar-sand beaches. He said a robot had to be deployed to check the apartment before officers could enter, finding the man dead.

No law enforcement agents were shot or wounded but one person leaving her apartment was injured and in stable condition, he said.

He described the dangerous situation that unfolded Tuesday in the tourist community as a “nightmare scenario for us,” with authorities estimating 100 rounds fired during the altercation. Ford said sporadic bursts of heavy gunfire had pinned several officers down at times as the suspected assailant fired from an elevated position with a rifle. Several law enforcement agents had surrounded the apartment building.
http://www.wdtn.com/news/national/sheriff-suspect-in-florida-standoff-gunfire-found-dead/1193994637

?itemid=4160067

To paraphrase a quote from Homer Simpson, it appears that more and more Americans are viewing guns as the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. I mean why get mad when you can just shoot someone or something? And then there were the zombies. Yes, zombies. In Florida. No you’re not imagining things.

Officials say they still don't who sent a "zombie alert" to residents of a Florida city following a power outage.

Lake Worth spokesman Ben Kerr says an independent investigation is underway to determine who was behind the message sent to some 7,880 customers during a 27-minute power outage Sunday.

During the city's own investigation, Kerr says officials determined that no current or former employees edited the pre-prepared message to include the warning of a zombie invasion.

He tells the Palm Beach Post that "no one was fired for it."
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/florida-city-looks-for-answers-after-a-zombie-alert-was-sent-to-residents.html

Ah great song! So yeah people in Florida apparently thought zombies were funny. I mean come on we’ve all seen The Walking Dead. But if there’s one take away from Florida is how poorly they handle shootings and just about everything else. I mean after all this is the state that attempted to construct a bridge only to have it collapse mere minutes after an inspection. So that’s Florida in a nutshell.

MIAMI (AP) — Federal investigators looking into the collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Florida that killed six people earlier this year confirmed Wednesday that they are focusing in part on the emergence of cracks in the structure before the accident.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report light on details but that suggested investigators are focused on cracks in the south and north ends of the bridge near a Miami-area university campus.

The cracks were discovered in the days before the March 15 collapse, which killed a bridge worker and five people in vehicles crushed by the falling structure.

Photographs released by NTSB noted three cracks in the north end of the span, where crews were working on tensioning a structural component of the crossing when the failure occurred. A crew was on the bridge working on the diagonal beam at the time.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/florida/articles/2018-05-23/ntsb-florida-bridge-collapse-probe-focusing-on-cracks

[font size="4"]And the winner is… [/font]

Oh my god this was one hell of a game but unfortunately only one team can be the winner. It was a solid first half with Florida pulling way ahead of Kentucky, but then Kentucky came back strong. And our winner is… Florida!!! You did it!!! Final score – 88 – 84! After last year’s humiliation Florida gets a shot at redemption and they are our 2018 Stupidest State!

[font size="6"]Statement From The Commissioner [/font]

Thank you! Thank you for attending. I’d like to thank Kentucky, Florida, and all of the teams for participating in this year’s Stupidest State contest! And it is my absolute honor to present Florida with our DeLay Trophy!

Both teams fought very hard and very well. I would also like to thank our governing body, the National For Fuck’s Sake Association, the NFFSA! You guys put on the best tournament possible, and all the host venues helped put on something magical. But this night belongs to Florida. They have towered over the competition to put an end to a stellar year. We hope you enjoyed this year’s Stupidest State contest and let’s make next year even better than this one! Let’s pop the champagne on this one!

[font size="6"]Net Cutting Ceremony [/font]

[font size="6"]Locker Room Celebration [/font]

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Panic! At The Disco[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen lets’ get this post season party started! My next guest has a new album coming out on June 22nd, and you can see them on tour everywhere this July and August with Arizona and Hayley Kiyoko. Their latest album is called “Pray For The Wicked”. Playing their song “Saturday Night (Say Amen)”, give it up for the one, the only Panic! At The Disco!

They want to stick around for one more? Sure!

I want to thank everyone for a great Top 10 season! I want to thank our audience. I want to thank my staff, the crew, all the venues who have hosted the World Tour 2018, and all the venues who hosted Stupidest State 2018. Not to mention all the great musical acts on the show from the Foo Fighters to Panic At The Disco. This is the end of Top 10 Conservative Idiots Season 4. Season 5 will begin on June 13th! We have some exciting changes coming for Season 5! See you in 3 weeks!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: City National Grove Of Anaheim, Anaheim, CA
Special Thanks To: City National Grove Management
Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders.
Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Writing: Top 10 Writing Department
Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department
Research: Top 10 Research Department
Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department
Legal: Top 10 Legal Department
Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department
HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department
Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc.
Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA
Panic At The Disco Appear Courtesy Of: Fueled By Ramen LLC
Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management

Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

May 16, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-18: Left Behind: Infinity War Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-18: Left Behind: Infinity War Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! You can save money by joining our new family plan – 4 lines for $109 a month! Switch now and save! OK so know it’s spring which means love is in the air which means that it’s prom season. We may have to do a deep dive on all the crazy shit that happens at school proms because in the day and age where the mere act of asking someone to the big dance requires a stadium scoreboard proposal and an elaborate choreographed dance number, we are bound to see some crazy shit happening. But let’s bring this story from where else our good friends in Florida, or America’s penis. There a Catholic high school in Miami – Christopher Columbus High School, held its’ annual prom, which featured, among other things, a real live tiger. Wait, what? And how were the people who were dancing around the cage failing to notice, I don’t know, a tiger? I mean please don’t tell me that Mike Tyson was involved. Or that they fed the tiger a steak full of roofies to get it to the car to take it back to Mike Tyson’s place. Oh shit I’m getting this story mixed up with one of my favorite comedies, The Hangover again. Wait, what? Yeah it’s Florida, I’m sure they could get roofies if they wanted to. But I’m sure getting the tiger back to the car involved something like this:

Shit, I got to stop getting this story mixed up with the Hangover again. I know it’s a high school prom, damn it! OK that’s enough of the intro. We got a lot of idiocy to get to this week but first we have to play Bill Maher’s brilliant New Rule from last Friday in which he says that the Trump administration isn’t a reality show – it’s a Scorsese movie:

Holy shit, I mean… yeah holy shit! What a week it’s been! In the number one and number 2 slots this week is of course President Donald Trump (1,2). It’s good to know that he has the best interests of America’s Christians at heart, and those interests include the Rapture. In the number 3 slot is Trump’s Company (3) which includes his lawyers Michael Cohen and Rudy Guiliani. Hey, we’re one Trump attorney away from an awkward sitcom! In the number 4 slot this week is the NRA (4). So new president Oliver North is hard at work accusing innocent mass shooting victims of being terrorists. Because victim blaming is what the NRA does best - it's your own damn fault you stood in the way of that bullet! In the number 5 slot this week is the GOP vs John McCain (5) so what do you do when one of your own is dying from a deadly brain disease? Pile salt on the wound! It’s the Trump way, damn it! In the number 6 slot this week is our weekly investigative piece Top 10 Investigates and this week we’re going to take a look at the controversial Incel movement and what we can do about it. In the number 7 slot this week is of course our weekly sermon of all things holy, Holy Shit, and this week we’re going to do something different. We’re going to combine it with “This Fucking Guy” and profile Trump’s resident pastor Robert Jeffress. Whew, he is another crazy pick from the Trump admin. In the number 8 slot is Alex Jones (8) and it appears he and his partner in crime Jerome Corsi have finally thrown in the towel on 4chan’s Qanon. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week we’ve got a new installment of “I Need A Drink” and we’re going to get drunk and do something that we Americans should have been doing a long time ago – bet on sports! Finally this week it’s the penultimate round of our Stupidest State Contest and this time we’re live from a venue that has hosted a great many Final Fours – the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California! This time it’s a double matchup as Kentucky takes on Wisconsin for the Flyover League Championship, while Florida takes on Missouri for the Layover League Championship! Plus closing things out this week, we’ve got some live music for you from Post Malone! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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

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

Hey everyone guess what? We’re all gonna get raptured! Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Woooooooooooooo! Woooo! Woo. Ok maybe it’s not at all as exciting as it’s made out to be since a whole lot of us are probably gonna die in a nuclear holocaust, and relatively soon. At least the doomsday preppers can say “I told you so!”. Followed by a very childish “neener neener!”. So for the sake of this piece, let’s call it “Left Behind: The Real Life Interactive Version”. Or to use something that might be more popular with the kids these days: “Left Behind: Infinity War”. Yes I’m crossing two franchises here – one has a really bizarre doomsday scenario in which half of the population gets snapped up by a crazy wannnabe god bent on controlling the universe, and the other one has Iron Man.

See you next week! What? We still have the full hour left? And Post Malone is backstage? OK. I definitely wouldn’t want to leave Post Malone hanging. So how are we going to get left behind this week?

The US officially relocated its Embassy to Jerusalem on Monday, formally upending decades of American foreign policy in a move that was met with clashes and protests along the Israeli-Gaza border.

At least 43 Palestinians were killed in Gaza as deadly protests took place ahead of and during the ceremony in Jerusalem — making it the deadliest day there since the 2014 Gaza war.

President Donald Trump did not attend the ceremony in Jerusalem's Arnona neighborhood, but in a video message broadcast at the event he congratulated Israel, saying the opening had been "a long time coming."

"Today, Jerusalem is the seam of Israel's government. It is the home of the Israeli legislature and the Israeli supreme court and Israel's prime minister and president. Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital, yet for many years, we failed to acknowledge the obvious, the plain reality that Israel's capital is Jerusalem," Trump said in the pre-recorded remarks.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/jerusalem-us-embassy-trump-intl/index.html

It’s good to know that today’s lunatic fringe Christians plan to create a literal version of hell on earth! I will take that one, thank you! So this weekend – the week after the Kentucky Derby – Trump managed to create a trifecta of pissing off three countries at once! And those countries are Isreal, Syria, and Palestine – countries whose bad side you do not want to get on! So how did Palestine mark this momentous occasion?

So of course while patting himself on the back for a job well done of pissing off half the world while pleasing his “base”, Donald Trump seems to forget that he’s going to get a whole lot of people killed in the process. There goes that Nobel Peace Prize!

Israel is bracing for a tense week as the U.S. Embassy officially opens in Jerusalem on Monday — a move that has triggered fierce protests by Palestinians. Protests turned violent in Gaza, where dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers in clashes along the border fence on Monday, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, making it the bloodiest day of demonstrations in the past six weeks of protests.

Overall, over 80 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and more than 3,000 have been injured since the embassy move was announced by President Trump in early December.

Observers of the conflict had already predicted the tensions when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announced the move. At the time, the decision was branded “dangerous,” “catastrophic,” “irresponsible” and being “against international law” by countries usually considered U.S. allies, including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

Here’s a short recap of how we got to this point, which helps make clear why most other foreign governments are opposed to the embassy move.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/14/trumps-embassy-move-to-jerusalem-is-controversial-these-3-maps-explain-why/?utm_term=.32cfca59227e

You know it’s a policy here not to joke about tragedy. But when the guy who you currently call “president” is a walking tragedy and everything he touches turns to shit, exceptions have to be made, damn it! It’s good to know Trump has some company in high places because when the rapture does happen, he’s going to need to seek shelter fast!

The U.S. today officially opened its new embassy in Jerusalem amid massive protests by Palestinians.

The move comes five months after President Donald Trump made his blockbuster announcement in December that the U.S. embassy would shift from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The new diplomatic office, in what was an existing U.S. consular building, was opened in a ceremony led by U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and attended by Israeli and American officials.

The day has also been marked by violence, with dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli military forces and more than 1,600 injured in protests at the Gaza border against the embassy move, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-embassy-set-open-jerusalem-netanyahu-praises-trump/story?id=55137896

And those men are currently running the show! And when this gets written up 50 years after nuclear Armageddon happens, assuming there’s something left of humanity, historians are not going to be surprised how we get to this point. I mean with friends like these, who needs enemies?

President Trump delivered recorded remarks Monday at the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

"Congratulations, it's been a long time coming," Trump said in a video played at the ceremony.

"This city and this entire nation is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people," he said. "The United States will always be a great friend of Israel."

The president went on to express his hope for peace in the region in the video message.

"We extend a hand in friendship to Israel, to Palestinians and to all of their neighbors. May there be peace. May God bless this embassy. May God bless all who serve there, and may God bless the United States of America," Trump said.
http://thehill.com/policy/international/387554-trump-delivers-recorded-remarks-at-us-embassy-opening-in-jerusalem

So the answer to world peace is… more war? How does that… oh fuck, it’s the Trump administration we’re talking about here! Attempting to question their logic could make one’s head explode! But it’s good to know those who fantasize about the apocalypse might actually get a chance to see it played out in real life. They do know Left Behind is fiction, right?

More than 20 people in Gaza were dead on Monday before anyone in Washington had had their breakfast. This was pitched to the awakening nation as a series of “deadly clashes,” even though the deadly part only applied to one side. It was a great start to a day in which the president*, who doesn’t know anything about anything, prepared to toss a lighted match into a lagoon of gasoline in the Middle East.

The decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem is more unnecessary than it is stupid and dangerous, and it’s pretty stupid and dangerous. There was no overwhelming political support—and certainly no overwhelming political pressure—in this country for such a provocative development. It was solely the desire of that odd mixture of highly conservative Judaism and American splinter Protestantism, of the prolonged slow-dance between the apocalyptic factions of two major monotheisms that very likely will incite the apocalyptic faction of the third. It is religious extremism disguised as international diplomacy.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a20681623/trump-jerusalem-embassy/

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

This week Trump made his case for the Nobel Peace Prize by bringing the whole world a step closer to nuclear Armageddon. I mean come on, how is Fox News supposed to run the country when they seem to have thrown the whole world into chaos? We all know that Fox News speaks to President Orange Douche directly. So while he was busy turning Isreal – Palestine relationships upside down, he had some other evil tricks up his sleeve this week.

President Trump early Monday promoted Fox News’s coverage of the U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem.

“U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem will be covered live on @FoxNews & @FoxBusiness. Lead up to 9:00 A.M. (eastern) event has already begun," the president wrote on Twitter.

"A great day for Israel!” he added.

Trump has previously promoted Fox News and its coverage on Twitter while criticizing negative coverage from other outlets and labeling them "fake news."

Trump announced last year that he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, a decision that caused criticism and concern from leaders across the globe. Palestinians hope to make a portion East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, the capital of an independent state.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387538-trump-promotes-fox-coverage-of-embassy-opening

So the way Trump appeals to his base is to tweet something that Fox news said, then it shows up a few minutes later immediately on… Fox News. it’s a bullshit to bullshit pipeline. Now addiction is something that no one should ever joke about. But what we are going to do is point out some of the obvious warning signs of addiction and then ask – is the guy who we call president an addict? The first sign is that you’re a danger to yourself or others.

There are two Mueller probes. There’s the one that exists in the Fox News-addled mind of President Trump and his supporters, which features dark conspiracy-mongering about a “Deep State coup” against Trump; out-of-control federal agents jackbooting poor, hapless Trump allies; and, of course, the corrupt failure to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Then there’s the one that exists in most mainstream news accounts, which features a team of investigators mostly going by the book, never leaking, methodically following the facts, albeit very aggressively, wherever they will lead.

The gaping disconnect between these two Mueller probes is driven home by two new pieces: one from New York magazine, which reports alarming new details about Trump’s addiction to Fox News and how that has shaped his perception of the Mueller investigation; and one from The Post, which paints a detailed picture of how the probe has actually been operating day in and day out.

The New York magazine piece reports that former White House advisers Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus sought to deliberately drive Trump deeper into the Fox News bubble, because he was getting overly agitated by criticism on MSNBC and CNN. They did this by talking up Fox’s high ratings and importance to Trump’s base until Trump’s television diet became, as one former official put it, “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/14/alarming-new-revelations-about-trumps-addiction-to-fox-news/?utm_term=.12936d930c71

Complete dosage of Fox… that sounds like the worst kind of dosage ever by the way. The second is that his addiction completely overpowers his thought process. He can’t stand it to go 5 minutes without his vice!

Trump and Hannity don’t usually speak in the morning, which the president spends alone, watching TV and tweeting. During the first months of the administration in particular, the tweets launched at the beginning of the day landed like bitchy little grenades directed at the programming and personalities that angered him on MSNBC and CNN. “Early on, usually we could count on the president watching Morning Joe first thing, at 6 a.m.,” one White House official told me. “He’d watch an hour of that. Then he’d move on to New Day for a segment or two. Then he’d move on to Fox.”

Senior staffers worried about this pattern of behavior: By the time his day was formally under way with the daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office — scheduled as late as 11 a.m. — the whole world was often thrown off course, wondering whether there were “tapes” of his conversations with a fired FBI director (May 12, 2017, 8:26 a.m.) or if a TV host had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at Mar-a-Lago (June 29, 2017, 8:58 a.m.).

With the hope of calming him down, then–chief of staff Reince Priebus and then–press secretary Sean Spicer began a subtle campaign. “It got to the point that they were just like, ‘We need to get him off these channels and onto Fox & Friends or else we’re going to be chasing down this crazy-train bullshit from MSNBC and CNN all day,’ ” one former White House official said.
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/sean-hannity-donald-trump-late-night-calls.html

Did you catch the other sign of his addiction there? Surrounding himself with his enablers – and no one is more of an enabler of Trump than Sean Hannity is. No matter what Hannity is talking about that night, it sets Trump off! But another sign of addiction is that Trump has increased his tolerance for bullshit, like that’s possible!

Donald J. Trump is an experiment in real time, but with no control group. His surreal tenure is an attempt to answer the question: What if we elected someone who does not read and gets all his information from cable news? This is not an exaggeration of any kind. A piece from Olivia Nuzzi, published in New York magazine late Sunday, says once more—this time for the people in the back of the room—that we have elected Fox News Grandpa as President of the United States.

The story's primary concern is Trump's cozy relationship with Sean Hannity, Fox's chief blowhard correspondent. But it also shows just how much Trump behaves like a typical Fox News viewer: He consumes far too much of it every day and far too little of anything else. He lacks reference points for what is happening in the world outside a closed information system tailored to a particular ideological agenda.

There is, for instance, a remarkable story about Trump's shifting viewing habits. He went from watching a number of cable news shows during Executive Time each morning to just Fox & Friends, which he now live-tweets—often using the text of on-screen chyrons verbatim, or misquoting the hosts:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a20681265/trump-fox-news-sean-hannity/

The other sign that Trump may have is his increased paranoia, and lately it’s begun to border on the extreme side. Think of it like a really fucked up season of 24 where the bad guy is in charge and CTU is controlled by what Keifer reacts to on television. Hey that’s meta. This also goes back into being a danger to himself and to others. Since Trump is an addict, maybe it’s time to get him into rehab, perhaps?

CNN's Brian Stelter said on Sunday that President Trump's "addiction" to Fox News leads to impulsive actions and other consequences.

"The line where Fox News ends and where Trump begins is getting blurrier by the day," he said on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

Stelter said there is a lack of quality information reaching the president, so he relies instead on reporters at Fox News.

"Sometimes via TV, sometimes on the phone, sometimes in person," he said.

"His addiction to Fox and to other pro-Trump commentators leads to impulsive actions."
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/382180-cnn-host-trumps-addiction-to-fox-news-leads-to-impulsive-actions

[font size="8"]Trump’s Company
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Come and knock on our door, come and knock on our door… it’s Trump’s company too! So Trump has a threesome of his own that he needs to worry about. Oh come on don’t boo that! Really? We’ve seen a lot of disturbing shit with this president and that’s where you draw the line? Ok fine. I’m of course talking about the tryst between Trump and his current lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and his former lawyer Michael Cohen. So what is the latest news?

When Donald Trump won the presidency, his longtime attorney Michael Cohen seemed in position for a coveted spot in the senior ranks of the White House.

At one point, Cohen topped a list of five candidates for White House counsel, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. He suggested to some Trump allies that he might make a good chief of staff.

But when Trump built his West Wing team, the brash New York lawyer did not make the cut.

Some in Trump's inner circle worried about blowback from Cohen's associations and unorthodox tactics in fixing the New York developer's problems, Trump associates said.

Among those opposed, the associates said, were Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. For his part, Cohen had warned Trump against giving Ivanka Trump and Kushner White House jobs, saying the president would be hammered by complaints of nepotism, according to two people familiar with the matter.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-michael-cohen-trump-danger-20180421-story.html

Yes why???? So if you’re keeping score at home Trump’s mob lawyer Michael Cohen is his fixer, and his fixer is in some deep shit. But here’s the thing – in the mob you always need a fall guy and there’s no perfect fall guy than Michael Cohen:

First, Michael Cohen is obviously in significant legal jeopardy.

Second, it's not at all obvious that President Donald Trump is as well, contrary to the popular narrative that this is the "beginning of the end" for this administration. I have no such confidence.

The problem is that it's extremely difficult to imagine what "significant legal jeopardy" would even mean for Donald Trump; for the moment, his party controls both houses of Congress, and he controls his party.

Even in the event that meaningful malfeasance is brought to light, I am not entirely certain under what circumstances the party would condemn him for it. And the Cohen case, for all the hoopla surrounding it, is not clearly and directly connected with the president to the degree that I would be confident saying it could bring him down, any more than Whitewater brought down former President Bill Clinton.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/19/michael-cohen-investigation-wont-end-trump-presidency.html

Now let’s flip the script and talk about the flip side of Trump’s mob business – and that’s his new (old?) lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Of course you know anything tied to Trump has to be shady and there’s no one in the mob who’s shadier and scarier than Giuliani.

President Donald Trump's new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said Sunday that he can't rule out the possibility of his client's invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the Russia investigation — and that Trump wouldn't have to comply with a subpoena to testify.

"He's the president of the United States. We can assert the same privileges other presidents have," Giuliani said Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week." He added that "we don't have to" comply if Trump is subpoenaed by the special counsel to testify.

Giuliani told NBC News' Peter Alexander on Sunday night that it was less and less likely that Trump would speak with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He said Mueller and his investigators were being "heavy-handed" and were "setting the president up for perjury."

Referring to Martha Stewart's conviction for lying to investigators in an insider trading case in 2004, Giuliani said on ABC News: "They don't have a case on collusion. They don't have obstruction. ... I'm going to walk him into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart did?"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/rudy-giuliani-not-ruling-out-trump-taking-5th-amendment-russia-n871726

So now Trump goes from one lawyer who’s a liar and a fraud to another lawyer who is a liar and a fraud. That’s so meta! And of course you know Trump’s attorneys have their own attorneys! As I keep saying it’s attorney-ception – it’s a trial within a trial within a trial! Where does it begin and where does it end? I hope it doesn’t end with what we were talking about earlier!

The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which hits its one-year mark Thursday, has formed the cloudy backdrop of Donald Trump's presidency — a rolling fog of controversy, much of it self-inflicted, that is a near-constant distraction for the commander in chief.

The Mueller operation, like the former Marine Corps platoon commander who leads it, is secretive and methodical. Ten blocks west in the White House, President Trump combats the probe with bluster, disarray and defiance as he scrambles for survival.

The president vents to associates about the FBI raids on his personal attorney Michael Cohen — as often as "20 times a day," in the estimation of one confidant — and they frequently listen in silence, knowing little they say will soothe him. Trump gripes that he needs better "TV lawyers" to defend him on cable news and is impatient to halt the "witch hunt" that he believes undermines his legitimacy as president. And he plots his battle plans with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, his new legal consigliere.

"We're on the same wavelength," Giuliani said. "We've gone from defense to offense."
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-mueller-investigation-second-year-20180513-story.html

[font size="8"]Oliver North
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The republicans always have a way of picking the best people don’t they? Why yes I do believe that was part of Trump’s campaign, sir! “I pick the best people, OK!”. Well the NRA definitely found the right man for the job in Oliver North, who was recently picked to replace outgoing president Wayne La Pierre. And when you’re under investigation for having ties to a hostile foreign entity, maybe you don’t pick a guy who sold weapons to a hostile foreign entity. Or do you?

The National Rifle Association’s new president, Oliver North — a man who, during the Reagan administration, played a central role in the Iran-Contra scandal and admitted he lied to Congress — has appeared on Fox News two times in as many days to accuse Iran of being a nation of deceivers.

“Never believe an Iranian — because if their lips are moving, they’re lying,” North told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night while discussing the rockets that Israel has accused Iran of firing at their territory from Syria.

The day before, North had repeated that phrase, almost verbatim, while discussing the Iran nuclear deal on “Fox & Friends” in the hours before Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the accord.

“The Iranians have been lying. Every time their lips move, they’re lying,” North said, suggesting that Iran had not abandoned its nuclear ambitions despite the agreement.

He added that Trump should sanction anyone who does business with Iran going forward. “If we sanction [Iran] again, we ought to sanction anybody else who does business with them,” North said. “That’ll stop the Euros from helping to bail them out while they cheat on this program.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oliver-north-iran-nra-president_us_5af3b903e4b0859d11d0338d

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Now just remember that to be high up in the GOP in 2018 you have to have Fox News and Infowars on 24/7 and spout the most batshit crazy bullshit you could ever think possible, which makes Mr. North the right guy for the job! And the other thing you have to do is make yourself a victim, something white male conservative snowflakes know all too well!

Todd Starnes spoke with Lt. Col. Oliver North, who has recently been named the President of the National Rifle Association. Stares asked Lt. Col North about why he accepted the position and also about the attacks the NRA is facing from anti-gun forces.

Lt. Col. North said, "What we're facing is a frontal assault that uses every lever of power against the NRA. They're using legal attacks. They're using cyberattacks. They're using intimidation and threats and harassment. It's pretty clear to me this is a psychological warfare operation that's being waged."
https://radio.foxnews.com/2018/05/10/lt-col-oliver-north-there-is-an-assault-on-the-nra-and-the-constitution/

I know it’s a Fox News link but there’s no one who would know the concept of psychological warfare better than a guy who is one of the world’s most famous weapons traffickers! And speaking of playing the victim, Mr. North has stooped to the unbelievable low of calling victims of a mass shooting “terrorists”. Ah, who am I kidding? Of course it’s believable! I know what year this is!

The newly elected president of the National Rifle Association has claimed that gun control activists, like those who have emerged following a deadly shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in February, are “civil terrorists.”

Oliver North, who is best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal in which profits from weapons sales to Iran were secretly funneled to right-wing guerrillas in Nicaragua, was named the lobbying group’s new president earlier this week. And he has wasted no time attacking activists who have criticized the NRA’s role in continued gun violence.

“They’re not activists—this is civil terrorism. This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America,” Oliver North told the Washington Times. “You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things—even there you didn’t have this kind of thing.”

In referencing Jim Crow, North appeared to be comparing the plight of the NRA with civil rights activists who fought for racial equality in the 1960s, during a time in which many were beaten and murdered. North said NRA leaders had been subjected to personal “threats.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nra-president-oliver-north-says-175639346.html

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! If you think that’s bad, wait until you see the next entry! But at least the parents and Parkland students are, for lack of a better phrase, firing back at the NRA and their evil bullshit:

A Parkland father slammed the newly elected leader of the National Rifle Association for equating gun control activists with "criminal civil terrorists," describing the remark to Newsweek as "hurtful" and hypocritical.

Fred Guttenberg, who has become a prominent gun control activist since his daughter Jaime was shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, was responding to comments Oliver North made in an interview published Wednesday by The Washington Times.

“They’re not activists—this is civil terrorism," North told the conservative-leaning paper. "This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America. You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things—even there you didn’t have this kind of thing.”

North was seemingly equating the attacks against NRA members—including vandalism and receiving personal threats—with the plight of people fighting for racial equality in the 1960s, some of whom were beaten and murdered.
http://www.newsweek.com/parkland-father-slams-nra-oliver-north-terrorists-923416

[font size="8"] The GOP
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One of the most prolific senators of the last 50 years and a guy who once ran for president a long time ago is dying an absolutely horrible death, if you haven’t noticed. I’m of course talking about John McCain, who is suffering from one of the worst types of cancers you could possibly have. But before Mr. McCain dies from this terrible disease, it’s good to know that he’s got friends in high places. Or is it low places? I forget how that song goes. Thank you sir! I mean there’s no one who knows the concept of dignity more than the GOP does!

Despite battling brain cancer with a dire prognosis, Sen. John McCain is not being treated with much respect by some of his political opponents.

A White House official mocked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his battle with the deadly disease during a meeting Thursday, The Hill reported. And earlier a guest on Fox News Business implied that McCain betrayed U.S. secrets when he was tortured as a prisoner of war.

"It doesn't matter, he's dying anyway," press aide Kelly Sadler said about McCain's opposition to CIA nominee Gina Haspel at a meeting of White House communications staffers, according to an unnamed source cited by The Hill's Jordan Fabian.

On Wednesday, McCain urged his fellow senators to reject Haspel's nomination because he does not believe she adequately answered for her role in the CIA's torture program after the 9/11 attacks during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/05/10/white-house-staffer-mocked-mccain/600312002/

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Stay classy guys. Yeah just like Ron Burgundy would say. I think we all are dying anyways, and I know I definitely died a little inside when I heard how cruel the Trump humpers are. But even those in his own party are debunking this nonsense especially when it comes to their president!

Republican senators are demanding a public apology after a White House staffer joked about Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) failing health, even as the administration is doubling down on its decision to handle the fallout "internally."

The growing divisions between the Senate GOP caucus and the White House comes on the eve of a closed-door Tuesday lunch between President Trump and Senate Republicans.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Monday that an apology would be "appropriate ... from the person who said that really dumb thing."

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) called staffer Kelly Sadler’s comments "stupid" and "a big mistake."

"I think the administration should apologize, but I think Mrs. Sadler ... I think she should apologize publicly as well," Kennedy separately told CBS News.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/387688-senate-gop-anger-over-mccain-comment-grows

Really so you helped elect the most boorish, insensitive jackass who’s ever attempted to call himself a leader, and that’s where you draw the line? OK. It’s good to know that the GOP does have its’ limits when it comes to what’s tasteful and what isn’t. For the record they consider Trump’s pee tape with porn stars tasteful. But anything Bill Clinton does isn’t.

Senate Republicans are openly seething over the White House’s treatment of John McCain, casting a pall over the party ahead of a rare lunch with President Donald Trump the caucus is hosting on Tuesday.

The White House’s refusal to apologize for an aide joking about the Arizona senator’s failing health is threatening to undermine what should be a feel-good moment for the caucus.

“Just out of common decency they should apologize. And the person who said it should apologize. It’s wrong,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

With a potential deal with North Korea in the works, the economy humming and Trump following through on his vow to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, Republicans were feeling more upbeat about the administration than they had in months. But the morbid joke by communications aide Kelly Sadler last week, delivered at a staff meeting and promptly leaked to the press, made them wonder when the administration is going to start treating McCain with more respect.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/14/trump-mccain-sadler-republicans-587773

To which we say – good luck with that, sir. This is the Trump administration we are talking about here, they apologize for nothing! But as I said even the most indecent political party in human history at least has its’ limits when it comes to human decency, if that’s a stretch! And the other thing guys, when you’re in a hole, stop digging! I mean its’ kind of good the Trump White House isn’t apologizing, this might be one instance where silence is better than attempting a half assed apology.

Several senior Senate Republicans -- including key members of leadership -- criticized the White House's handling of an impolitic comment made last week by a junior aide about Sen. John McCain "dying" and the administration's refusal to apologize and move on.
"I think an apology is appropriate," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said firmly.

When asked from who, Cornyn said, "From the person who said that really dumb thing."
Cornyn said he would have preferred the White House already put to rest the story, now five days old, which has pitted Trump officials against one of the most revered members of the Senate who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Despite his illness, the Arizona Republican has remained a vocal and active critic of Trump's, which may explain why the White House is reluctant to make peace.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/14/politics/senate-republicans-mccain-white-house/index.html

[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Involuntarily Celibate
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It’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates.

Last month, a terrorist attack happened in Toronto that killed 10 and wounded 15 when a van rammed into a crowd of pedestrians. But now shocking revelations have been made about the toxic, male centric culture that Toronto attacker Alex Minassian was a part of. They call themselves “Involuntarily Celebate”, or shorthand “Incel”. The Incel movement was originally an underground movement consisting of a group of men in online circles who were part of the racist and sexist alt right movement, but with an even more dangerous twist – they claimed women owed them for sex.

A profile on social networking site LinkedIn identifies Minassian as attending Seneca College in suburban North York from 2011-2018. Neighbours told CBC News that he lived with his father.

Speculation surfaced Monday night around a Facebook post associated with the same name and photo as appear on Minassian's LinkedIn site.

Facebook told CBC News that the post from an Alek Minassian was real and was posted publicly on his profile before Facebook shut it down.

The post referred to the "Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger." Rodger was the 22-year-old California man responsible for a deadly rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., that left six people dead and a dozen people wounded.

In a video posted ahead of that 2014 attack, Rodger raged about a number of women turning down his advances, rendering men like him "incels," a term used by some groups to mean "involuntarily celibate."

Rodger referred to men who were successful with women as "Chads" and women who turned men down as "Stacys."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-van-attack-driver-profile-alek-minassian-1.4632435

Yes holy shit indeed. So what is an Incel? The term means “involuntarily celebate” but what does that imply? Well it implies that they hate women for not performing sexual acts with them. So explain this one, how does hating women expect to land you a girlfriend?

What are we to make of “incels,” the oddball community of frustrated guys who go online to complain about how they can’t find women who want to have sex with them?

Gee, I wonder why?

There’s room for all sorts of opinions on the web, I like to think. But this one has turned deadly. An incel, which stands for “involuntary celibate,” is blamed for driving a rented van that jumped the sidewalk and plowed into pedestrians on a Toronto street on April 23.

Police charged Alek Minassian, 25, of Toronto with killing 10 people and injuring 15, most of whom were women. Before the attack, authorities say, he posted a message on his Facebook page to announce his incel ties.

“The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” it said in part. “We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
http://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/incels-as-if-hating-women-could-get-you-a-girlfriend/article_8f557c09-f9c4-50e2-9f17-b99614f4a8d7.html

But there’s more to this. They’re not just a bunch of creepy perverts hanging out online. They seem to have a love of some dark and twisted shit. For instance – their love of serial killers and terrorists isn’t exactly anything new but definitely creepy.

That’s incel-speak. “Chads” in their world are guys who are cool and good-looking enough to attract what incels feel unfairly denied, sex with attractive and sexually active “Stacys.” “Supreme gentleman” and “perfect guy” is how Elliot Rodger, perversely an incel patron saint, described himself in a lengthy manifesto before he killed six people and injured 14 others in a 2014 shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, Calif.

He wrote a manifesto blaming women for his loneliness and the fact that he was still a virgin. “I’m the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman,” he wrote.

Now, that sad, delusional loner appears to have posthumously inspired his own sick, posthumous personality cult — and at least one copycat, Minassian.

Other mass murderers are treated like heroes in the looniest incel chatter. “Going Sodini,” for example, refers to George Sodini, 48, who opened fire in a women’s dance class at an LA Fitness gym near Pittsburgh, killing four — including himself — and wounding nine others

And that can’t be good for anybody. But Incels aren’t just looking for sex. They are looking for conservative white supremacy. Supremacy of anything is never a good thing, but these men are proud of being males and they won’t accept the fact that someone might be better than them.

These days, in this country, sex has become a hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, and, like any hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, it often makes people feel very bad. Our newest sex technologies, such as Tinder and Grindr, are built to carefully match people by looks above all else. Sexual value continues to accrue to abled over disabled, cis over trans, thin over fat, tall over short, white over nonwhite, rich over poor. There is an absurd mismatch in the way that straight men and women are taught to respond to these circumstances. Women are socialized from childhood to blame themselves if they feel undesirable, to believe that they will be unacceptable unless they spend time and money and mental effort being pretty and amenable and appealing to men. Conventional femininity teaches women to be good partners to men as a basic moral requirement: a woman should provide her man a support system, and be an ideal accessory for him, and it is her job to convince him, and the world, that she is good.

Men, like women, blame women if they feel undesirable. And, as women gain the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners, men have generated ideas about self-improvement that are sometimes inextricable from violent rage.

Several distinct cultural changes have created a situation in which many men who hate women do not have the access to women’s bodies that they would have had in an earlier era. The sexual revolution urged women to seek liberation. The self-esteem movement taught women that they were valuable beyond what convention might dictate. The rise of mainstream feminism gave women certainty and company in these convictions. And the Internet-enabled efficiency of today’s sexual marketplace allowed people to find potential sexual partners with a minimum of barriers and restraints. Most American women now grow up understanding that they can and should choose who they want to have sex with.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rage-of-the-incels

Apparently no one loved them enough when they were little otherwise they wouldn’t think they are the superior specimen. That is it this week for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters, it’s time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate, for the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it’s time for our weekly duty to remind you that the holiest among us are the most full of:

How great is the Top 10 gospel choir? Let’s give it up for them! Can I get a hallelujah? So the Christian right seems hell bent on bringing about Armageddon and they are doing so at what seems like a rabbits’ pace since the election of the Dark One. Now the Dark One opened the new American embassy in Jerusalem last week and this is the man who they have chosen to lead the services:

A Dallas evangelical pastor who once said that Jewish people are going to hell and a megachurch televangelist who claimed that Hitler was part of God’s plan to return Jews to Israel both played prominent roles on Monday in the opening ceremony of the new American Embassy in Jerusalem.

Robert Jeffress, who spoke at President Trump’s private inaugural prayer service and is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, delivered a prayer at the opening ceremony on Monday, while the Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist who founded Christians United for Israel and leads a San Antonio megachurch, gave the closing benediction.

Despite their comments about Jewish people, the two pastors are among the leading pro-Israel voices in the evangelical Christian world. Some evangelicals believe that American foreign policy should support Israel to help fulfill biblical prophecies about the second coming of Christ.

The decision by Mr. Trump to move the embassy from Tel Aviv fulfilled a major campaign promise and handed a victory to hard-line pro-Israel Americans, as well as conservative and evangelical Christians who have long wanted the United States’ diplomatic home to be in Jerusalem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/world/middleeast/robert-jeffress-embassy-jerusalem-us.html

Well there may not be a tomorrow if this keeps unfolding the way it is unfolding! But of course leave it to Trump to get the biggest bigots, the worst kinds of pastors to lead the opening prayers at the embassy of Jerusalem. RIP separation of church and state by the way, you will be missed!

Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress spoke at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem May 14. Here's a look at some of his controversial statements. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

Well before he was asked to offer a prayer at Monday’s ceremony marking the U.S. Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, earning the enmity of Mitt Romney, Pastor Robert Jeffress offered tangential insight into why he and many evangelicals think the move was so important.

“Jerusalem has been the object of the affection of both Jews and Christians down through history and the touchstone of prophecy,” Jeffress told CNN last year. “But, most importantly, God gave Jerusalem — and the rest of the Holy Land — to the Jewish people.”

The latter half of that quote hints at the deep religious meaning of the existence of Israel for Jeffress and other Christians. As University of North Texas professor Elizabeth Oldmixon told Vox last year, the issue of recognizing Jerusalem is inextricable from that belief.

“The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God’s promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It’s not just something in antiquity,” Oldmixon said. “When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It’s viewed as a historical and biblical capital.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/half-of-evangelicals-support-israel-because-they-believe-it-is-important-for-fulfilling-end-times-prophecy/?utm_term=.88fdaf6e2aa7

You know having Pastor Jeffress speaking in Jerusalem, you might as well just skip a step and invite Hitler and Satan themselves!!! For Pastor Jeffress has committed the sin of blasphemy, and it is one of the most egregious of SINS!!!! Because in our good book that is something that in the eyes of the good LAWRD JAYSUS would not have wanted! Because JAYSUS said “the dark one shall pose as a creature of light”. And there shall be no darker one than that of Donald J. Trump!!!

Radical anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively appeared on the “Point Of View” radio program yesterday to discuss his campaign for governor in Massachusetts, during which he claimed to have received “spiritual confirmation” that President Trump has been transformed “into a man of God” and urged Christians to model themselves after Trump.

Lively has made his support for Trump a centerpiece of his campaign, declaring that Trump is a political genius and “God’s man” and pledging to be “the most pro-Trump governor in America,” and he reiterated that position during yesterday’s interview.

“I’m a strong supporter of President Trump,” Lively said. “I believe he was transformed from a somewhat reprobate New York liberal into a man of God, God’s man in the White House today. I saw the transformation myself—I had a spiritual confirmation, sort of an endorsement of the idea. He has shown the example of speaking boldly and not being intimidated and not backing down on the things that are important and essential.”

Evangelicals, Lively asserted, can make America great again “if Christians would simply follow that model.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/scott-lively-received-spiritual-confirmation-that-trump-has-been-transformed-into-a-man-of-god/

I think even somewhere Jesus right now is going "do not want". Thank you! But these are the kinds of folks we’re dealing with here. Dark ones posing as creatures of light! And there be no darker one than the evangelical who supports this DAYMON!!!! I don’t know about you – but I would much prefer a church that teaches that humanity can do good, rather than one that brings about the end of times!!!!

One of President Trump's closest evangelical advisers gave the prayer Monday at the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. But Robert Jeffress's past comments about other faiths, including Judaism, followed him to the event.

Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas, regularly talks about the significance of Jerusalem to conservative Christians — a major component of Trump’s base of supporters.

Long before Jeffress began defending Trump on cable news, he made headlines for attacking other Americans whose faith is different from his own — something former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney noted Sunday on Twitter.

“Robert Jeffress says 'you can’t be saved by being a Jew,' and 'Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.' He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem,” tweeted Romney, a candidate for the Senate in Utah and a Mormon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/14/a-look-at-robert-jeffress-the-controversial-figure-giving-the-prayer-at-the-u-s-embassy-in-jerusalem-today/?utm_term=.c654323f7398

And yes I’m afraid it may come to that, because we need to cleanse our planet of these fools, liars and hypocrites!!! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Alex Jones
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If you’ve been reading the political Twittersphere, and why wouldn’t you? Since the guy who we call “president” spends most of his early AM attempting to take a shit while angrily tweeting about whatever bullshit he might have seen on Fox & Friends, or on Sean Hannity the previous night. I’ll leave you with that image, and I would hate to be the White House employee who has to clean up after him. Worst government job ever. Well, you may have seen trolls referring to a hashtag on Twitter called “Qanon” which is an account originating from the 4Chan message board claiming to be an insider in the Trump White House who claims that they have inside dirt on elected democrats including Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Well guess what? This week Alex Jones revealed some surprising insights into the “Qanon” account.

As Jared reported earlier today, Jerome Corsi, the Washington bureau chief for Alex Jones’ Infowars, who has spent hours online every day for the last several months “decoding” the cryptic message-board posts made by an anonymous figure known as “QAnon,” has declared that “Q” has been “compromised” and that his postings can no longer be trusted.

Many fringe right-wing activists believe that QAnon was a high-level Trump administration official who has been leaking secret intelligence information to them via the anonymous message boards 4chan and 8chan and Corsi was among the most vocal proponents of the theory, having once even claimed that President Trump himself had directly ordered QAnon to release information.

Recently, Corsi began to sour on QAnon and today he joined Jones on his radio program where Jones claimed that he had personally spoken with QAnon and had been told that the account had been compromised and should no longer be trusted.

“I was on the phone this morning talking to some folks who were out playing golf with people that have been involved in QAnon, they say, ‘Hey, that’s been taken over, we’re unable to even post anymore, that’s not us anymore,'” Jones said. “I’ve talked to QAnon. There is only about five or six that have actually be posting. I’ve talked to QAnon and they are saying QAnon is no longer QAnon.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/stick-a-fork-in-qanon-alex-jones-and-jerome-corsi-claim-that-qanon-has-been-completely-compromised/

Yes let’s. I have so many questions about this. How… who… what… how does Alex know who Qanon is unless it was someone inside Infowars? And how can it be compromised? Oh this isn’t even the weirdest thing Mr. Jones has done this week! We’ve talked about “The Storm” many times on this program, but how can you prove it exists? Well…

Jerome Corsi, the Washington bureau chief for Alex Jones’ Infowars, has been growing increasingly frustrated with the anonymous source at the center of the “QAnon” conspiracy theory and is now publicly doubting a piece of “evidence” that he once touted as irrefutable proof that the conspiracy was real.

Earlier this year, Corsi emerged as one of the leading figures promoting a conspiracy theory known as “The Storm.” Adherents to The Storm believe that a high-level Trump administration official is leaking secret intelligence information to them via the anonymous message boards 4chan and 8chan; Corsi once claimed that President Trump himself had directly ordered that activity.

Corsi has begun to sour on Q, as the anonymous poster is known, after Q alleged that people like Corsi who are using the laughably fake conspiracy theory to enrich themselves. As a result, Corsi has started to publicly doubt the authenticity of a grainy photo of an ink pen that he once claimed “pretty much authenticates that QAnon is very close to Donald Trump.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jerome-corsi-reverses-on-image-he-once-said-authenticates-qanon-conspiracy-theory/

So let’s contemplate this for a minute. Alex Jones has talked to Trump, Infowars has a bureau inside the White House… maybe it’s someone within Infowars? And how can they be compromised unless it was just someone fucking with people?

The fringiest part of the right wing fringe, the ones who have been pushing this idiotic conspiracy theory about Trump destroying a global pedophile ring based on cryptic 8Chan postings by someone called Q Anon, is now splitting up over whether Q is authentic or not. Jerome Corsi’s total 180 on this is particularly amusing. He once claimed that a picture posted by Q was proof that he is very close to Trump, and might even be Trump himself:

The picture was of a pen on a desk, which got Corsi just trembling with excitement.

“That’s the Laurel desk,” Corsi said while discussing the image in question. “It’s the one that Obama used and apparently Trump is also using at Camp David. That’s the desktop at Camp David.”

“The pen is a Montblanc ink pen that Trump has used for a long time,” Corsi continued. “That’s Camp David over the weekend and that picture had to have been taken by somebody who was there with President Trump. His pen on the desk; that pretty much authenticates that QAnon is very close to Donald Trump and present in some of these really important inner circle White House meetings.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2018/05/14/wingnutosphere-now-splitting-over-qanon/

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So you’re trying to prove a conspiracy through the use of the same pen? That would be like trying to prove your wife is having an affair because you saw her and the guy she was seeing in the same hotel and they were eating the same mints! But in the era of fake news, nobody does it faker than Alex Jones and Jerome Corsi. Yes that is a thing. Look it up.

Alex Jones is claiming that the end has come for the anonymous QAnon account, which right-wing supporters believed to be run by a high-level Trump administration official (or officials) leaking classified intelligence on message boards like 4chan.

QAnon had for months dropped “breadcrumbs” of clues they said would lead to the revelation of a huge sex trafficking conspiracy at the highest levels of government. Jerome Corsi, the Washington bureau chief for Jones’ Infowars, had for months been following the trail of breadcrumbs, aka “decoding” cryptic messageboard posts by the anonymous figure.

But recently Corsi wasn’t getting the info he wanted from the source, and now Jones claims he’s talked to the people behind QAnon. Jones said the account has been “taken over,” left-wing advocacy group Right Wing Watch reported Friday.

“I was on the phone this morning talking to some folks who were out playing golf with people that have been involved in QAnon, they say, ‘Hey, that’s been taken over, we’re unable to even post anymore, that’s not us anymore,’” Jones said on his radio show. “I’ve talked to QAnon. There is only about five or six that have actually be posting. I’ve talked to QAnon and they are saying QAnon is no longer QAnon.”
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/alex-jones-qanon-compromised/

[font size="8"]I Need A Drink
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It’s time for a new installment of:

And man do I need a drink this week! Considering how dark this week has been – I mean we’re on the verge of the apocalypse here! But I have some good news to report for a change and that’s why we’re celebrating with some drinking! So tell me bartender, what goes well with sports gambling? Tall boys of Bud Light? I’m in! I’ll take five of those thanks. So the Supreme Court, in a near unanimous ruling, overturned the long time federal ban on sports gambling. So what does that mean?

The Supreme Court has struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively prevented most states from legalizing sports betting, clearing up a legal gray area and opening a door for state governments to join in what has become a lucrative industry.

"Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own," the court wrote in a decision released Monday.

The law known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, passed in 1992, prohibited sports betting, except in four states where it had already been legalized — Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon. It gave the other states one year to legalize such betting, if they wanted to.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/14/589087523/supreme-court-rules-states-are-free-to-legalize-sports-betting

Wait a minute Homer, not just yet. So the Supreme Court just made it legal across the land to gamble on sports. Now you might be asking “how does this affect Pete Rose”? Well of course his name is synonymous with sports betting so here is the answer!

It may not have felt like it, but Monday was a watershed day for sports.

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act that had outlawed sports betting outside of the state of Nevada. That will allow other states to offer legalized sports betting if they so choose.

Not long after the Supreme Court's ruling, Pete Rose's name began to trend on Twitter.

Rose agreed in 1989 to a permanent ban for gambling, although he denied at the time that he had bet on baseball games. In 2007, Rose admitted that he had bet on games every night while he was managing the Reds. That admission didn't change Major League Baseball's outlook on Rose's ban.
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/for-petes-sake/article211104844.html

So yeah Pete Rose unfortunately is still Pete Rose – ban or no ban. But what does this mean for the future of gambling? Well like most things that are American, it will be loud, it will be proud, it will be in your face, and it will be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Because if there’s money to be made, people are going to come for it! Like vultures.

The United States Supreme Court delivered a historic decision Monday morning, ruling the federal law banning sports betting in most states was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court voted 7-2 in favor of striking down the ban.

Long story short, Monday's ruling allows states to pass their own sports betting laws. It will take some time for those laws to be put into place -- New Jersey, which brought the case to the Supreme Court, is the state most ready to jump into action right now -- but the road has been paved.

Major League Baseball issued the following statement following Monday's ruling:

"Today's decision by the United States Supreme Court will have profound effects on Major League Baseball. As each state considers whether to allow sports betting, we will continue to seek the proper protections for our sport, in partnership with other professional sports. Our most important priority is protecting the integrity of our games. We will continue to support legislation that creates air-tight coordination and partnerships between the state, the casino operators and the governing bodies in sports toward that goal."

MLB has a long and complicated history with sports betting. What does Monday's ruling mean for the league? Here are four things to know.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/what-the-supreme-courts-ruling-to-allow-states-to-legalize-sports-gambling-means-for-mlb-the-players-and-pete-rose/

“There is going to be so much winning that we will be sick of winning, OK! Totally. Unbelievable. I hire the best winners!”. But of the four major leagues in the US – the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, and the MLB, you know which league is going to benefit the most? Yup! You guessed it!

Although it is always difficult to read the tea leaves about court cases, especially in the United States Supreme Court, I noticed a clear preference from the Court for striking down PASPA, the law preventing implementation of state sports betting, when I attended oral arguments on December 4, 2017 (discussed here). Well, the tea leaves were right. The world as we know it with sports betting in this country changed yesterday at 10 a.m. with the 7-2 opinion in favor of New Jersey, allowing that state, and a caravan of others to follow, to implement sports betting. Welcome to the future.

Here is a quick look at the opinion, with a longer discussion of the impact on the NFL and beyond:
The Opinion

Let’s clear up some confusion about what the decision did or did not say. The Supreme Court did not grant a consitutional right to sports gambling. This is a case about states’ rights prevailing over federal “authorization.” As the opinion of Justice Alito noted: “We have always understood that even where Congress has the authority under the Constitution to pass laws requiring or prohibiting certain acts, it lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit those acts.”
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/05/15/us-supreme-court-ruling-sports-gambling-nfl

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[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest: Round 2 Week 4
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16 states will enter, but only one will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State!

Welcome back! I hope you all filled out your brackets! Round 2 of the tournament is over and man there have been some exciting developments. Last week we were live at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento where Wisconsin pulled it out against West Virginia to advance to the Final Four! And this week, we’re live at a venue that has hosted many real life Final Fours, the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California where we will have our last double matchup of the tournament! This is it! The last double matchup of the tournament. We have all four corners of conservativism represented – god, guns, greed, and batshit insanity! Only two of these teams will move onto the finals at Staples Center, the losers will go home. So who will it be this week? Let’s find out!

[font size="6"]Flyover League Championship: Kentucky Vs Wisconsin [/font]

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

We are into the stretch here people! One more week and we will be putting Stupidest State 2018 to bed for Season 4. But it’s been great. We still have two matchups to go. First up is Kentucky – this year’s king of batshit has certainly proven their credentials this far as to why they are the craziest state in the union not named Florida. Just like their college basketball team, the Wildcats of UK, have generated all star after all star, Kentucky has done the same! They have given us Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell (Cocaine Mitch as he’s now called) and Kim Davis and Matt Bevin. But one of the craziest states in the union certainly isn’t done yet!

Eddie Devine voted for President Donald Trump because he thought he would be good for American business. Now, he says, the Trump administration’s restrictions on seasonal foreign labor may put him out of business.

“I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” said Devine, owner of Harrodsburg-based Devine Creations Landscaping. “I feel so stupid.”

Devine says it has been years since he could find enough dependable, drug-free American workers for his $12-an-hour jobs mowing and tending landscapes for cemeteries, shopping centers and apartment complexes across Central Kentucky.

So for years he has hired 20 seasonal workers, mostly from Guatemala, through the U.S. Labor Department’s H2-B “guest worker” program. Importing these workers for a few months cost him an additional $18,000 in fees and expenses beyond their wages, which must be the same as he pays American workers. But that’s the only way he could serve his customers.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article210676214.html

Well you know when you fall for a con artist like Trump, don’t be surprised when you get conned. I mean after all, Kentucky was the first state in the union to call it for @realDonaldTrump, so how has he treated his friends so far?

Pikeville -- Martin County's troubled water district failed to meet its first reporting deadline to Kentucky regulators after it was granted an emergency rate increase to prevent its financial collapse.

The failure prompted regulators to threaten the water system again this week with a forced takeover.

The deadlines were issued when the Public Service Commission, the state agency that regulates most utilities in Kentucky, gave the district permission in March to raise rates by 28 percent.

Martin County Water District officials said the district needed an influx of cash to stave off impending financial collapse. As part of the agreement, the PSC ordered the district to submit detailed financial records on the 15th of every month, starting in April.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article210866209.html

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

Ah Wisconsin – another state ravaged by reckless Koch and Heritage Foundation policies. Last week we talked heavily about the teacher protests that have been coming to light because teachers are fed up with the people who we have elected, and why wouldn’t they be? Of course they’ve been getting tricked by slick looking hucksters for 40 years. And then there’s another company coming to Wisconsin, aided by Paul Ryan, called Foxconn. Of course if you do a quick Google search for Foxconn, you can tell all about their egregious human rights violations and horrible working conditions. So how have they treated Wisconsin so far?

Foxconn Technology Group has selected a company led by a Republican megadonor with close ties to Gov. Scott Walker to develop the master plan for its massive campus in Wisconsin.

Foxconn announced Monday that it chose Hammes Company to be the lead developer on the project that will house a display-screen factory on a campus spread over 2,900 acres (1173.61 hectares). Foxconn could qualify for up to $4.5 billion in taxpayer incentives.

Hammes is led by Jon Hammes, Walker's campaign finance chairman for his re-election bid. Hammes is part owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and causes over the years.

Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Martha Laning says the Foxconn project "is all about helping Scott Walker save his own career and not about the people of Wisconsin."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-foxconn-walker-developer-20180514-story.html

Yup – a little “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” variety of quid pro quo! And it’s good to know that Scott Walker has the best interests of the good people of Wisconsin at heart! Because air, water, who needs these things? There’s profits to be made!

As Wisconsin taxpayers eyeball the budget-busting Foxconn costs legislators committed them to — originally $3 billion, to the now projected $4.47 billion, an almost 50 percent increase — Manitowoc County residents will endure environmental degradation, health risks and commercial losses.

Whether Wisconsin's environmental waivers for Foxconn comply with the Great Lakes Compact is a potential litigation cost for taxpayers. Dave Dempsey of the water protection group For the Love of Water (FLOW) argues "the Racine proposal should not have been approved under the Compact and Wisconsin law because (a) the proposal does not 'solely serve a public water supply purpose' of the straddling community; (b) the public water supply as to the water diverted or to be transferred or diverted does not 'serve largely residential users;' and (c) Racine does not qualify under the straddling community definition."

Litigation costs will continue to mount as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan files suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stating, "Despite its name, the Environmental Protection Agency now operates with total disregard for the quality of our air and water, and in this case, the U.S. EPA is putting a company’s profit ahead of our natural resources and the public’s health.”
https://www.htrnews.com/story/opinion/2018/05/11/foxconn-wisconsin-could-hurt-manitowoc-air-water-fishing-industry-scott-walker/602260002/

[font size="4"]And the winner is… [/font]

Oh my god! Kentucky pulled it out against Wisconsin and they win by another routing of Wisconsin and this time they win by a whopping 19 points! Final score: 91 – 72! Kentucky will be moving on to the national championship! Cut the net guys you earned it!

[font size="6"]Layover League Championship: Florida Vs Missouri [/font]

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

Ah, Florida, you guys! If you remember last year’s tournament they had a strong presence going into the conference finals but they quickly bowed out due to an utter disaster involving Florida Man’s over inflated ego and his disastrous stunt that cost the team the tournament. Well this year Florida is angry, they’re pissed, and they’re very well armed. In fact this was the state that was the site of that horrific shooting at Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. And you know what? We haven’t learned a damn thing since then!

The National Rifle Association has reportedly filed a lawsuit over Florida gun legislation that was signed into law on Friday.

The lawsuit takes issue with the part of the bill that raises the age limit for purchasing all firearms from 18 to 21, according to the Associated Press. The NRA claims the regulation violates the 2nd amendment.

Florida lawmakers passed a bill this week that implements a three-day waiting period for purchase of most long guns and bans bump stocks, among other regulations. The bill came just a few weeks after the shooting that left 17 dead and more than a dozen injured at a South Florida high school.

Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law on Friday, despite opposition from the NRA

Read more: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/377694-nra-sues-over-new-florida-gun-legislation-report?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Of course if you have an R next to your name, don’t attempt anything even remotely humanly decent or the gun lobby will come to you and give you a stern talking to. You know, kind of like getting sent to the principal’s office except the principal comes to you and humiliates you in front of the class. But of course there’s lots of blame for this shooting, but you know what it really was? Political correctness. Yup, you guessed it!

Stefan Molyneux, a video blogger popular with far-right and alt-right audiences, claimed that it was actually “political correctness” and not loose guns regulations that enabled the mass murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last month.

In a video uploaded yesterday, Molyneux sought to break down what he believed to be “the ugly truth” about the March for Our Lives protests on Saturday, which attracted hundreds of thousands of people across the United States to stand with survivors of the shooting who demanded gun reform measures aimed at making schools safer.

“Now, of course, the proximate cause for all of this was the shooting in Broward County recently—the shooting of the children. And because there is an emotionally reactive group of people who either have never been exposed to the facts and the truth about that shooting, about guns as a whole, or simply have simply ignored it if they have been exposed to it, or they’re simply useful happy bleating idiots—the puppets of the puppet master—speaking out against the elemental freedoms of the United States,” Molyneux said.

“The fact is that it was not fundamentally a gun that killed those kids in the school in Florida. What killed those kids was political correctness,” he said. “What killed those kids was political correctness.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/stefan-molyneux-political-correctness-killed-the-florida-school-shooting-victims-not-guns/

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

OK so we’ve talked about the right wing conspiracy theory known as “the Storm” – the theory that a group of global elites are involved in a child sex trafficking ring that would dwarf anything that’s seen before. But the Show Me State has not only actual child sex trafficking going on, they’re the home of some of the most horrible anit-woman and anti-family laws in the country. Making them one of the most perfect candidates ever to unseat Alabama and win the Family Values Conference! This is from last year but it firmly cements Missouri’s credentials!

The Missouri House is aiming to drastically restrict reproductive rights, including enshrining into law discrimination against people who use contraceptives or have had an abortion.
Planned Parenthood

Reproductive rights in Missouri are set to take a huge leap backward, if the conservative House in that state has its way.

During a special session called by Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, the House passed a stunningly regressive bill that would allow employers and landlords to discriminate against women who have used birth control, had an abortion, or — in a bizarre catch-22 — are pregnant.

The bill actually seeks to undo an existing ordinance in the city of St. Louis that banned such discrimination.

It also includes draconian new regulations on abortion clinics, such as “banning abortion clinic staffers from requesting that ambulances responding to medical emergencies at their facilities avoid using sirens or flashing lights” — something clinics may do to avoid attracting attention from anti-abortion extremists who would use such a sight to push falsified, gratuitous stories that further their agenda.

The bill is a harsher version of one the Missouri Senate passed days prior, which Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri called out for its “medically unnecessary restrictions” on abortion...........................
http://shareblue.com/heartless-missouri-bill-lets-employers-fire-women-for-using-birth-control/

Damn straight that’s republican family values in a nutshell! So Planned Parenthood kills more babies than Nazi Germany according to them. And Missouri’s political credentials? Well their governor Eric Greitens is so bad that the house is threatening to impeach him – and he ran on a family values campaign! So much for that!

JEFFERSON CITY • Legislative leaders announced Thursday night that they will convene a special session on May 18 that could lead to the impeachment of Gov. Eric Greitens.

The announcement was made at a press conference called by Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard and House Speaker Todd Richardson.

The decision was made after 138 House members and 29 Senators signed a petition calling for the session on the controversies surrounding the governor. The session will begin an estimated 30 minutes after the regular session is set to end, Richard told reporters.

Richard was not sure when senators would actually convene because the upper chamber's duties are dependent on what the House does.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/missouri-lawmakers-to-convene-special-session-on-potential-greitens-impeachment/article_f121e6d0-0fc6-5abe-a9c4-e9c20dc243de.html

[font size="4"]And the winner is… [/font]

Another stunner! Florida managed to route Missouri by a whopping 30 points and they take the lead with a new record going into the final round! Final score – 87 – 57! Cut the net guys, you earned it!

[font size="6"]Next Week [/font]

This is it folks! It’s the championship round, and we’re live in a venue that has hosted a whopping 6 Lakers championships and 2 Kings championships – the one and only Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, and only one state can be the winner. Florida. Kentucky. The best of the best. The cream of the crop. One of these two teams will be crowned the 2018 Stupidest State! Stay tuned!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Post Malone[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest is an amazing hip hop artist who recently headlined Coachella and you can see him on tour this summer and at the Hollywood Bowl on June 27th. His latest album is called “Beerbongs and Bentleys”. Playing his song “Stay”, give it up for Post Malone!

See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: City National Grove Of Anaheim, Anaheim, CA
Special Thanks To: City National Grove Management
Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders.
Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders
Writing: Top 10 Writing Department
Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department
Research: Top 10 Research Department
Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department
Legal: Top 10 Legal Department
Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department
HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department
Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc.
Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA
Post Malone Appears Courtesy Of: Republic Records
Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management

Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

&t=1s

May 9, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-17: Wheel Of Corruption & The Prisoner Of Azkaban Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-17: Wheel Of Corruption & The Prisoner Of Azkaban Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! 15 minutes with us can save an average of 15% or more on your car insurance! So we got to start by talking about the Met Gala. This is even more of a nerd prom than the White House Correspondents Dinner. Probably my favorite thing about last night was seeing our good friends in the band Ghost calling out Rhianna for copying their style. Well let’s expand on that a bit. I know next to nothing about the fashion world so nothing in that world makes sense to me. But apparently every year the Met Gala has a theme. And this year the theme was Catholic chic. Yeah those two words don’t exactly don’t go hand in hand, but have you seen what the Pope is wearing lately? He’s fabulous! And the crazy decorations that are all over the Vatican City? Oh honey don’t get me started please! But then there was Jaden Smith. Jaden… what are you doing? Every year for the last two years, Will Smith’s son has brought a truly odd choice of dates with him to the high fashion prom. One year he brought his sister Willow. OK that’s a perfectly normal choice for a date in some eyes. Then last year he brought… his hair. Yes, he brought his hair for a date. Well apparently that relationship didn’t last long because he broke up with his signature dreads. His date this year? He brought a gold record. Yes, not just any gold record – a gold record of his hit single “Icon”. So if we extrapolate this – does that mean that Jaden is dating himself? Or does he only love inanimate objects now? I have so many questions about this! But ain’t nobody got time for that. We have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first John Oliver is back and he delves into the history of Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani:

Hey the Wheel Of Corruption is back everybody! Number one this week is Donald Trump (1). So while the popular opinion is swaying against guns, Trump went to the NRA’s convention and made it clear that he’s the president for the gun nuts. Sigh. In the second slot this week we’re going to take a look at the guy who’s going to replace Wayne La Pierre – Oliver North (2) because in the GOP – traitors never die or even have to answer for their crimes, because, patriotism. In the number three slot this week, our first lady Melania Trump finally unveiled her campaign to end cyberbullying called “Be Best” – and surprise – she’s being accused of plagiarism! At number 4 we’re going to ask “How Is This Still A Thing” and this week we're going to talk separation of church and state and ask "The House Chaplain - How Is This Still A Thing?". In the number 5 slot this week is our weekly investigative piece “Top 10 Investigates” and this week we’re going to talk about Amazon. So Amazon is shopping around for where they’re going to put their new mega warehouse, but is that something you really want in your city? At number 6 this week – is our weekly sermon of all things holy, Holy Shit, and this week we’re going to have some fun and explore Jim Bakker’s end times product line. In the number 7 slot this week we’ve got a new installment of “People Who Somehow Got Elected” and this week we’re going to profile Kentucky governor Matt Bevin. Whew, he is crazy. Taking the 8th slot this week is our old buddy Alex Jones and this week he dropped one batshit crazy theory that wouldn’t seem out of place in the Terminator universe. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!!) slot this week we have a new installment of “I Need A Drink” and this week we are going to get drunk and tell you all the ways you can make money off the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry to Megan Markle. Because we care. Finally this week we’ve got the finale for Round 2 of our Stupidest State contest! This week we’re live at Sacramento’s new Golden 1 Center and it’s a battle to see who can go for broke as Wisconsin takes on West Virginia in a battle for the Fiscal Irresponsibility Championship! Plus we’ve got some live music for you from A Perfect Circle! Really, if you don’t have their new album “Eat The Elephant” by now, you are no friend of this show! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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[font size="8"]Donald Trump
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Hey everybody! It’s time for the WHEEL OF CORRUPTION!!! Yay!!!!

Of course you know the rules by now – I spin the wheel and we have to talk about whatever it lands on. Of course if it lands on the guacamole option, you know that it costs $1.50 extra. So here’s what is on the wheel this week:

- Guns
- Abortion
- Crime
- Poverty
- Chance
- 5,000
- Infowars
- Nazis
- Go Directly To Jail
- Buy A Vowel
- North Korea
- Lawsuits
- Whammy
- Donald Trump
- People Are Dumb
- ‘Merica!
- How Is This Still A Thing?
- A Random Tweet
- 10,000
- Community Chest
- Talk Shows
- Clip Without Context
- Something Random In The News
- Fox News
- Top 10 Investigates
- Polls
- Chance
- Nukes
- Protests
- Intermission
- 15,000
- Bankrupt
- Morally Bankrupt
- Golf
- The GOP
- Butter Beer
- Community Chest
- Florida (Obviously)
- This Fucking Guy
- Beating A Dead Horse
- Holy Shit
- Guacamole ($1.50 Extra)
- Harry Potter
- T-Shirt Cannon
- ? (Mystery Item)
- I Need A Drink
- Lightning Round
- Bonus Spin

Let’s get this going! Spin that shit! Wheel goes ‘round, wheel goes ‘round… and it lands on… oh look a clip without context!

I think I’ll side with the witches thanks! Spin it again… guns! Sigh… people, have we learned nothing from the recent events? So the popular opinion right now is moving away from the theory that guns are good, and saying that – wait for it – guns are not good! Yeah they might, I don’t know, kill people? OK I’ll take the blame coming from the gun nuts and own that shit! So the gun nuts basically took a massive shit on all the people killed by guns in the last year in senseless tragedies by turning out in record numbers.

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting this year in Dallas set an attendance record, an NRA spokesperson tweeted on Monday.

Dana Loesch said that 87,154 people attended the convention over the three-day weekend.

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting this year in Dallas set an attendance record, an NRA spokesperson tweeted on Monday.

Dana Loesch said that 87,154 people attended the convention over the three-day weekend.

President Trump and Vice President Pence both attended the NRA convention last week.

Because Secret Service policy prohibits firearms at events Trump or Pence attend, guns were banned at certain events, sparking criticism.

Trump also triggered controversy with his speech, during which he railed against immigrants, Democrats and France and Britain’s gun laws.

“They took their time and gunned them down one by one — boom, come over here, boom, come over here, boom,” Trump said, referring to victims fatally shot in Paris while pointing his hand as if it were a gun.

The French foreign ministry later expressed its "firm disapproval of President Trump's remarks," adding in a statement the nation "calls for the respect of the memory of the victims.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/386522-nra-annual-meeting-sets-attendance-record

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! You know it fucking sucks in this country when we have a mass shooting in this country and it drums up *MORE* interest in guns and America’s addiction with the killing machines. It sucks even more when the guy who’s supposed to unite us in a time of tragedy is instead siding with the people who cause it.

US President Donald Trump took aim at two of America's closest allies in a speech at the NRA convention, saying strict gun laws failed to prevent the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and highlighting a purported increase in knife violence in London.

The comments provoked anger in both France and Britain.

France was especially incensed after Trump, while speaking at the gun rights convention in Dallas on Friday, pointed his hand as if it were a gun while describing how each of the victims in Paris was fatally shot.

"They took their time and gunned them down one by one -- boom, come over here, boom, come over here, boom," he said.

The French foreign ministry issued a statement Saturday after Trump's comments.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/05/politics/trump-nra-speech-angers-french/index.html

Leave it to the guy who we currently call president to turn an innocent speech into an international incident. “I have the best speeches, OK?”. And by the way, when you’re seeking help for the midterms, maybe you don’t go to the people who vote with their guns, OK?

DALLAS — President Trump made a passionate appeal to the National Rifle Association on Friday to help him in the midterm elections, renewing his longstanding bond with the controversial gun-rights group just months after criticizing members of Congress for being overly deferential to the gun lobby.

After a season of tumult in the national debate over gun violence, Mr. Trump left little doubt about his political allegiance at the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Texas. The president, who briefly mulled a package of incremental gun-control measures after a February high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., cast himself as a lock step ally for the organization and implored its members to vote in November.

“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege,” Mr. Trump said. “But they will never, ever be under siege as long as I am your president.”

Mr. Trump’s visit to the convention, alongside Vice President Mike Pence, amounted to an unreserved show of support for the N.R.A., and a further signal that Democrats and Republicans are likely to campaign on diametrically opposed gun-policy platforms this year. Most Democrats have endorsed an assortment of new gun regulations and many have attacked the N.R.A. by name.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/trump-pence-national-rifle-association.html

Uh, no, you fucking idiots. Nobody’s second amendment rights are under siege. We’re the only country in the entire world where 50 people are killed in a mass shooting and our first thought is “but were the guns hurt?”. So where does the NRA stand on controlling its’ own product? And nothing says “having fun” like endlessly quoting gun statistics!

DALLAS ― John Lott, the National Rifle Association’s favorite academic and gun researcher, had a question for the mostly older, white, male crowd seated in front of him.

How many of them had heard someone say that federal gun research has been stymied for years because of Congress? Or that the U.S. has a uniquely high rate of gun homicide compared to other nations? Or that guns make suicide easier?

All those claims were lies, he said, told by gun control advocates and repeated by an unquestioning media intent on pushing an anti-gun agenda.

Over the weekend the NRA held its 147th annual convention, and Lott, whose highly discredited book More Guns, Less Crime, is considered the bible of the gun lobby, addressed a packed room inside the Kay Hutchison Convention Center here in downtown Dallas. For three days, gun rights enthusiasts gathered to peruse the newest firearms and gear, attend educational seminars such as “Refuse to be a victim: Crime prevention strategies,” and “14 factors impacting your shooting performance under duress,” and to simply have fun.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nra-convention-dallas-gun-rights_us_5af06108e4b0ab5c3d67cce9

[font size="8"]Oliver North
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Let’s spin that shit! Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… stop! It’s another clip without context!

To which I counter that clip with another clip:

Spin it again! Guns! Crooks in the GOP never seem to go away. In fact if you’re in the GOP and you have committed a crime – even if that crime is some right treason, somehow the republicans will love you more! Remember when Trump said he could literally shoot someone on 5th Avenue and he’d still have 90% of the republican base? Yeah there’s always that. Now, the NRA has literally embraced treason by naming this guy as their new president and CEO when Wayne La Pierre steps down!

Oliver North, the Fox News contributor and central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, will be the National Rifle Association's new president, the group announced Monday.
"Oliver North is, hands down, the absolute best choice to lead our NRA Board, to fully engage with our members, and to unflinchingly stand and fight for the great freedoms he has defended his entire life," NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre said in a statement on the pick.
In his statement, LaPierre compared North favorably to Charlton Heston, the Hollywood icon who was once president of the group.
North will become president "within a few weeks," the group said, and is retiring from his position at Fox News, effective immediately.

North will join the NRA at an increasingly contentious juncture for the group, facing off against a renewed push for gun control in the wake of the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Some survivors of the shooting have emerged as prominent voices in favor of gun control measures and have accused the NRA of endangering lives through political influence.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/07/politics/nra-oliver-north/index.html

Yes, why is the question I have? Guys like this never seem to go away. Want proof? Remember last year how insane the Roy Moore for Senate campaign was? Now he is apparently running for governor of the same state! We’re just going to find out more weird and creepy things about him. Now that Oliver North is back in the news we’re going to learn about his past exploits, which may or may not have included some light treason.

He once stood at the center of an international political scandal, becoming a household name for destroying government documents and lying to members of Congress.

That was more than three decades ago.

Now, Oliver North, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, has a new job: president of the National Rifle Assn.

On Monday, the NRA's board of directors announced that the organization would now be headed by North, who many gun rights supporters are banking will be able to rally the base at a time when gun control groups believe momentum is on their side in the highly polarized national debate over firearms. In recent months, the powerful special-interest group has faced an onslaught of criticism from gun control organizations and has seen pushback in polls following mass shootings at a Florida high school and a country music festival in Las Vegas.

Robert Spitzer, who has written extensively on politics and gun control, said North is "a sort-of celebrity who raises the organization's visibility among its base," which is helpful ahead of the November election.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-oliver-north-nra-20180508-story.html

Yes, Oliver North may have committed some light treason back in the 80s, but he plays the patriot card and plays it well – which makes him the perfect guy to tell other patriots that the less patriotic candidate is coming to take your guns away!

Sometimes it feels as though the current moment in American history is unique. At other times, there’s a disquieting déjà vu—for example, this week, when Daniel Ortega, the Nicaragua Sandinista leader, and Ollie North, the American Marine who funneled weapons to his right-wing opponents, the Contras, are both in the news.

Ortega, now president once again, is holding on for bare political life amid protests in his country. North, it turns out, is about to take over another controversial, oft-protested body: The National Rifle Association announced Monday that North will be its next president.

From a certain angle, North’s ascension is a peculiar choice for the NRA, both given the current political moment and given North’s own history. North came to national prominence in the Iran-Contra affair, in which the U.S. illegally sold weapons to Iran—violating an arms embargo—then funneled the proceeds to the Contras, who were fighting Ortega’s left-wing government. North, a Vietnam veteran, was then a lieutenant colonel serving on the National Security Council. He was charged with various felonies related to Iran-Contra and convicted of three. The New York Times editorial board tartly panned his verdict: “Oliver North won’t go to prison even though he lied to Congress, shredded White House documents and accepted a $14,000 security fence from an Iran-contra arms profiteer.” As it turned out, North’s convictions were reversed and vacated altogether because a judge ruled that the prosecution had used testimony North offered Congress under an immunity agreement.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/ollie-north-nra-double-down/559823/

Oh come on – he’s just like Trump! He wants to build a wall and shredded official White House documents in an effort to gain immunity! I mean with the NRA being fingered in Mueller’s investigation, what’s there to stop him from taking the 5th again? After all, Mr. North does have experience in this sort of thing!

The National Rifle Association reported this week that it received more money from people with Russian ties than it has previously acknowledged, but announced that it was officially done cooperating with a congressional inquiry exploring whether illicit Kremlin-linked funding passed through the NRA and into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said on Wednesday.

Wyden released a letter from the NRA, dated Tuesday, in which the gun rights group reported receiving $2,512.85 in contributions and membership dues “from people associated with Russian addresses” or known Russian nationals living in the United States from 2015 to the present. In the past, a congressional aide to Wyden said, the group had confirmed receiving only one financial contribution, in the form of a lifetime membership purchased by Alexander Torshin, a Russian banker.

Torshin, a gun enthusiast and an associate of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, is the focus of an FBI investigation into whether any Russian money was funneled through the NRA and on to the Trump campaign, perhaps through NRA entities not required to disclose their funding sources. The Trump administration imposed stiff sanctions last week against Torshin, who has denied wrongdoing, and six other Russian oligarchs and 17 Russian government officials in response to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/11/nra-russia-money-guns-516804

[font size="8"]Melania Trump
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Let’s spin the wheel shall we? Come on, no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy, stop! And it lands on… no, a whammy!!!

Spin it again… and lt lands on Morally Bankrupt. So of course you know that every first lady since the dawn of time has been given their own mission. And most usually start theirs the day after inauguration day. Well when you’re Melania Trump and you’re married to the biggest cyber bully in the entire world, choosing to go on a quest to end cyber bullying, may not exactly be your strong point. Oh and did we mention it’s taken 1 year and 3 months to come up with a campaign and name?

Melania Trump, nearly 16 months into her tenure as first lady, has at last revealed her formal platform: "Be Best." The comprehensive program will focus on three main points -- well-being, fighting opioid abuse and positivity on social media -- and is the culmination of the past several months of Trump's various public events, all of which centered around helping children.

"As a mother and as first lady, it concerns me that in today's fast-paced and ever-connected world, children can be less prepared to express or manage their emotions and oftentimes turn to forms of destructive or addictive behavior such as bullying, drug addiction or even suicide," she said during a Rose Garden event Monday.

"I feel strongly that as adults we can and should be best at educating our children about the importance of a healthy and balanced life," the first lady said.
Trump has in recent weeks experienced a significant surge in support, a new CNN poll revealed Monday, including among women and Democrats.

In a poll conducted by SSRS last week, 57% say they have a favorable impression of Trump, up from 47% in January. This is the biggest number Melania Trump has experienced in any CNN polling, and higher than any favorability rating earned by President Donald Trump in CNN polling history going back to 1999.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/07/politics/melania-trump-unveils-platform-be-best/index.html

You know Melania, you’re missing the word “the” in there. “Be Best”? I mean the song doesn’t doesn’t go “You be best! Whoa, nothing’s ever gonna keep you down!”. But really? That’s the best thing they could come up with? Oh and hey Melania if you really care about cyberbullying you’d divorce your husband. Just saying. Let’s explore this further.

Some people think parts of first lady Melania Trump's "Be Best" initiative aren't entirely her own.

Trump announced the program Monday. It focuses on three main points regarding kids: well-being, fighting opioid abuse and positivity on social media.

Critics are taking issue with a pamphlet about children's online habits that the White House released as part of her initiative, saying it looks eerily similar to one released by the Federal Trade Commission in 2014.

But the White House always credited the FTC for the pamphlet. Initially it gave the FTC dual writing credit with the first lady, but it later changed the wording on its website to say Melania Trump was promoting the materials.

A Trump administration official told The Guardian the wording had been changed in order to clear up any confusion.
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/newsy/did-melania-trump-actually-plagiarize-part-of-her-be-best-campaign

Yes – wait wait wait wait wait. Wait. Wait. So Melania may have plagiarized a talking point from a previous first lady? Yes bullying is nothing to scoff at. It’s something that kills people. But I still can’t get over the fact that they’re calling it “Be Best”. But apparently it’s not just children who the first lady is targeting.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump is admonishing journalists to “be best” in their jobs following some unflattering news coverage of her initiative to promote child well-being.

The first lady launched the “Be Best” campaign on Monday to encourage adults to help teach children to be good citizens. Several news outlets reported that material she distributed for adults to talk to children about being online was similar to information distributed during the Obama administration.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman, took the “opposition media” to task on Tuesday. She says in a statement that journalists used a day meant to promote positive efforts on behalf of children to lob “baseless accusations towards the first lady.”

Grisham said Monday that the Federal Trade Commission asked Mrs. Trump to include the booklet in her materials.
https://wtop.com/living/2018/05/first-lady-admonishes-reporters-to-be-best-in-their-jobs/

Yes, nobody messes with the Be Best people! Especially those damn fake news reporters! But of course the White House is coming into defense of Melania in spite of the plagiarism accusations.

The White House is miffed that first lady Melania Trump's speech announcing her agenda is being criticized for copying an Obama administration pamphlet on how to talk to kids about online cyber bullying.

A statement issued Tuesday by Trump's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, attacked the "opposition media" for focusing on the strong similarities between two government pamphlets instead of the first lady's Be Best campaign to promote children's well-being during her term.

The statement said Trump's speech on Monday in the Rose Garden was "strong" and "met with a standing ovation and positive feedback."

But Trump critics immediately began tweeting Monday afternoon about the similarities between the Be Best campaign material and an educational booklet, “Talking With Kids About Being Online,” originally produced by the Federal Trade Commission in 2009.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2018/05/08/melania-trumps-best-plans-criticized-copying-obama-era-booklet/590356002/

[font size="8"]The House Chaplain: How Is This Still A Thing?
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Spin that shit! No whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… stop! Racists!

Sure! That will help people identify you as “not a white nationalist”. I want to see that on resumes, people!! Spin it again! How is this still a thing? Time once again to ask:

This week: The House Chaplain. How is this still a thing? The House Chaplain was started way back during the early days of the country. But in a nation where we supposedly have a separation of church and state, we must ask how is this still a thing? In fact this very question is being debated this week as Paul Ryan attempted to simply cut the position!

Two members of the House of Representatives engaged in a shouting match on the floor Tuesday afternoon over the ongoing controversy surrounding House Chaplain Father Patrick Conroy, who returned to the chamber this week after claiming he was initially forced to resign by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Rep. Tom MacArthur, a New Jersey Republican, confronted Rep. Joe Crowley, a New York Democrat, Tuesday afternoon after Crowley tried unsuccessfully to force another House floor vote to initiate an investigation into Conroy's initial resignation.

MacArthur approached Crowley on the floor and told him to "let go" of the issue, MacArthur recounted to reporters after the vote series. The exchange became heated, he said, after the towering Crowley demanded the much shorter MacArthur leave "his side of the floor."

"I said, ‘You know Joe this side of the floor belongs to the people of the United States, it’s not your side, and I’ll come here any time I want to,'" MacArthur said. "That got him wrapped around the axle quite a bit more and he exploded."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/speaker-ryan-house-chaplain-bury-hatchet-reinstatement/story?id=55014622

That’s actually Papa Emiritus III from the band Ghost. But its’ all the same. Leave it to the “peaceful” Christians in the House to throw down over religious issues. But guess what? This all comes back full circle as members of the house promise to “Be Best”. After all, these are the people who don’t want to hold hands and sing “kumbaya”.

House chaplain Patrick Conroy called on House members to be their “best selves” during Monday’s opening prayer, his first since House Speaker Paul Ryan reversed his decision to remove the chaplain.

“As members return to Washington, may they be encouraged and empowered by their constituents to be their best selves in serving in the People’s House,” said Conroy, a Catholic priest. “May the disagreements that seem to perjure give way to good faith efforts to find solutions to the issues facing our nation in a manner consistent with the great traditions of our republican form of government.”

Ryan’s reversal came on Thursday after Conroy challenged his forced resignation and essentially dared Ryan to fire him. In a letter to Ryan, Conroy said he had never heard a complaint about his ministry and disputed Ryan's justification for seeking his resignation.

Ryan, R-Wis., asked Conroy to resign in mid-April,saying later he had heard complaints about the chaplain's pastoral services. The speaker's decision sparked a backlash in both parties and across religious lines among lawmakers who thought Conroy was treated unfairly.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/05/07/house-chaplain-tells-lawmakers-their-best-selves-after-resignation-fight/587478002/

Yes we are all praying that someone will save us from these people. So why was the House Chaplain fired? Well some point to him channeling his inner Ned Flanders. Or outer Ned Flanders.

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Paul Ryan has forced out the House chaplain, Reverend Patrick Conroy.

Conroy had served as the chamber’s chaplain since 2011 but offered his resignation last week at Ryan’s urging.

Conroy’s resignation letter said he was offering to step down at Ryan’s request, calling his seven years of House service “one of the great privileges of my life.”

Ryan spokeswoman Ashlee Strong would not reveal the speaker’s reasons for forcing Conroy out. A top Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, said he believes it was because of a prayer Conroy gave during last fall’s tax debate urging that lawmakers not “pick winners and losers” but spread its benefits equitably.

Strong said that was not the reason.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/27/paul-ryan-patrick-conroy-house-chaplain/557227002/

So we still don’t know why Father Conroy was shit canned. But he seems to have indicated that Paul Ryan fired him for no reason. But now that he was hired back, people are still asking why do we have this position when we’re supposed to have separation of church and state?

Now that we are finished with the spectacle of the U.S. House chaplain being forced out, then withdrawing his resignation and returning to his post, it’s a good time to ask a question that may have been bothering you all along: Why, exactly, does Congress, bound by the establishment clause of the Constitution, have a paid chaplain to deliver prayers and minister to its members?

If this arrangement were being set up today, it would almost certainly be held unconstitutional under contemporary judicial interpretation of the First Amendment. Since a key decision made in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed most concerns about the government endorsement of religion by asking whether a given action sends a message to some believers that they are favored members of the political community and to others that they are disfavored.

The House chaplaincy rather obviously seems to violate this standard. The government is paying directly for a chaplain who comes from a single denomination – and has always been a Christian. If that doesn’t send a message of endorsement, I’m not sure what does.

But when it comes to the establishment clause, tradition matters. The fact that the House chaplaincy couldn’t be created now doesn’t mean it is unconstitutional. Therein lies a tale about religion, politics and the nature of a functioning Constitution.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-05/house-chaplain-is-rooted-in-tradition-not-constitution

There you have it. Even the House themselves is debating about whether or not we should be allowing religion in the House. That’s enough to make you ask – the House Chaplain:

[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Amazon
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Spin it to win it! And it lands on… wait for it… something random in the news!

A 42-year-old Pennsylvania man is facing an assault and harassment charges after allegedly beating his mother with a Star Wars light saber, according to court records.

Police responding to an April 27 disturbance call at a home in Dubois found Joan Vargas, 75, being treated by EMS workers. Vargas was bleeding from gashes on her head and wrist.

Vargas told police that her son Andrew had “hit her repeatedly with what she called a light saber.” Vargas said she was sitting on a dining room chair when her son “began striking her with this saber in the head, on her back/neck area and on her wrist.”

“Joan could not say why Andrew struck her with the saber,” police noted. The 6’ 4”, 330-pound Vargas owns many other light sabers, his mother told investigators.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/stupid/light-saber-assault-653907

Spin it again! And it lands on… Top 10 Investigates!

It’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates.

Amazon. Everyone knows them and loves them. And we are sure that most of you here have an Amazon Prime account. Because… shipping. But there has been a lot of news and a lot of buzz lately about a new potential for Amazon when they are shopping around from city to city for a new mega warehouse. But what happens? What would the environment be like inside the warehouse? What would it be like outside the warehouse and surrounding areas?

A former Amazon warehouse worker described being stopped in his tracks by an "awful smell" emanating from the trash cans. The stench, he said, was "unmistakable" and led him to one conclusion: His coworkers were so worried about taking too long on a bathroom break that they had resorted to urinating in the bin.

"I never witnessed anyone in the act but have witnessed the aftermath," the US staffer told Business Insider. "In three instances I had noticed an awful smell, pinpointed the location — trash bins that are scattered throughout the multitiered mezzanine — and reported it. From what I heard afterward, camera evidence got these associates fired."

His story echoes an investigation by the journalist James Bloodworth, who went undercover as a worker in an Amazon warehouse in the UK in 2016 for a book on low-wage jobs.

Bloodworth told Business Insider he once found a bottle of urine on a shelf, saying people would do so because they feared that a bathroom break would take too long and would cause them to miss their strict targets.
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-share-their-horror-stories-2018-4

Holy shit indeed. These are the kinds of working conditions one must endure when working at a mega warehouse like Amazon. In fact two years ago there have been a number of allegations that have surfaced against the online mega conglomerate.

One of the most prominent attacks on Amazon’s work culture came from a scathing piece in the New York Times back in 2015. The piece alleged that employees were told that if they “hit the wall,” the only solution was to “climb the wall.” The article alleged that employees were expected to stay late, attend long meetings designed to force employees to tear apart one other’s ideas and respond to emails as late as midnight.

It even alleged that the company had a policy that encouraged employees to send anonymous feedback to supervisors as a way to sabotage one other and ruthlessly climb the corporate ladder. One employee, Bo Olson, claimed, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Of course that was three years ago. But, more recently, a New York Post story reported on undercover investigator and author James Bloodworth’s attempts to infiltrate an Amazon Warehouse in Rugeley, Staffordshire, in the U.K.. Bloodworth alleged, “People just peed in bottles because they lived in fear of being disciplined over ‘idle time’ and losing their jobs just because they needed the loo.” He likened the warehouse to a prison.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312942

Unfortunately it’s not like that prison. Think more Shawshank Redemption kind of prison. And yes, think that it’s even worse than you might hear. So what city does Amazon have in its’ midst for the new warehouse expansion?

An effort to generate more revenue to address dual crises in affordable housing and homelessness has spiraled into one of the biggest fights yet between Amazon and its hometown of Seattle while raising questions for the cities competing to host the online retail giant’s second headquarters.

Five of Seattle’s nine council members support a so-called head tax, which would require big businesses to pay 26 cents per hour for each of their employees. That amounts to about $500 per employee per year for the estimated 585 Seattle businesses that generate at least $20 million in revenue every year.

The money would be earmarked for construction of new affordable housing, and to address the city’s growing homelessness crisis. Supporters say the city’s existing tax structure — heavily dependent on sales and property taxes — needs additional revenue to foot the bill.

“Seattle has the most regressive tax systems in all of the country, and we’re looking at a way to get revenue in the door to address this public health crisis that does not raise sales taxes or property taxes once again,” said council member Teresa Mosqueda, who backs the bill. “It’s called shared responsibility so we can have shared prosperity.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/386790-debate-over-taxes-in-seattle-raises-alarms-for-amazon-hq2-finalists

So Amazon is choosing Seattle because they don’t want to pay taxes, just like every other mega corporation. Why can’t they just hide their money in an off shore tax haven like the rest of them? Well Jeff Bezos wants to swindle his money the old fashioned American way! But the residents won’t have any of it. In fact they are fuming.

Here’s what people are saying about a proposal by Seattle City Council members to tax big employers, such as Amazon, to address the city’s housing affordability crisis.

A number of people across the region responded to a series of Seattle Times stories in the last week via email and social media, sharing their opinions of the so-called head-tax as tension surrounding the proposed measure climaxed with Amazon taking an unprecedented stand against it.

Supporters say the new tax would generate an estimated $75 million needed for housing and homeless services by taxing large employers about about $500 per employee per year.

The majority of responses were critical of the proposed tax — siding with frustrated homeowners in Ballard and iron workers downtown — or trashed the City Council’s approach to the homelessness crisis. At least one person said they were torn on the matter. Several gave support.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/amazons-growth-was-a-gift-to-the-city-heres-what-some-readers-say-about-seattles-proposed-head-tax/

So there you have it – Amazon is so toxic that it’s created a divide in the city where it is trying to establish a warehouse. That’s it for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Spin that shit! No whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… stop! Clip without context!

To give you credit, Jim, I think you underestimated there a bit. Spin it again! Holy shit!

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

You know my fair brothers and sisters, we usually cover a wide variety of topics in our weekly sermon from a wide variety of followers of the LAWRD! But this week we are going to focus on one, and one in particular. I’m talking about a guy who is so batshit crazy that he has his own special section on Right Wing Watch. He has a wide variety of end times products for us to sell! Yes everything from barely edible emergency survival food to a whole fucking village. Literally! I’m of course talking about Brother Jim Bakker. Brother Jim is in a world of hurt right now because he’s selling shit and nobody is buying it!

Controversial televangelist Jim Bakker has claimed that the Missouri town in which he is building a Christian community is equipped to survive the end of the world, and is selling survival gear, such as packs of bottles that cost $150.

Baker said on his program "The Jim Bakker Show" earlier this week that various prophets have predicted that if there is a major world disaster and humankind faces the end of the world, people in large cities are not going to be able to survive.

That is why for 15 years Bakker has been building his Morningside community in Blue Eye, Missouri, which will come with an amphitheater, houses for the residents, and a chapel that can be used for weddings.

He also is advertising survival gear, such as a pack of six "extreme survival" water bottles being sold for $150. His website claims that the bottles are "designed using a combination of both Advanced and Radiological filters."

"You all are going to know soon why God brought us here," Bakker said on Tuesday's show.

"Do you know the people from the government, from NASA, the research from so many of them, they have said in their research that the safest place to live in troubled times is right here. That's why God brought us here," he added.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/televangelist-jim-bakker-says-christians-can-survive-end-of-world-by-buying-his-condos-and-150-water-bottles-223671/

So Brother Jim is constructing his own village, because as you know – you all know, that in our good book, it says that “it takes a village to save mankind from impending doom”. That is a prophecy from the good LAWRD, creator of all things holy. Can I get an amen? And in terms of his village, apparently science is the reason why you should live in his village!

End Times prepper pastor Jim Bakker has spent the last several episodes of his television program urging viewers not only to stock up on his buckets of survival food, but to move to his Morningside community outside of Branson, Missouri, in preparation for the Last Days, claiming on yesterday’s program that government scientists have declared that this location will be the best place to ride out the coming Tribulation.

“There is nowhere on earth you could live with more of God’s generals here,” Bakker proclaimed, bizarrely bragging that “Branson has the number-one Christian theater in the world.”

“You all are going to know soon why God brought us here,” he said. “Do you know the people from the government, from NASA, the research from so many of them, they have said in their research that the safest place to live in troubled times is right here. That’s why God brought us here.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-government-scientists-say-morningside-is-the-best-place-to-ride-out-the-end-times/

Yes indeed it is science! That’s not the only shit that Brother Jim is selling. But instead - Jim is also hawking emergency survival kits.

Jim Bakker of PTL fame is back. Or, rather, he's been back, you were probably just unaware of it. This time, instead of timeshares on the campus of PTL, a thrilling vacation at his "Christian" theme park, and promises of reaping material rewards for donating to his "ministry," the disgraced televangelist is hawking survival gear on Christian TV.

A long expose in The Charlotte Observer details Bakker's current activities. In a nutshell, as the article succinctly states, "Jim Bakker is back on TV with a different, darker message: The Apocalypse is coming and you better get ready."

For Bakker, getting ready means sending him large amounts of money, called a "donation," and as a "thank you," he'll send you survival gear that he endorses.

Of course, you'll be forgiven if the specifics sound new and yet the overall theme of Jim Bakker's message sounds vaguely familiar to you. You can read the details of Bakker's rise and fall during the '80s by reading The Charlotte Observer article, but as the article points out, the financial information for his new "ministry" is shrouded in mystery. In other words, like in the '80s, people are apparently sending Bakker money without any real accountability for where the money goes and how it's used.
https://pjmedia.com/faith/disgraced-televangelist-jim-bakker-cashes-apocalypse-fears/

But here is how Brother Jim is selling this – and I think even the good LAWRD JAYSUS would want this because he is the creator of all that is good and holy! But not buying his shit will apparently cause cannibalism!

End Times prepper pastor Jim Bakker used his television program again today to promote his line of survival products, urging viewers to stock up now because people will be forced to resort to cannibalism when the Last Days arrive.

Complaining that he has “been so lambasted in the last few years” for endlessly promoting his End Times survival products, Bakker lashed out, warning that “the Bible says a fool sees trouble coming and doesn’t prepare.”

“In perilous times, they do crazy things,” Bakker said, adding that he has “cried so much” over the destruction wrought on Houston by Hurricane Harvey.

“I saw wonderful people with everything gone,” Bakker wept. “Everything gone! You don’t understand everything gone! You don’t understand living in darkness unless you’ve lived in darkness. And they will kill each other, eat each other, steal everything from each other and that’s what the Bible warns about. I want you to be prepared.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakkers-food-buckets-will-prevent-you-from-resorting-to-cannibalism/

See here’s where you don’t give a crackpot a microphone and a license to sell crap that nobody wants – he will use it for evil instead of good. Because Brother Jim sells emergency kits and then, THEN claims that he can see into the future and that it will be a bleak one! Gee, I wonder why? Maybe Jim can tell me the plot of Avengers 4 at least?

Jim Bakker is making headlines again three years after his “Praise the Lord” (PTL) empire near Charlotte collapsed amid financial corruption and sexual scandal. Now, instead of rebuilding his 2,300 acre Christian theme park and resort, Heritage USA, Bakker is selling supplies for the coming apocalypse. “We are in the final days,” Bakker says.

While Bakker claims that he has abandoned his previous lifestyle in favor of coming to a truer understanding of Christ, plenty of people remember that his theme park and TV show funded an opulent lifestyle filled with vacation homes, expensive cars and an air-conditioned doghouse. There are questions about whether Bakker truly repented after serving five years in prison for fraud or if he is merely capitalizing on 21st century fears such as terrorism and climate change. His new TV show, “The Jim Bakker Show,” certainly works hard to sell fuel-less generators, doomsday guidebooks and freeze-dried food with a shelf life of up to 30 years. Bakker, however, insists that the twin disasters of Hurricane Harvey and Maria and concerns of nuclear war with North Korea are signs that the end times are on the horizon, and that Christians ignore the warnings at their own risk. “One day,” Bakker says, “you’re going to shake your fist in God’s face and you’re going to say, ‘God, why didn’t you warn me?’ He’s going to say, ‘You sat there and you made fun of Jim Bakker all those years. I warned you. But you didn’t listen.’ ”

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/news/2018/02/jim-bakker-says-apocalypse-coming-proof.php#tXjqvltAWWbA37J0.99

Now because all good food comes in bucket form – we here at the Holy Church Of The Top 10 have actually acquired some food of theirs to taste. And we recommend that you do not try this at home! Can we show the flyer first?

Now we here have a wide variety of stuff that comes in that magical bucket! I mean look at that – you have pizza, you have fried chicken, mac & cheese, coleslaw – it’s essentially KFC for those that believe in the doomsday apocalypse! Let’s try some. Mmmmmmmmmmm…. Yeah!

Like other Religious Right leaders, Bakker is a zealous supporter of President Trump. Bakker said a few weeks ago that criticism of Trump was a sign that “America is in a war against God.” Last year Bakker warned that God’s judgment would fall on anyone who interfered with divine plans to use Trump to save America. Bakker has also warned that people will have to answer to God for making fun of him.

In his new pitch, Bakker warns his followers that the “popular and delicious Tasty Food Bucket is going to be discontinued at the end of April due to cost of the ingredients. Many of these recipes will never be offered in a configuration like this again! Some recipes may even be retired.”

The colorful flyer included with the letter spells out four offers, from the single food bucket available for a gift of $175 to Bakker’s ministry (374 servings) all the way up to the special Time of Trouble Officer of 28 Tasty Pantry Deluxe Plus Buckets (10,472 servings) that can be yours for a $3,700 contribution.

Says Bakker, “We believe in preparing because God has warned us to prepare.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-heed-gods-warning-and-buy-my-prepper-buckets-for-the-end-of-days-time-of-trouble/

You know what? Excuse me a minute!

So there we have it, we have dedicated this week to exposing the end times crap that Brother Jim hath been hawking! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Matt Bevin
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Spin it to win it! Wheel goes round, wheel goes round… and it lands on… oh look it’s another clip without context!

Well I guess Satan is my father then! Spin it again! and it lands on… People Who Somehow Got Elected Hit it!

Politicians at the state and local who are so terrible, you can’t help but wonder how they keep managing to win elections. This is:

This week we’re going to my old Kentucky home to profile governor Matt Bevin. Because, whew, he is certifiably insane. So if you haven’t been following the news lately, first off, what are you doing paying attention to our show? Go read some actual news! But second, the Koch Brothers’ reckless policies have ravaged most of middle America, and the state of Kentucky is no exception. There has been a massive teacher strike going on and Mr. Bevin has made some, well, less than sensitive comments about it.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says children were left vulnerable to harm, sexual assault and drugs as a result of public school closures throughout the state Friday to allow teachers and supporters to protest at the state's Capitol.
"I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them," the Republican governor told reporters Friday afternoon, according to CNN affiliate WDRB.
"I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn't have any money to take care of them."
Bevin went on to say that "some were introduced to drugs for the first time because they were vulnerable and left alone."

CNN has reached out to Bevin's communications director. The governor's press secretary did not immediately return CNN's request for comment Saturday morning.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/14/politics/kentucky-matt-bevin-teachers-strike/index.html

Yes, that was a horribly insensitive comment to make. And what is it about Christian fundamentalists where their mind just goes to the most horrifying sex crimes they can think of? What are they trying to tell us? One minute their god is a loving god and the next minute their god is your creepy, racist redneck uncle. Same goes for Matt Bevin.

Kentucky's Republican governor says a judge who ruled against him is an incompetent hack.

Multiple media outlets report Gov. Matt Bevin criticized Franklin County Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in a radio interview on WKRC-AM in Cincinnati. Monday, Shepherd denied Bevin's request to take depositions from the staff of the state attorney general's office and the Kentucky Education Association. Both have sued Bevin in an effort to block implementation of a bill making changes to the state's pension system.

It's not the first time Bevin has criticized the judge. Two years ago, he referred to Shepherd as a "political hack" and has said Kentucky should consider changing how judges are selected. Currently, judges in Kentucky are elected in nonpartisan elections.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article210737134.html

This is absolutely hilarious. The guy who is the incompetent hack is calling somebody else an incompetent hack. Hypocrisy, thy name is Matt Bevin. And guess what? He recently gave a free ride to the billionaire class.

Republicans in Kentucky's state legislature overturned Gov. Matt Bevin's (R) vetoes of their tax overhaul and budget plan Friday, capping a dramatic confrontation between members of the same party that has also seen thousands of teachers descend on the state Capitol in protests for better pay.

The impasse between the governor and the Republican lawmakers kicked off earlier this month, when the state legislature unveiled a tax package to dramatically cut income and business taxes in the state. The plan aimed to pay for those cuts by dramatically increasing sales taxes, leading one analysis to project that it would wind up raising taxes on all but the wealthiest 5 percent of state residents.

Meanwhile, the state's legislature separately approved a budget that raised the state's per-pupil funding to $4,000, from $3,700, amid intense pressure from teachers who demonstrated at the Capitol and throughout the state after Bevin vetoed both measures.

Republicans in the state legislature defended the tax measure, in part, as necessary to avoid deeper cuts to education and to fund teachers' pensions, with nonpartisan staff in Kentucky's House of Representatives saying that the tax package would generate an additional $239 million in state revenue in 2019 and an extra $248 million in 2020.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/13/kentuckys-tax-cut-for-the-top-5-percent-survives-despite-governors-veto/?utm_term=.de15f8a5ce89

Yes we can hear the boos right now. States are strapped for cash to fund the very things its’ residents need to survive, but let’s give tax breaks to the upper 1% that don’t need them. Right. But the pension debate has enraged voters. If you vote the way Fox News tells you to vote, you’re going to get screwed, that’s science.

FRANKFORT — It was probably no coincidence that on the first business day after the General Assembly left town, Gov. Matt Bevin tried to serve notice that it is he who rules Kentucky.

Bevin’s Monday appointment of seven new members to the state’s 11-member school board forced the Tuesday resignation of Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt and his replacement with an advocate for charter schools – enterprises that the legislature approved last year but declined to fund this year, amid a debate about funding for public schools.

It remains to be seen just how far Bevin, the board and leading new member Hal Heiner will go, beyond taking over Jefferson County Public Schools. But the last two weeks in Frankfort have made a few things clear: Bevin has no respect for public-school teachers who made legislators reject his proposed cuts to education; he has about as much regard for the legislature; and the feeling is mostly mutual.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/columnists/cross/2018/04/20/matt-bevin-teachers-comments-kentucky-elections-house-senate-al-cross/531670002/

Yes, he is bad and he should feel bad. But things like apologies and public appearances are something that republicans just shouldn’t do. In fact here’s what happened when Matt Bevin appeared at a recent Kentucky parade:

The governor, wearing a hot pink blazer, waved to parade attendees while running. It is unknown why Bevin started the jog, but he eventually slowed down to a walking pace in the brief video.

Bevin has seen his approval rating slide in recent months. An April Western Kentucky poll showed only 32 percent of people approve of his job performance while 56 disapproved. This comes after a tumultuous legislative session where Republican lawmakers overrode both his budget and tax vetoes.

The governor was mostly smiles during the event, even stopping to take one of his well-known group selfies with some of the attendees.
http://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Watch-Gov-Bevin-get-mixed-reaction-while-running-during-Pegasus-Parade-481781821.html

Yeah it was kind of like that. That’s Kentucky governor Matt Bevin. Yet another one of the:

[font size="8"]Alex Jones
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Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin shall we? And it lands on… ‘Merica! Fuck yeah!

&t=22s

Spin it again! And it lands on… Infowars. OK seriously I have to say that when I saw this story last week I about fell off my chair laughing. You know Alex, you should never fall asleep watching Terminator 2, because it can seriously fuck with your head. And I love that franchise. Yeah even Terminator: Genisys, as shitty as it was, was still a Terminator movie, damn it! But before we show you the story, let’s play the video because it is exquisite.

Excuse me a minute…

Yeah so Alex thinks that there’s a rogue AI that’s going to kill a whole lots of people. Now this has been a staple talking point in movies like the Terminator, AI, I:Robot, Brazil, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, and a whole slew of others. And of course Futurama.

Before Alex Jones headed to court to face his ex-wife today, he told Infowars listeners that President Trump is part of an effort to fight against a sentient computer program that has decided to kill all humans.

This afternoon, Jones was speaking with a guest on his show when he declared that we are living in an “information apocalypse” where global elites “want to keep you in-the-moment confused.” Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he claimed that Trump is working with a group of people to defeat an automated intelligence computer program set on destroying humanity.

“This is already an A.I. system that made the decision to have a post-human world and Trump has jumped in with others and are saying, ‘No, we’re not doing it,’ at the elite level,” Jones said.

He quickly moved on, unfazed, and added that global elites “are really pissed about” Infowars “questioning the next false flag,” referring to his network’s infamous tendency to claim tragedies are staged events.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-trump-is-fighting-a-computer-program-that-has-decided-to-kill-humans/

But here’s my favorite part of this whole story is that Alex didn’t just call out the fact that there’s a murderous AI out to kill everybody! He’s got the one guy who can save us all from it! Yup – you guessed it!

Infowars’ Alex Jones announced out of nowhere on Friday that President Donald Trump is fighting a sentient artificial intelligence program that has turned on its human creators and wants to kill us all.

Right Wing Watch reported that prior to a court appearance with his ex-wife, Jones announced the president’s valorous intentions during a tangent about the current “information apocalypse” undertaken by “global elites” who want to keep the world “confused.”

“This is already an A.I. system that made the decision to have a post-human world,” the Infowars host said, “and Trump has jumped in with others and are saying, ‘No, we’re not doing it,’ at the elite level.”

Jones did not cite where he’d acquired his knowledge before adding that an apparent different group of elites “are really pissed about” Infowars because the conspiracy theorist program is in the business of “questioning the next false flag” — a reference to Jones and his company’s claims that massive tragedies are really government-sponsored attempts to shape public discourse.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/infowars-alex-jones-announces-trump-fighting-evil-artificial-intelligence-programs-bent-killing-humans/

So you know that wasn’t the only piece of bat feces that Jones has been flinging lately. You know we’ve been talking a lot about Kanye West over the last couple of weeks. You know there’s that old adage about separating the art from the artist, but when Kanye goes on Infowars there really isn’t much separation to do. He really is that crazy!

Alex Jones, the nation’s leading conspiracy theorist and creator of Infowars, said in a livestream last night that “Kanye West is saying the same thing” as he is and that it is “self-evident” that he and the rapper share a common purpose.

Yesterday, West made news again after he continued his vocal support for President Trump and tweeted a photo of himself wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

Conservative media figures have fawned over West’s open support of President Trump. Earlier this week, Jones said he admired West’s “bold moves against the thought police” and apologized for previously assuming West was “a Democrat and a globalist.” In wake of yesterday’s news, Jones said one of the Infowars producers had told him that his “mission is the same” as West’s, to which he agreed.

“He goes, ‘He wants to break people out of their programming and you want to break people out of their conditioning, is the term you use.’ That’s a more psychological term—that’s what they call it. The globalists have conditioned us, globalist conditioning to be these scared people that have chips on our shoulders that are victims all the time,” Jones said.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-its-self-evident-that-kanye-west-has-the-same-mission-as-infowars/

But it’s good to know that even someone as crazy as Kanye West has his limits! Because if you’re too crazy for Kanye, that’s pretty fucking crazy!

Kanye West did not appear on Infowars, as Alex Jones claimed he would on Twitter Wednesday. Refinery29 has reached out to West's representatives for comment and will update this post should we hear back.
This story was originally published on May 2, 2018.
It turns out that Kanye West proclaiming his love of Donald Trump wasn't even close to the most controversial thing the rapper could do this month. The "Black Skinhead" rapper has a new platform for his philoso-ye, and apparently, it's on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars.
On Wednesday, May 2, West is scheduled to appear on Jones' live show in order to explain comments he made to TMZ Live about how slavery was a "choice." It's a decision so profoundly odd that I'm unsure how West — or his wife, Kim Kardashian — will explain it.
No matter how you feel about West's latest tweets or declarations of "free thinking," aligning himself with Jones is a dramatic step that I'm not sure he can come back from. This is not a case of West bridging a political gap: It's him condoning a man who spreads not just false information, but damaging and cruel lies that have directly affected some of the most vulnerable.
https://www.refinery29.com/2018/05/198087/kanye-west-joins-alex-jones-infowars

[font size="8"]I Need A Drink
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Spin that shit! Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy stop!!! And it lands on… oh look it’s another clip without context!

Boy the fundies sure do love being dominated, don’t they? Spin it again! It’s now time for:

Yes I need a drink this week! And man this week has got particularly dark. So tell me, bartender, what goes well with the Royal Wedding? Elton John’s tears in a glass? Yeah I think that might be impossible to obtain. Since we are talking about the royal wedding, just bring me some tall boys of Boddingtons Lager – that’s some good shit! So the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry and Megan Markle is happening on May 19th. And we’re going to do you the favor and show you how you can turn the forthcoming Royal Wedding into a money making opportunity! Because this is 2018 we’re talking about here. For one thing if you live in London and you happen to own a company that manufactures high end wedding invitations you are gettin’ paid!

We may not know the exact price of the invitations, but we do know the May 19 wedding is on track to cost an estimated $2.8 million, according to the U.K.-based wedding planning app Bridebook. Experts in the U.S. have their own guesses about the invitations’ value.

Sarah Sadler, a client coordinator with New York printer Bella Figura, tells MONEY that she thinks printing 600 of Harry and Markle’s invitations probably cost about $7,500. With inserts or envelopes, the total was likely about $10,000.

The bulk of the cost came from the die stamping, also called engraving. Sadler said it’s more expensive than letterpress because “it requires a lot more work and a lot more high-end materials.” It’s an older, traditional process that involves someone making each invitation by hand.

Die stamping isn’t easy. Small likely had to keep checking the color and making sure the pressure was consistent. She also likely had to print double the amount of invitations just to get 600 good ones to send out.
http://time.com/money/5212801/royal-wedding-invitations-cost/

Of course Seinfeld has taught us that you never go cheap on wedding invitations! So that’s just one of many possibilities that you can make money on. But for us average chumps – there’s always one of my favorite things that come up at times like this – the prop bet! I love some good prop bets! And there are some awesome ones for the Royal Wedding:

Royal watchers have been abuzz with anticipation following the recent announcement that Prince Harry will soon tie the knot with American actress Meghan Markle. Naturally, that enthusiasm has spread to the entertainment betting odds, where a host of proposition wagers are now available covering the happy couple’s impending nuptials and future children.

Currently fifth in the line of succession to the British throne, Harry played a very active role in the wedding of his older brother, Prince William, to Kate Middleton in April 2011. William broke with royal tradition at his wedding by having Harry stand with him as best man.

Little brother is widely expected to return the favor at his wedding next spring, making William a heavy -3300 favorite to be Harry’s best man, while Tom Inskip, a close boyhood friend of the prince, trails at +800.

Far more mystery surrounds which musical artist will be the wedding performer at what is expected to be one of the most watched events of 2018. Singer/songwriter Elton John enjoyed a close personal relationship with Harry’s mother, Diana, and is warmly remembered for his rendition of Candle in the Wind at the funeral of the People’s Princess in September 1997.

The 70-year-old star leads a star-studded list of British artists as a +125 favorite to serenade the happy couple on their big day, followed by pop star Ed Sheeran, who is pegged at +400 after publicly stating his desire to get the gig, while Grammy Award-winning singer Adele trails at +800.
http://www.bovadasportsbook.com/prince-harry-meghan-markle-betting-props/

And why wouldn’t Elton John be the favorite of the Royal Family? Well if gambling isn’t your thing, there’s always merchandising! Why place money on odds if the house always wins? And in this case it’s the royal house! Even Las Vegas and London can’t help but get in on some of that sweet prop betting action:

There are several more Royal Wedding betting markets which could prove popular with punters as there is a semblance of value to be had. Alas the markets on the wedding date has now closed – May 2018 was an odds-on favourite from the moment the engagement was announced.

And the Royal Wedding odds on the venue were only opened for a short time – one day after announcing their engagement, Buckingham Palace has announced that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be married in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

However, the invite list makes for some fascinating Royal Wedding bet opportunities. As it is 5/4 Elton John will perform at the wedding, the 1/25 about him attending the event is something of a gimme.

At the other end of the scale 50/1 about Donald Trump attending should have a nought or two added to it. But Paddy Power’s 3/1 about the Sky F1 reporter Natalie Pinkham smacks of a good thing.

It may have once been reported Prince Harry and Pinkham shared a kiss but that was over a decade ago. The former World Poker Tour presenter has since got married and become a mother. More importantly she is a very close friend of Mike Tindall and Zara Tindall (nee Phillips), Prince Harry’s aunty.
https://www.freebets.co.uk/royal-wedding-betting/

So if prop bets aren’t your thing there’s always making money selling stupid shit! Yes, as the great Mel Brooks said in the movie Spaceballs – the real money being made is in merchandising!

In the King and Queen Gift Shop at the foot of Windsor's Castle Hill, Harry and Meghan memorabilia have been flying off the shelves. Tourists have been snapping up fridge magnets, T-shirts, tea towels and mugs bearing images of the happy couple and costing $18 or more. Margaret Tyler from London was in Windsor recently adding to her collection of royal souvenirs.

“I’ve already got about 10,000 at home. Everything you can imagine, from mugs and plaques and figurines, covering several generations of royals. I’ve got so much that there’s hardly any room to move around my house. I’ve got a sofa, a television and a little kitchen. I haven’t got room for anything else,” Tyler said. “Nevertheless, I’m still looking for more commemorative items. I love the royal family.”

The royal wedding has triggered an avalanche of royal tat, including some bizarre products like the Harry and Meghan breakfast cereal, and the aim is obvious: to make a quick buck.

But in tune with the socially aware image that the young couple has been energetically projecting, there’s been an effort to link this demand for souvenirs to a charitable cause. “For Richer, For Poorer” is the result. This is a new brand of souvenirs, launched by a group of design and marketing consultants, and aimed at raising funds for the homeless of Windsor. Giulia Watson of Revolt Communications leads the project.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/20/world/royal-wedding-knick-knacks-flying-shelf

So at least the money there is going to a good cause, but people love merchandise for things. And only in England would you see a merch booth outside Westminster Abbey on Royal Wedding day, because, reasons, and money. Even if you own property in London you’re in luck!

Windsor residents are renting out their homes over the royal wedding weekend for extremely high prices.

One two-bedroom property that sleeps four is listed on Airbnb as being “located perfectly for the royal wedding” – and it costs £3,195 for the night.

The host is just one of many homeowners capitalising on public interest in the upcoming nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by renting out their properties at increased prices.

On Airbnb, various homes are listed as “luxury royal wedding accommodation” and are going for more than £2,000 a night.

Other people are merely renting out spare rooms in their Windsor houses – although these are still going for increased rates.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/windsor-residents-renting-out-homes-royal-wedding-airbnb-3000-night-a8305396.html

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest: Round 2 Week 4
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Let’s spin the wheel one last time this week! And it lands on… t-shirt cannon! Everyone here will get the new official Top 10 Stupidest State t-shirt. See how it has that on the front and our schedule on the back? Now if only I had the budget to make and sell t-shirts! Spin it again! Stupidest State 2018! Hit it!

16 states will enter, but only one will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State!

Welcome back! I hope you all filled out your brackets! Round 1 of the tournament is over and man there have been some exciting developments. Last week we were live at Moda Center in Portalnd and it was an absolute bloodbath as Kentucky absolutely put on a show and completely routed Virginia by a whopping 25 points to take the Batshit Conference. This week we’re live at the beautiful new home of the Sacramento Kings, Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California and this week it’s a battle of greed vs more greed as West Virginia’s coal barons take on Wisconsin, sponsored by Koch Industries, for the Fiscal Irresponsibility Championship! Only one will win and go on to face Kentucky and the loser will go home. So who will it be this week? Let’s find out!

[font size="6"]Fiscal Irresponsibility Championship: Wisconsin Vs West Virginia [/font]

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

Wisconsin. You know them as the home of the Green Bay Packers. The football team responsible for the famous Lambeau Leap and of course the cheesehead. It’s also the home of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee Bucks. Wisconsin is also home to some of the best beer in the world which includes the famous Miller Brewery and other breweries like New Glarus and Stevens Point Brewery. But farm country is also home to some of the craziest politicians in the world. After all, when all you got is nothing but farmland for miles and miles, politics is really your only form of entertainment. And Wisconsin is the state that has given us Paul Ryan and Scott Walker. But you know what Wisconsin is entangled in right now? A massive teacher protest!

Cathy Myers, a Janesville School Board Member and Democrat running for Congress in Wisconsin’s 1st District, announced the launch of Teachers and Students for Cathy.

The program, which will employ students and teachers as summer organizers, is the campaign’s newest initiative to mobilize and engage voters in the district now represented by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Myers faces Randy Bryce in the Democratic primary set for August.

“As a parent, and a teacher, I know that our public education system is crucially important — and now, it’s under repeated attacks by Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos," Myers said in a news release. "I’m running for Congress to bring an educator’s perspective to the halls of the Capitol and protect public education from the Trump administration’s shameful attacks."

She added, “I’m thrilled to have the support of teachers and students in Wisconsin’s 1st District, and I know that their perspective is invaluable. That’s why I’m relying on them to help us carry this campaign across the finish line.”
http://www.wisconsingazette.com/news/cathy-myers-launches-teachers-students-program-to-mobilize-voters/article_17d7b486-48b7-11e8-87b3-cf6b0403486d.html

Now let’s switch gears and talk about Wisconsin’s governor – Scott Walker. Yeah I can already hear the boos, so go ahead and let it out! Remember during the Bush years when Bush gave that strange $300 tax break and nobody knew what to do with it? Well, Walker is trying the same thing!

Scott Walker is about to give every family in Wisconsin a $100 check for each child that it’s raising — an economically incoherent policy that’s clearly intended to bribe voters into giving the governor a third term.

And Democratic officeholders should really be implementing more policies like it.

But before we get that point, let’s take a closer look at the “Badger-State Buyoff.” Thanks to a combination of Walker’s spending cuts and good economic times, Wisconsin currently boasts a budget surplus. It also has one of the most depleted rainy-day funds of any U.S. state. Thus, it would seem fiscally prudent to put the surplus into that emergency reserve — or else, into public investments that would pay long-term dividends for the state, such as infrastructure or public education.

But Walker is more concerned with political prudence, at the moment. A series of Democratic upsets in recent Wisconsin special elections has the governor afraid of drowning in a blue wave this November. And if he wants to alert the public to the “fact” that his superior economic management has produced a budget surplus, investing the excess funds in programs that will pay off years from now won’t cut it. He needed something splashy, and instantly gratifying — like say, by setting up a website where every Wisconsinite with kids can claim $100 checks:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/walker-will-give-671-00-families-an-election-year-check.html

So that is happening. The republicans are so desperate to hang onto their positions, despite that they don’t do anything and blame it on the other guy, that they are resorting to these kinds of measures. And Scott Walker is so toxic that he’s not even welcome at his own party gatherings! Thanks Koch Brothers!

MADISON, Wis. — Last week, Gov. Scott Walker was featured at a Milwaukee event hosted by America First Policies, an affiliated arm of the the America First Super PAC. Last week was a busy one for the Trump-Pence aligned group. In addition to hosting Walker, the group’s advocacy director, Carl Higbie, made a media appearance in which he defended his racist statements that “… the black race as a whole, not totally, is lazier than the white race, period” and Black women believe, “breeding is a form of employment.”

Angela Lang, Executive Director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) responded saying, ”Higbie’s disgusting comments unfortunately are a symptom of the white supremacy that has been boiling over since the Trump administration began. Walker’s silence on these reprehensible comments show that Walker has never stood with or cared about the Black community in Wisconsin.”

America First Director of Advocacy Carl Higbie worked as a radio host before joining the Trump administration. During his time on the air he espoused appalling racist sentiments including those characterizing the “black race” as “lazier than the white race.” He left the Trump administration after his comments were reported and moved into his current position in the pro Trump-Pence group.
http://onewisconsinnow.org/press/leaders-condemn-gov-scott-walker-attendance-at-event-employing-high-ranking-official-who-says-black-race-is-lazier-than-the-white-race/

And you know what else Wisconsin is going to be the future home of? Foxconn! Yes, the Chinese conglomerate that manufactures just about anything you use with an on / off switch and is universally known for egregious human rights violations, is coming to America! And one guy is looking to give the controversial company a boost!

MADISON, Wis.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is scheduled to take part in an announcement Monday about site development for the Foxconn Technology Group campus in the southeast corner of the state.

The governor's press office says Walker will join business owners and workers from across Wisconsin for announcements planned in Black River Falls, Brownsville and Racine.

Foxconn expects to begin construction soon on a $10 billion flat-screen plant in Mount Pleasant.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently approved four air permits for the manufacturing complex and a request to pull millions of gallons of water daily from Lake Michigan to serve the new plant.
http://www.bradenton.com/news/business/article210591094.html

[font size="4"]West Virginia [/font]

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Coal mining country is huge in West Virginia. So much that it’s pretty engrained into their culture and state. But for this entry we’re going to take a look at one senate candidate in particular. That’s former coal mining CEO Don Blankenship. Mr. Blankenship was the CEO of Massey Energy – the coal mining operation whose reckless disregard for workplace safety caused the entrapment and eventual deaths of 29 miners back in 2009. Now that he’s out of prison, he thinks he’s got a shot at the United States Senate, and this is funny coming from a guy, who, in the past, and I’m quoting directly – once accused Senate politicians of not doing enough to regulate coal mining safety! To which I’m sure his employees gave him a gigantic middle finger. Well let’s delve into this further.

WASHINGTON — President Trump intervened Monday in the West Virginia Republican Senate primary, pleading with voters a day before the election to oppose the former mine operator Don Blankenship, and suggesting that Mr. Blankenship’s nomination would lead to a replay of the party’s embarrassing loss last year in Alabama.

Responding to the requests of party leaders who fear a win for Mr. Blankenship in the primary would all but ensure the re-election of Senator Joe Manchin II, a Democrat, Mr. Trump echoed those fears in a tweet aimed at West Virginians.

“Don Blankenship currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State…No way!” Mr. Trump wrote. “Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/us/politics/don-blankenship-trump-west-virginia.html

Let’s think about this here for a minute. Remember back in 2017 – I know that seems like a fucking eternity ago but it was really only last fucking year – when Trump campaigned for Luther Strange in Alabama, which gave us Roy Moore, which gave us Doug Jones? If you could bet on elections, I would bet big money that this has the potential to backfire on Trump! So what happens when your own party rejects you? Run third of course!

Ex-coal CEO and West Virginia senate candidate Don Blankenship says he will not rule out a third party bid in the West Virginia senate race, if Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wins the Republican nomination Tuesday. "I have not ruled out anything," Blankenship told CBS News on Sunday, adding, "I've said that I cannot let him win because of the opioid connection and planned parenthood connection."

Blankenship has repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that Morrisey is at fault for the opioid epidemic in West Virginia, and vows he will not support the attorney general if chosen as the Republican nominee. "Mr. Morrisey has been less than truthful about his involvement with the drug companies," Blankenship said, noting that an independent bid might be the most viable option in the general election race against current West Virginia senator Democrat Joe Manchin.

But Blankenship's threat may ring hollow. West Virginia law contains a "sore loser" clause barring candidates that lose in a party primary from running as an independent for the same post. It's not clear how or if he could ever run such a campaign in the Stare of West Virginia.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/don-blankenship-wont-rule-out-third-party-bid-west-virginia-senate-race-2018-05-06/

Remember when Trump promised to “drain the swamp”? You can’t exactly drain the swamp if the drain was clogged to begin with! So you can’t keep a good conservative down. When they are circling the drain, they just plug the drain back up! I mean Blankenship is every bit of a criminal as the rest of them, and add a dash of hardcore racism to that!

Washington (CNN)West Virginia GOP Senate candidate Don Blankenship defended on Tuesday his use of the term "Chinaperson" to describe the father-in-law of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

During a Fox News GOP primary debate, Blankenship said his earlier use of the term "wealthy Chinaperson" to describe the father of McConnell's wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, is not racist.

"This idea that calling someone a 'Chinaperson' -- I mean, I'm an American-person -- I don't see this insinuation by the press that there is something racist about saying a 'Chinaperson,'" Blankenship said. "Some people are Korean-persons, some people are African-persons — it's not any slander there."

James Chao, McConnell's father-in-law, was born in China, but moved to the United States before starting the Foremost Group, a shipping company, in New York. Blankenship has said McConnell is "soft on China" and that his marriage to Elaine Chao raises "the potential for conflict of interest."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/politics/don-blankenship-defense-west-virginia-debate/index.html

Maybe Donnie was just channeling his inner Walter Sobchak! Although he doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of guy who would ever watch “The Big Lebowski”. Oh and here’s the thing about this election that might shock you. At least Roy Moore lived in Alabama. Guess where Mr. Blankenship lives?

KEYSER, W.Va. — Don Blankenship is running for the United States Senate as a proud West Virginian with Appalachian roots, but his primary residence is a $2.4 million villa with palm trees and an infinity pool near Las Vegas.

Mr. Blankenship, a Republican loyalist of President Trump, is running an America First-style campaign and calls himself an “American competitionist,” but he admires China’s state-controlled economy and has expressed interest in gaining Chinese citizenship.

The former coal mining executive is widely known for spending a year in prison for his role in a mining explosion that claimed 29 lives. Yet ahead of the May 8 primary election, he is running as a champion of miners and has bought TV ads that challenge settled facts about his role in the disaster.

And even as Mr. Blankenship seeks to join the Republican majority in Washington, a “super PAC” linked to the party establishment is attacking him as a “convicted criminal” and a hypocrite.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/politics/don-blankenship-china-west-virginia.html

[font size="4"]And the winner is… [/font]

Wow, this was a close matchup – but in the end Wisconsin pulled it out in the 2nd half and went up on West Virginia by a score of 10. Sorry West Virginia, you put up a good fight but only one team can move on, and Wisconsin wins the game by a score of 76 – 65. Wisconsin wins the Fiscal Irresponsibility conference and will move on to play Kentucky in the final four! Cut the net guys, you earned it!

[font size="6"]Next Week [/font]

We’re live from a stadium that has hosted many Final Fours – the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, California! We have the four corners of conservativism represented. God, guns, greed, and batshit insanity. Florida vs Missouri for the Layover League, Kentucky vs Wisconsin for the Flyover League. The winners will move on to the championship!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]A Perfect Circle[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guests have a great new album out called “Eat The Elephant”, you can see them on tour everywhere this fall. Playing their song called “The Doomed”, give it up for A Perfect Circle!

See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
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Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management

Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

May 2, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-16: My Beautiful Dark Twisted MAGA Fantasy Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #4-16: My Beautiful Dark Twisted MAGA Fantasy Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! For more information, see our ad in Golf Digest Magazine! So I think I may have found the perfect race for the rest of us who aren’t exactly what one would call physically fit. This takes place in the town of Boerne, Texas. So it starts out with a pint of beer – already they speak my language, and it ends with a pint of beer. But here’s my favorite part of the race – there is a coffee and donuts station about halfway through the race! Because what says “5K race” more than beer, coffee, and donuts? I feel like this is more of a brisk walk to get coffee and donuts with the added bonus of a good, couple of pints of beer thrown in for good measure! I’m sure the physical fitness buffs in the audience will back me up here, but wouldn’t these things be contradictory to the idea of a 5k? Yes and I have participated in 5Ks. But what makes this one different is that it appeals to the most physically fit among us, and the least physically fit among us. I definitely fall into the latter category. You can tell. Yes, physical fitness is not exactly my strong point. But comedy is, well sort of. Just ask me what time I can run a full mile. Um… I’ll finish eventually! But here’s the best part – it’s not even an actual 5K run! It’s an 0.5K run, so we can eat all the donuts and drink all the beer we want, god bless America! OK that’s enough of the intro. We got a lot of idiocy to get to. But first we got to play Bill Maher’s new rules segment from last week where he had an open letter to Roseanne and made some really excellent points:

In the number one slot this week we’re going to recap the shit show that followed the White House Correspondents Dinner (1) because conservatives still don’t understand how comedy works. In the second slot, we’re going to talk about the end of the Korean War. Yes, nearly 50+ years of conflict is coming to a formal end this week, but should Trump get all the credit for it? No! Especially when we have far greater threats to worry about. Taking the third slot this week, we’re going to talk about the burgeoning bromance between Trump (3) and Kanye West. Yes, Kanye is back and well he hasn’t really changed much. At number four is the Groper’s Club (4). So Bill Cosby finally got convicted of first degree sexual assault over last week, but the day after, Charlie Rose announced a new show where he reveals the real victims of MeToo – the men. Yeah cry me a river. In the fifth slot we have a new installment of “This Fucking Guy” and we’re going to profile Trump’s new Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo. If you thought Rex Tillerson was scary, you ain’t seen nothing yet! At number 6 is our now weekly investigative piece Top 10 Investigates (6) and this week we’re going to talk cults. They have been in the news a lot lately thanks to Smallville actress Allison Mack, and we’re going to go deep inside the NXIVM cult at the center of this controversy. At number 7 is of course our weekly sermon of all things holy, Holy Shit, and this week, among other things, we’re going to talk about the closing of Memories Pizza. Yes, the pizza parlor at the center of the country’s biggest gay wedding controversy is now just a memory. Fuck you, I’m not filing that, I’ve been waiting a week to make that joke, sir! Taking the 8th slot this week is Ford Motor Company (8). So their new CEO announced a bold new decision by Ford executives to take the money and run. Yes, we’ll explain more. At number 9 (NEIN!!!!) is a new installment of People Are Dumb, because, well, People Are Dumb. Finally this week we’re live at the home of the Portland Trailblazers – Portland’s Moda Center! This week it’s the Batshit Conference Championship. Will Kentucky prevail and advance to the Final Four, or will Virginia continue their Cinderella story? Plus it’s the final week of our punk month and we have a live performance for you from the one and only Rancid! And as always don’t forget the key!

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

[font size="8"]White House Correspondents Dinner Recap
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So who else enjoyed watching the shit show that followed Michelle Wolf’s epic ownage of the room at the White House Correspondents Dinner? I know I did. See here’s the first rule of comedy, conservatives, and any comedian will tell you this – don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. And no one dishes it out on a regular basis quite like conservatives. They call us “libtard” and tell us to go eat Tide Pods on a regular basis. And they can’t really go crying to mama when we fight them back.

Trump-era White House Correspondents' dinners are somewhat subdued affairs—our thin-skinned president is off basking in the adoration of his base at a rally, and the stars who studded the event during the Obama years are nowhere to be found. Enter former Daily Show contributor Michelle Wolf, who offered a truly no-holds-barred attack on the Trump administration.

"Like a pornstar says when she’s about to have sex with a Trump," she opened, "Let’s get this over with." Wolf worked her way through the litany Trump administration disgraces, touching on the Roy Moore scandal, the revolving door of cabinet officials, and Don Jr.'s impressively slick mane.

Wolf's routine was raunchier than that of her predecessors. She was reluctant to talk about Russia and collusion, she said, as there were many members of the liberal media in the audience. "And I've never really wanted to know what any of you look like when you orgasm. Except for maybe you, Jake Tapper."

She also described the MeToo movement as "probably the reason I'm here."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a20096316/michelle-wolf-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

I’m sure Trump was doing that too. But see conservatives you already broke the first rule of comedy. And here’s the whole underlying irony of this whole thing – remember back in the 2016 election when Trump fans – railing against “snowflakes” wore these shirts?

Yeah those people have literally turned into the whiny crybabies they claim to despise! Irony has now come full circle in this administration! So where was Trump if you may ask? Well I answer you:

President Donald Trump has heaped more criticism on comedian Michelle Wolf for her divisive performance at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, calling her “filthy” and suggesting the annual event be canceled.

“The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it,” the President tweeted on Sunday night. “The filthy ‘comedian’ totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance). Put Dinner to rest, or start over!” Trump made a reference to late-night host Seth Meyer’s 2011 performance at the dinner, in which the comedian roasted Trump.

In her scathing, 20-minute address, Wolf ripped into the Trump administration and took particular aim at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She also threw barbs at Ivanka Trump, “as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons,” and Kellyanne Conway, “the perfect last name for what she does.”
http://time.com/5259271/donald-trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-put-to-rest/

Says the guy who not only didn’t watch it – went out of his way to not attend! Just like last year. The guy who roasts everyone daily can’t handle getting roasted himself. Snowflake! But my favorite part of the whole evening had to come from Dennis Miller. Yeah remember that guy? The guy who could make obscure pop culture references at the drop of a hat? Well he’s slipping a bit. And by a bit, I mean a lot!

It’s been basically accepted that once-beloved comedian Dennis Miller went through a serious personality change on 9/11, and that he’s been a reactionary since.

Miller became so enraged by the attack on the World Trade Center that he literally could not talk.

“I couldn’t put together a sentence for two weeks, much less something pithy,” he once said.

When he did start talking again, Miller mostly spit venom about terrorists.

Which perhaps makes it unsurprising that Miller did not like Michelle Wolf’s controversial, brilliant and hilarious White House Correspondents’ Dinner performance.

“What a horrid human being Michelle Wolf is. I’m going to read up on her over the next couple of days and I will have a few brutally mean jokes about her by Wednesday,” he tweeted early Sunday morning.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/dennis-miller-slams-michelle-wolf-twitter-gets-roasted-worse-sarah-sanders/

Yeah OK sure, Dennis. Way to improv there when you need four days to write a joke! How many obscure pop culture references are you going to cram into a Crystal Pepsi minute? Thank you! So back to the WHCD – here’s the other thing about comedy that conservatives need to learn – don’t be surprised when you get called out on your bullshit, which is what Michelle did to Trump spokeswoman and woman whose couch is most likely covered in cat hair, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Comedian Michelle Wolf has drawn criticism from political pundits following her comments about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Sanders, who was in attendance and seated on the dais as Wolf made her comments, was mocked for her job performance and also for her appearance. "Every time Sarah steps up to the podium, I get excited because I’m not sure what we’re going to get: a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams," the comedian said during the event. She also compared the press secretary to the villainous, dour Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid's Tale and made comments about Sanders' makeup, saying, "She burns facts then uses that ash to create the perfect smoky eye."

The comments drew the ire of several political pundits, including MSNBC's Morning Joe cohost Mika Brzezinski. "Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable," Brzezinski tweeted Sunday morning. "I have experienced insults about my appearance from the president. All women have a duty to unite when these attacks happen and the WHCA owes Sarah an apology."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michelle-wolf-slammed-vile-sarah-huckabee-sanders-jokes-at-white-house-correspondents-dinner-1106776

[font size="8"]The End Of The Korean War
[br] [/font] [br]

While we were sleeping, or enjoying our post WHCD vodka-induced benders, Kim Jong Un is actually taking steps to avoid a nuclear war in North Korea with Donald Trump. And by conservative logic, or complete lack thereof, just the mere act of threatening war with North Korea is enough to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize, and that isn’t just awarded to anybody.

The Korean War will be formally declared over after 65 years, the North and South have said.

At a historic summit between leaders Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-in, the neighbouring countries agreed they would work towards peace on the peninsula with a formal end to the conflict set to be announced later this year.

The pair agreed to bring the two countries together and establish a "peace zone" on the contested border.

The war began in 1950 and most fighting came to an end with an armistice three years later. But peace was never officially declared and the two countries have been officially at war ever since.

At their first summit in more than a decade, the two sides announced they would seek an agreement to establish "permanent" and "solid" peace on the peninsula.

"The two leaders declare before our people of 80 million and the entire world there will be no more war on the Korean peninsula and a new age of peace has begun," the official declaration sai
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/korean-war-ends-kim-jong-un-moon-jae-in-north-south-summit-latest-news-a8324976.html

Damn Windows 10!!! So now guess who’s trying to take credit for ending 50+ years of conflict in one of the most dangerous zones known to man? Bet you didn’t think it was going to be him, did you? And you think you’re so smart!

SEOUL, South Korea — Several months ago, South Koreans considered President Trump as dangerous as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as the two traded threats of nuclear annihilation.

Now, commentators and others in Seoul think Mr. Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for helping start the unexpected peace process unfolding on the divided Korean Peninsula. On Monday, South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, said he felt the same.

Mr. Moon’s endorsement of a Nobel for Mr. Trump, who has faced one ethical scandal after another at home, came as the South Korean leader presided over a meeting of his senior presidential staff on Monday. During the meeting, Mr. Moon received a telegram from Lee Hee-ho, a former first lady of South Korea, congratulating him for a successful summit meeting with Mr. Kim on Friday and wishing him a Nobel Peace Prize.

“It’s really President Trump who should receive it; we can just take peace,” Mr. Moon was quoted by his office as saying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/world/asia/trump-nobel-peace-prize-korea.html

Yes, why. Let me see if I can extrapolate the logic of the Trump supporter for a minute. Trump positioned the US military to physically threaten North Korea if they didn’t disarm, and nearly brought the whole world to the brink of nuclear war. But then we learned that guy who’s been the real threat the whole time isn’t in Pyongyang, he’s in Moscow. So by that logic, yeah, I guess Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but he has about as much of a chance of winning that as I do the Powerball.

As a candidate, Donald Trump expressed support for reinstating military torture, dropping bombs on the wives and children of enemy combatants, and mass murdering Muslim prisoners of war with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. As president, he has praised police brutality, closed America’s border to Syrian refugees, defended white supremacists, demonized Central American immigrants, threatened thermonuclear war over Twitter, and endorsed extrajudicial assassinations of suspected drug users as a public health policy.

And yet, Trump’s aides believe he just might win a Nobel Peace Prize. And that notion is a tad less crazy than it sounds.

You may have trouble picturing Donald Trump as a world-historic peacemaker. But Donald Trump doesn’t. As the president contemplates his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un, he feels confident that his unique deal-making skills will allow him to resolve the tensions that have kept the Korean peninsula in a cold war for 65 years — and led Pyongyang to cling to a nuclear arsenal at immense economic and diplomatic cost. As Axios reports:

President Trump views the North Korean crisis as his “great man” of history moment.

The big picture: He came into office thinking he could be the historic deal maker to bring peace to the Middle East. He’s stopped talking about that. There’s very little point. The peace deal looks dead and cremated. But Trump wants to sign his name even larger into the history books, and he views North Korea as his moment.

Sources close to him say he genuinely believes he — and he alone — can overcome the seemingly intractable disaster on the Korean Peninsula.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/trump-thinks-he-alone-can-end-korean-war-he-may-be-right.html

Exactly wrong! This is the guy who brought the whole world to the brink of nuclear war, alienated our allies, caused an exponential number of untold human rights violations by illegal deportation methods, appointed a far right apocalypse worshipper to be Secretary Of State, and wants to bring back Guantanamo Bay. Yet he’s worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize? GTFO!!

Sweden and Switzerland are among the places the White House is considering for an unprecedented summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he dispatched CIA Director Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang last month to meet with Kim in advance of the summit, which the U.S. hopes will lead to North Korea giving up its nuclear arsenal. The unannounced meeting indicates preparations are advancing for a summit that Trump said could take place by early June or sooner.

“Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump said in a Twitter posting Wednesday morning. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/trump-says-south-korea-has-his-blessing-for-north-korea-peace

And while on the subject of denuclearization, Trump, while you’re praising North Korea, you should be aware what your buddy Vlad has been up to! Because while we were all distracted, Vlad revealed that he has the real weapon that could kill us all! By the way if this is called “Satan 2” it really makes you wonder what happened to Satan 1 doesn’t it?

VLADIMIR Putin’s war of words with the West escalated into war games yesterday. In a show of force, the Russian president demonstrated his fearsome new Sarmat missile. Dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, it can travel at 20 times the speed of sound and carry 12 nuclear warheads up to 6,000 miles.

The test launch, shown on an “Easter message” video from the Russian defence ministry, came as Vladimir Putin ordered further cuts to Britain’s diplomatic ranks in Moscow. Meanwhile police in Salisbury are closing in on the gang behind the nerve agent poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, which has led to tit-for-tat expulsions.

In the video, the Satan 2 missile emerges from an underground silo, pauses as if hovering above the ground, and then speeds away in a cloud of white smoke. The launch was at the snow-covered Plesetsk spaceport in the northern Archangel province of Russia close to the Arctic Circle.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/939524/vladimir-putin-russia-missile-threat-sarmat-satan2-sergei-skripal-new-cold-war

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

If there’s one person in this entire world who loves getting his ass kissed, it’s Donald J. Trump. if there’s another person in this world who loves getting his ass kissed, it’s Kanye West. So in case you were living under a rock, or hiding under a rock, Kanye reemerged on Twitter following a very long absence, and it’s good to know that he hasn’t changed much. Or maybe he did since he’s now a full blown Trump supporter.

Kanye West, the music producer and rapper and author of some of the most influential records of the 21st century, returned to Twitter after almost a full year away, where he’s now posting so many tweets that it’s genuinely hard to keep up with his seemingly insatiable pace.

At first, it seemed like he was just back on Twitter to announce a pair of new albums (one solo, one with longtime collaborator Kid Cudi). But it didn’t take long before he set off a firestorm of controversy that expanded to encompass a series of right-wing pundits; the creator of Dilbert; his wife, Kim Kardashian West; and the president of the United States.

Many of Kanye’s tweets have been harmless or border on impenetrable (“I no longer have a manager. I can’t be managed” and then “decentralize”). But the hip-hop star immediately kicked up outcry when he professed his admiration for several right-wing speakers — and, as he had before, President Donald Trump.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/25/17280922/kanye-west-donald-trump-tweets-kim-kardashian

It’s about ides, bro!!!! And it’s also about information! But really, I think Kanye has gone full Tracy Jordan here. And you never go full Tracy Jordan. I mean even Tracy Jordan doesn’t go full Tracy Jordan. I mean can we play a clip of his song?

Yeah that guy won multiple Grammys! He’s a creative genius, folks! Which then this happened:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/989225812166696960

OK who are you and what have you done with @realDonaldTrump? Should we be more concerned that Kanye wants to be Trump's BFF or should we be more concerned with the fact that Trump actually took time out of his day to compliment somebody?

And we saw it even more strongly when rapper Kanye West tweeted support for Trump a few days later. A bigger star than Shania Twain, Kanye has refused to back down, and even garnered public support from his normally non-political wife, Kim Kardashian West, and from Chance The Rapper (who noted that "Black people don’t have to be Democrats,”), though Chance, like Shania Twain, later chickened out and apologized.

Kanye tweeted: “You don't have to agree with trump but the mob can't make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don't agree with everything anyone does. That's what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.”

And when fellow musician John Legend chided him for these statements and said he was letting down his fans, Kanye responded: “I love you John and I appreciate your thoughts. You bringing up my fans is a tactic based on fear used to manipulate my free thought.” West's new song on the subject points out that “Lot of people agree with me, but they're too scared to speak up." Which is the whole point of preference falsification.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/04/30/kanye-west-black-famous-backs-donald-trump-column/562850002/

Cause baby I’m awesome… awesome… y’all know… remember that? I know Kanye had that album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. Now let’s add a MAGA to that and it becomes “My Beautiful Dark Twisted MAGA Fantasy”. You could add that to any of his albums. “808s and MAGA Heartbreaks”, or “The MAGA College Dropout”, or “MAGA Late Registration”, or “The MAGA Life Of Pablo”. Thank you! I mean this whole bromance is crazy. But the good news is – Kanye has a new song out! I mean why tweet it when a song expresses how you feel?

This is no joke, folks.

After Kanye West seemingly trolled everyone with his “whoopdety poop scoop” song, “Lift Yourself,” the rapper dropped a legitimate track that delves further into his recent remarks about President Trump on Twitter. Just like the title suggests, his support of the current commander in chief sets up a “Ye vs. the People” mentality.

“I know Obama was heaven-sent, but ever since Trump won, it proved that I could be president,” Yeezy raps.

T.I. joins him on the track as they share dueling views. “Yeah, you can. At what cost, though?” he spits back.

“Ye vs. the People” dropped Friday on Los Angeles radio station Power 106, even before West released it in full to the masses. The song is available on Apple Music (listen below), Amazon Music Unlimited, and Tidal.
http://ew.com/music/2018/04/28/kanye-west-ye-vs-the-people-trump/

[font size="8"]The Gropers’ Club
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So this week saw both a huge win, and subsequently a huge loss for the MeToo movement. The win came in the form of an enormous celebrity getting his ass handed to him. And the loss came from the proposal of a new TV show. Let’s talk about the win first. I’m sure everyone knew where they were last week when the verdict was announced in the Bill Cosby case. And guess what? He’s GUILTY!!!!! Yeah that is some sweet justice for you!

A Montgomery County jury has found Bill Cosby guilty of the only criminal charges to emerge from a career-ending scandal fueled by dozens of women who accused the entertainer once known as “America’s Dad” of sexual assault.

After about 13 hours of deliberation, the panel of seven men and five women on Thursday convicted him of drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who said she had seen Cosby as a father-figure and mentor until the early 2004 night that he accosted her at his Cheltenham Township home.

The 80-year-old entertainer could face up to 10 years in prison.

The verdict delivered the first celebrity conviction of the #MeToo era in a case that in many ways stood at its vanguard and shone a spotlight on the role sexual entitlement, a scandal-hungry media and Hollywood’s casting couch culture played in the ruin of a comedy icon.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/cosby/bill-cosby-guilty-trial-verdict-sexual-assault-20180426.html

Damn straight. So Bill Cosby is guilty of charges of first degree sexual assault. This is some serious shit right here, and the shit just hit the fan. But you know what’s scary? The ‘Cos might not serve a single day of jail time.

(CNN)Based on his conviction this week on three assault charges, comedian and TV star Bill Cosby could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

But legal experts said the 80-year-old certainly will spend less time than that behind bars, and there's a very real possibility that he may not ever be incarcerated.

Why? Well, it's mostly to do with his defense team's plan to appeal the guilty verdict -- likely on the grounds that the decision to allow five other accusers to testify in the trial unfairly prejudiced the jury.

Cosby's attorney, Tom Mesereau, will probably ask the court that his client be given home confinement during the appeal, which could take months or even years, CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson said.

"I think he'll ask the court and do whatever he needs to, to have his client remain out at liberty until these issues are decided, whether it was appropriate to allow all those accusers to testify, and how prejudicial and unfair would that be," Jackson said.

more
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/27/us/bill-cosby-appeal-prison-time/index.html

So now that we’ve got the good news out of the way, let’s tell you about the bad news. And this is not only bad news for the ladies involved in the horrible MeToo scandals, but also the guys too. Really, when you’re in a hole, you want to stop digging, not dig further!

Just weeks after the Hollywood Reporter published a lengthy article on Charlie Rose’s post-#MeToo life, rumors of a comeback for the former PBS and CBS news anchor are drifting into sight.

According to Page Six, there’s a pitch making the rounds for a new #MeToo atonement series. The proposed show would reportedly star Rose, who would interview some of the other prominent men who lost their jobs after being accused of sexual misconduct last fall, including Matt Lauer and Louis C.K. Tina Brown, the media celebrity who previously edited the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, confirmed to Page Six that she was approached about producing the show but declined to say who was approaching her. (She also says she declined to participate in the show.)

At this point, there’s no reason to believe that this proposed show is anywhere close to reality; it most likely exists only in the form of a pitch. But that a Charlie Rose redemption show is getting pitched to major media figures like Brown suggests there are people in the industry who are willing to test the waters for him. It suggests that there are people behind the scenes who think he’s spent enough time in exile.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/26/17284726/charlie-rose-post-metoo-atonement-show-pitch

Yes d’oh indeed! I mean you’re already incriminated. Don’t incriminate yourself any further guys because anything you say could potentially backfire on you. And seriously – terrible timing on whoever put this idea out there. This comes the day after the Cosby verdict! At least wait a few days before announcing something this unbelievably stupid!

The #MeToo comeback wave for disgraced men is getting bolder by the second. Last week, we got speculations about how Louis C.K. might stage his return to the comedy world, while in another corner, Matt Lauer was reportedly “testing the waters” for a comeback of his own. And now, according to Page Six, a #MeToo television series starring Charlie Rose is reportedly in the works—in which the former CBS anchor would interview other shunned men like Lauer and C.K. The question here seems obvious: who on earth is making this proposed series, and in what universe do they imagine viewers will tune in?

Rose was fired from CBS This Morning and his eponymous PBS show last fall following allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women; in a statement given at the time, Rose apologized, but denied the accuracy of some allegations. “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings,” Rose said, “even though I now realize I was mistaken.” Rose’s agent did not immediately respond to V.F.’s request for comment regarding the new project.

Why would anyone think a series in which Rose interviews other men who have been accused of sexual misconduct is a good or necessary idea? That might remain a mystery—but the report should also be received with skepticism, since as of yet, it’s unclear who is actually trying to make this series happen.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/04/charlie-rose-tv-series-me-too-scandal-matt-lauer-louis-ck-tina-brown

Seriously – to quote Jerry Seinfeld – “who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?”. And you know in this day and age when timing is everything, don’t release news of a show like this the day after one of the world’s most notorious sex abusers gets his ass handed to him! But really a lot of these creeps don’t deserve second chances. They know what they did.

Early Thursday afternoon, a Pennsylvania jury consisting of seven men and five women found Bill Cosby guilty of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand.

Minutes later, news cameras captured four women who were not Andrea Constand sobbing, leaning on a marble balcony, leaning on each other. Three of them—Caroline Heldman, Lili Bernard, and Victoria Valentino—were among Cosby’s 60-plus other accusers, finally seeing some form of justice befall a man society and time told them was untouchable.

The footage of Cosby’s victims crying with relief played as B-roll to almost every news story of the Cosby verdict. And as I watched the women embracing, over and over again, two thoughts occurred to me. First: I can’t imagine the bittersweet victory those women must feel. Second: Charlie Rose can go fuck himself.

Charlie Rose has been high on the “go fuck yourself” list for quite some time. Last fall, eight women accused the erstwhile newsman of exposing himself to them, making lewd calls, and groping. Back then, Rose’s public response oscillated between defensive and confused. He tried to explain his creepiness away by saying that he was under the impression that he was pursuing mutual feelings. From his 21-year-old assistant. (For just one day in my life, I’d love to live with the confidence of an unattractive male septuagenarian who is still convinced that 21-year-old women are interested in him romantically.) Like Cosby, Rose never seemed to grok the harm he caused.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/charlie-rose-doesnt-deserve-a-second-act

[font size="8"]Mike Pompeo
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This week’s This Fucking Guy is Mike Pompeo. If you don’t know who he is, well, you will definitely need to because he’s now FOURTH in line for the presidency. If you think the idea of Mike Pence as president is scary, well, wait until you meet Mike Pompeo. And we’re going to delve deep into this guy’s character. See, we can all mock Mike Pence’s pasty white boy wannabe Ned Flanders brand of Christianity because it’s almost cartoonish in nature. But add a dash of some hardcore end times apocalypse worship to the mix, and you’ve got Mike Pompeo!

WASHINGTON — The Senate easily confirmed Mike Pompeo on Thursday as the United States’ 70th secretary of state, elevating the current C.I.A. director and an outspoken foreign policy hawk to be the nation’s top diplomat.

In the end, the 57-to-42 tally lacked the drama of other nail-biting confirmation votes in the Trump era. This week, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the nominee’s main Republican antagonist, bowed to pressure from President Trump to drop his objections. Ultimately, seven members of the Senate Democratic caucus — five of whom face re-election this year in states that Mr. Trump won in 2016 — joined a united Republican conference to support Mr. Pompeo’s confirmation.

Shortly after the vote at the Capitol, Mr. Pompeo went across the street to the Supreme Court, where he was sworn in by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Mr. Pompeo then dashed to Joint Base Andrews, where a plane was waiting to fly him to Brussels for a meeting of NATO allies. Senior staff on the plane greeted him with applause.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state.html

Yes seriously – holy shit! So he’s now fourth in line from the presidency behind Orrin Hatch and Paul Ryan. This fucking guy! Let’s go over some of his qualifications, shall we?

Secretary of State-in-waiting Mike Pompeo never served in the Gulf War, even though media outlets and many of his colleagues have repeatedly said he did, and Pompeo has done nothing to dispute their claims.

Splinter News asked the CIA about Pompeo’s record, and the agency confirmed that while he was in the Army from 1986 to 1991, he never saw action in the Middle East.

A spokesperson said that Pompeo, who is currently director of the CIA, “was in the U.S. Army at the time of the Gulf War — serving until 1991. He was not deployed to that theater.” The war lasted less than seven months, between August 1990 and February 1991.

The discrepancy between Pompeo’s record and public accounts was first brought to light by Ned Price, a former CIA spokesman and special assistant to President Obama, who highlighted a series of inconsistencies on Twitter.

Splinter has a rundown of some prominent instances in which Pompeo’s war record has been cited incorrectly These include articles in The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal, a letter signed by 51 Republicans expressing support for Pompeo’s secretary of State nomination, and a Marco Rubio speech on the Senate floor. Throughout all this, Pompeo has said nothing to correct the record. It’s possible, though seems unlikely, that he has simply missed all the references to his nonexistent war history. He has been busy, after all.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/it-turns-out-mike-pompeo-never-served-in-the-gulf-war.html

So he is fourth in line for the presidency and he lied about his time in the military. Oh who am I kidding? That makes him perfect for the Trump administration! Trump is a compulsive liar and he surrounds himself with other compulsive liars. But was he investigated by Mueller?

During his Secretary of State confirmation hearing Thursday morning, CIA Director Pompeo told senators that he has been interviewed by Special Counsel Bob Mueller, although he would not reveal the contents of those conversations. NBC News first reported on the interview back in January.

The backdrop: Pompeo reportedly took part in a White House a meeting last March during which President Trump asked whether he could intervene in the FBI's Russia investigation, per The Washington Post. During his hearing, Pompeo denied the suggestion that Trump asked him to do anything "improper" regarding the investigation.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/pompeo-interview-mueller-investigation-russia-fbi-c14f71fb-0da4-46ad-9985-e3cb4d62ce73.html

Well that raises another question – who in the Trump administration hasn’t been investigated by Muller yet? So why is Mike Pompeo such a big deal? Well despite that he has his lips firmly placed on Trump’s ass – and we all know how much his ass loves getting kissed – is that the Iran deal has been a big part of the news lately, and Mike might just be the guy to help Trump get his way.

WASHINGTON — Mike Pompeo, US President Donald Trump’s pick to become secretary of state, is an unabashed Iran hawk who vehemently opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, and has sought a more aggressive approach toward Tehran since joining the administration as CIA Director in January 2017.

Tillerson will now be succeeded by a figure who has stood out as an Iran hardliner. After former president Barack Obama forged the landmark agreement with world powers and Iran in July 2015, Pompeo, then a Congressman from Kansas, immediately castigated the pact as both ineffectual and weak.

He said the accord would not “stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb” and that it “places Israel at more risk.” He scorned the notion, perpetuated by the Obama administration, that the deal would open Tehran up to the international economy and thus allow it to potentially join the community of nations. He said the “theory that post-sanctions Iran will moderate is a joke – they want to annihilate Israel.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-mike-pompeo-trump-taps-an-iran-hawk-whose-views-dovetail-with-his-own/

Well yeah it’s pretty obvious that no one wants to get annihilated. But Trump and his goons are helping to accelerate that process because they’re dominionists, and that’s what they believe in, because, that’s what Jesus would want! But this might be the icing on why this guy is so fucking dangerous. I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Washington — A one-letter mistake on an official White House statement led to consternation and questions about official U.S. policy toward Iran on Monday, and a quiet correction did little to quell the matter.

In the written statement sent to reporters around 7:30 p.m. ET, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declared that newly unveiled Israeli intelligence proved "Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program."

The declaration flew in the face of American intelligence determinations, which found Tehran froze its program following the Obama-era agreement to lift sanctions in exchange for curtailing its nuclear ambitions. By 9:30 p.m. ET, the statement appeared differently online.

"Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program," the online version read, reiterating a long-established U.S. position.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/white-house-claims-clerical-error-led-to-drastic-change-in-iran-statement/ar-AAwAtp8?li=BBnb7Kz

Well there’s that. I mean even Putin is giving you the facepalm. That’s Mike Pompeo – this week’s:

[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Cults Of Personality
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It’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates:

Cults. They are generally a faux pas not talked about in normal society except when they surface in the news. The last time a cult made the news? 2001 – Heaven’s Gate, and before that 1992 – the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh. None of these however hold a candle to the NXIVM cult that was recently thrust into the spotlight by Smallville actress Allison Mack.

In late March, a man named Keith Raniere was arrested and charged with sex trafficking for his role NXIVM, a sex cult he founded in 1998. Since then, there’s been a flurry of reports about other alleged members, with the most recent being Allison Mack, who was arrested last week for allegedly recruiting women to be sex slaves.

Below, here’s everything you need to know about the most recent developments.

First things first: How do you say “NXIVM”?
It’s pronounced “Nexium.”

And what exactly is it?
It’s an Albany-based cult with connections all over the world, that reportedly masquerades as a “self-help” organization, meant to empower women. It was thrust into the spotlight in October 2017, when a New York Times investigation exposed that the women who were involved were referred to as “slaves,” and subject to ritual humiliations and brandings. They were also allegedly told to starve themselves to achieve Raniere’s standard of beauty and to have sex encounters with him.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/smallville-allison-mack-sex-cult-nxivm-everything-to-know.html

Yes that is certainly true. And the allegations are definitely far more serious and damning than you would think possible. The NXIVM cult makes the previous cults we mentioned look almost cartoonish by comparison. It’s far worse than you would think. So how does a cult like this get sold?

A former Smallville actress has been arrested and charged with sex trafficking for her role in a secret society that news reports are calling a “sex cult.”

Allison Mack, who is perhaps best-known for her role as Chloe Sullivan on the WB (later CW) show Smallville, has been charged in a New York federal court with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and forced labor conspiracy. She’s accused of having recruited women — some of whom were underage — to the multilevel-marketing organization Nxivm (pronounced NEX-ium). She faces life in prison.

Ostensibly a self-help group advertising “executive success programs,” Nxivm has been condemned by former members as a cult, in which female members are ritualistically branded and pressured to engage in sexual “master-slave” relationships with higher-ups in the program, and in particular with the group’s founder and leader, Keith Raniere. Raniere, who is known to his followers as “Vanguard,” was arrested last month on charges of sex trafficking.

Raniere maintains his innocence, and the Nxivm website has posted a statement denying all allegations, saying, “We are currently working with the authorities to demonstrate his innocence and true character. We strongly believe the justice system will prevail in bringing the truth to light. We are saddened by the reports perpetuated by the media and their apparent disregard for ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ yet we will continue to honor the same principles on which our company was founded.”
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/25/17275930/allison-mack-smallville-actress-sex-cult-nxivm-dos-prison-arrest-sex-trafficking-keith-raniere

So the cult got sold as a “female empowerment program” and a “self help” program. And just like most cults, they broke down the people who signed up for it and got tricked by their charismatic leader. Which is pretty common among all cults.

Pause your Wild Wild Country bingeing and look at the news, where so-called cult Nxivm has been making headlines for a week. Smallville actress Allison Mack was released on a $5 million bond on Tuesday after being indicted on sex-trafficking charges on Friday.

Since her arrest, stories have broken that Mack may have tried to recruit women including Emma Watson, Kelly Clarkson, and several feminist writers into a group that she referred to on Twitter as a “human development and women’s movement.” The group, however, was allegedly Nxivm, the upstate New York alleged sex cult run by a man named Keith Raniere, also known as “The Vanguard.”

Mack is denying the charges, and per Today, has issued a statement via a representative saying she has no comment at this time. Raniere was arrested in Mexico last month and has been charged with multiple accounts of sex trafficking and forced labor.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/04/a-running-list-of-the-women-allison-mack-attempted-to-recruit-to-nxivm

This cult however, will most likely need defensive attorneys because they most likely can’t afford the other kind. These are very serious crimes and Ms. Mack and Mr. Raniere are probably going to be going away for a very long time. We could go into this subject all day – but NXIVM had branches all over the country.

A branch of notorious “sex cult” Nxivm — which has been known to brand female “slaves” with its founder’s initials — is covertly recruiting within the arty Brooklyn crowd.

While the Albany-based sect had seemed to be imploding after its founder, Keith Raniere, was arrested in Mexico last month on sex-trafficking charges, it now appears to be searching for new blood. Last month, a number of notable Williamsburg artists and writers, who asked not to be named, were invited by friends to what was billed as a party promising “authentic conversation” among creatives and “light vegetarian fare.”

A flyer for the event at a private home in Williamsburg billed it as “an evening of meeting cool, like-minded artists and chatting about life, authenticity, and the awesome human potential,” also vaguely referring to an unexplained “human expression program.”
https://pagesix.com/2018/04/09/alleged-sex-cult-recruits-hipsters-in-brooklyn/

So they would recruit nearly the same way with the promise of a free “get acquainted” weekend. They even had their own school:

In 2015, Spanish-language pop icon Alejandro Sanz spoke to Mexican television stations and newspapers to promote his wife's new venture: a midtown Miami school called the Rainbow Cultural Garden that purported to train toddlers to speak as many as seven languages at once.

In response, sisters Loreta and Jimena Garza posted fawning praise of Sanz's interview on their Facebook pages. "Here we go RCG!!!!!!" Loreta Garza wrote July 7, 2015. "Thank You Keith Raniere for such an amazing opportunity."

Since then, Raniere has been outed as the leader of the alleged NXIVM sex cult, accused of using flaming-hot irons to brand women, and arrested by the FBI in Mexico on sex-trafficking charges. According to the Mexico City newspaper La Silla Rota, federal agents found Raniere hiding on a compound trying to live "off the grid" — alongside Loreta, Jimena, and another sister, Carola Garza.
http://cbs6albany.com/news/local/neighbor-speaks-to-cbs6-about-nxivm-party-house

So that is an insight into how one of the world’s most notoriouis sex cults was able to operate. This has been Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters, it’s time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate. For the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it is our weekly duty to remind you that the holiest among us are also the most full of:

Food and religion. These are two things that often go hand in hand. But there has been one restaurant in particular in all of the these great United States of ours has been at the center of a very grave controversy. Now in our book, the good LAWRD does offer those who seek vengeance their just desserts, for revenge is a dish that is best served cold!

Memories Pizza, the Walkerton, Indiana restaurant that gained national attention for suggesting they would refuse to cater a gay wedding if invited to, has permanently closed. According to the South Bend Tribune, the restaurant shuttered last month.

The pizzeria went viral in 2015 after its owners became among the first to publicly voice support for Indiana’s controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which then-governor Mike Pence signed into law to protect the “many people of faith [who] feel their religious liberty is under attack by government action.” (Due to a vocal backlash from civil rights groups, the act was amended a week later to explicitly offer anti-discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community.)

But in the days leading up to the original act’s signing, the pizzeria entered the spotlight then when Memories co-owner Crystal O’Connor told a local news station that “we would have to say no” to a gay couple if they requested pizzas for a wedding, a response fueled by the fact that they are “a Christian establishment.” O’Connor clarified at the time that the pizzeria would not deny service to any individual who wanted to place an order, but that they would not support or offer their services to a same-sex marriage celebration.
https://www.eater.com/2018/4/25/17279666/memories-pizza-indiana-controversy-shutters

Seriously I would think our LGBT brothers and sisters would have to have better taste in food than to get pizza from a low rent pizza joint in the first place. Now just like Kentucky’s Sister Kim, Memories Pizza became an overnight celebrity with right wing Christian bigots.

Memories Pizza has put a sign out declaring the shop has permanently shut down last month, reports The South Bend Tribune. The Walkerton pizzeria was once at the center of a national controversy over LGBT discrimination.

In April 2015, owners Kevin and Crystal O’Connor told local media that they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding because of their religious beliefs. It was one of the first businesses to go on the record that it would refuse services related to same-sex weddings.

At that time, then-Governor Mike Pence had signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the state, which many viewed as a "get out of jail free card" for business people who discriminated against LGBT patrons in the name of Christianity.

The video report of Memories Pizza went viral. Protests and death threats against the O'Connors led the store to close for eight days. Even a Concord High School coach was fired for commenting on Twitter, "Who's going to Walkerton with me to burn down Memories Pizza." But after Glenn Beck's The Blaze (which springboarded Tomi Lauren's career) started a GoFundMe account to support the restauranteurs, they received more than $800,000 in donations.

Kevin O’Connor has returned to the spotlight several times since the controversy. A year later he told The Tribune, "If your opinion isn’t what somebody else’s is, then I’m a dirtbag. Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I have to hate you.” He appeared on Fox News' You The Jury, pitted against a gay couple from Indianapolis.
https://www.advocate.com/small-business/2018/4/25/memories-pizza-which-refused-cater-same-sex-weddings-no-more

/revision/latest?cb=20180315215956

Now even the good LAWRD sayeth that not only does he think it is ridiculous, but it is also good to forgive and forget, am I not right about that? Can I get an amen??? But our followers have done this and you shall not forgive if thine death threat is issued!

Memories Pizza, an Indiana pizzeria owned by a Christian family who in 2015 said they wouldn't carter a same-sex wedding if asked, has closed.

The South Bend Tribune reported on Monday that the pizzeria, which found itself in the midst of a national controversy due to its stance, has closed, with a sign at the front window explaining that it was shuttered last month.

The website for the pizzeria has also shut down and placed for sale on public domain.

Local business owners declined to speak publicly about the closing, but suggested that the pizzeria's owners, father Kevin and daughter Crystal O'Connor, were ready to retire.

The O'Connors said that they had received death threats in 2015 after they explained that they wouldn't cater same-sex weddings — because of their Christian belief that marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman — after a reporter asked them that question.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/memories-pizza-where-christian-owners-got-death-threats-for-not-catering-gay-weddings-closes-223357/

Yes!!! It is time to stop this foolishness!!!! For leaving a death threat is a sin!!!! It is one of the most egregious of sins ,and if you commit this sin, you will go to the place where the devil will immediately judge your fate, and we all don’t want that!!

A sign found at the front window of Memories Pizza stated that it permanently locked its doors in March. Owner Kevin O'Connor and his daughter Crystal have decided to close down and retire, according to reports.

The O'Connors were first featured in the national news in 2015 after saying that they would refuse catering to a gay couple's wedding. Their pronouncements came after Vice President Mike Pence, who was the state's governor at that time, signed Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that legally allowed establishments to refuse service if it went against their beliefs. The O'Connors told reporters that they would actually welcome anyone into their restaurant but that they would not cater to a gay wedding if asked.

"It is not right for a man to marry a man and for a woman to marry a woman," Kevin said in the interview. "People could end up marrying trees," he added.

Reporter Alyssa Marino, who talked to Indiana business owners regarding the RFRA, explained on Twitter: "I just walked into their shop and asked how they feel. They've never been asked to cater a same-sex wedding."

After the O'Connors' statements made headlines, Memories Pizza's Yelp page received a number of negative reviews. The restaurant owners also reportedly received death threats.
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/memories-pizza-closed-for-good-christian-owners-got-death-threats-over-convictions-against-same-sex-wedding/128804.htm

Yes!!!! Don’t call this pizza dude! For doing so is a sin, and I hope that is the take away that you get from today’s sermon. For now, mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Ford Motor Company
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So this weekend, the Ford Motor Company made one of the most astoundingly stupid decisions a company can make. And with this decision they may have just very well committed corporate suicide and that’s not going to be good for anybody. This is a “take the money and run” kind of decision that can come back to bite you in the ass. So here’s what happened.

In the news last week: "Say goodbye to the Ford sedan," (as reported, in this case, at the Washington Post).

Ford announced plans late Wednesday to eliminate some of the company’s most well-known cars in North America, including the Fiesta subcompact, Fusion midsize sedan, Taurus large sedan and the C-Max van, according to Ford’s quarterly earnings statement. The decision followed years of declining car sales.

Ford said eliminating most of the company’s cars except for two models will allow the company to focus on their “winning portfolio” in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Detroit automaker plans to keep the Ford Mustang sports car and a new Focus crossover that the company plans to release next year.

This comes as the sales of new vehicles in the United States has shifted, once again, from cars to light trucks (that is, including minivans, crossovers, and SUVs as well as actual trucks); the trend started round about the time of the invention of the minivan in 1983 (remember when Lee Iacocca saved Chrysler?), slowed with the rise in gas prices, and picked up again in the past five years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2018/05/01/bye-bye-ford-cars-plus-two-retirement-take-aways/#6711b0acfde8

Really? This is winning? Are you guys drinking from the same Kool-Aid that Charlie Sheen and Kanye West are drinking from? Do you not realize the ripple effect this is going to have on the economy? Oh wait you don’t care because you’re rich. It’s not enough you have to make $25 billion, you have to make 3 or 4 times that. Because rich executives want all the money. I said all!

While Ford still sells a fair number of cars in the U.S., models like the Fiesta, Focus, and Fusion all lose money today. Many are delivered to rental car companies at bargain-basement prices. In the consumer market, Ford has to offer massive discounts to move cars off of its dealers' lots.

Crossovers are far more profitable, largely because consumers tend to see them as more desirable. Additionally, the difference in price between sedans and crossovers has narrowed in recent years. Indeed, in January, Ford began U.S. sales of the EcoSport: its first entry-level crossover for the domestic market. The starting price is just $19,995, though a typically equipped version would cost significantly more.

If consumer preferences are set to continue shifting toward crossovers, it makes sense for Ford to double down on that slice of the market.

Crosstown rival General Motors (NYSE: GM) is moving in a similar direction. It is working to broaden its crossover lineup with an ever-expanding array of models. And while GM doesn't plan to exit the U.S. car market entirely, it is likely to discontinue at least two models in the next few years: the Chevy Sonic and the Chevy Impala.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-dumps-u-sedan-lineup-103500791.html

Yeah it’s about like that, only the Ford execs are the ones giving us the finger. So just how bad of a decision is this? Like I said before it could be corporate suicide for Ford. Hey Trump is this really how we MAGA?

Ford's new CEO, Jim Hackett, just announced a bold strategic move for America's most enduring automaker: abandoning the car business. Hackett completely reversed former CEO Alan Mulally's full-line strategy to focus on trucks and SUVs. A 3 percent jump in Ford's stock price validated Hackett's decision, but that adrenaline shot could be short-lived. Jettisoning automobiles may prove fatal for Ford, leaving the market to GM and foreign producers.

Bowing to short-term shareholder pressures that felled predecessor Mark Fields, Hackett is undoing 115 years of Ford's automobile legacy. Unlike General Motors CEO Mary Barra, labelled a "car gal" for her 38 years in the business, Hackett has no experience in automobiles. He comes from thirty years of making furniture and most recently as interim athletic director at the University of Michigan.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/ford-ceo-jim-hacketts-decision-to-dump-cars-may-prove-fatal.html

Yeah except for one problem – it probably won’t. And it will most likely backfire on them. Because think of all of what it takes to produce one car and then sell it, and all those people will most likely be out of a job. But hey, the executives will get nice big fat fucking paydays so it’s all good! Or not. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I played the funeral version of the Toys R Us song? Someone may need to do that for “have you driven a Ford lately?”.

Nearly 110 years after first unveiling the Ford Model T, one of America's most iconic vehicle manufacturers has announced plans to move away from U.S. small-car production and instead focus on the SUVs and trucks that have increasingly eaten into smaller vehicles' market share.

Ford executives last week announced a plan to reposition the company's business model, saying they expect "almost 90 percent of the Ford portfolio in North America will be trucks, utilities and commercial vehicles" by 2020. It represents a watershed moment for a company that more than a century ago produced one of the first commercially viable car models the world had ever seen.

The move is consistent with a domestic vehicle landscape that in recent years has tilted heavily in favor of trucks, SUVs and larger vehicles that many Americans shied away from a decade ago, when the economy was dragging and oil prices were considerably higher.

Total car sales in the U.S. – which do not include trucks and SUVs – clocked in at nearly 556,000 in March, down 9.2 percent over the year, according to industry statistics compiled by the Autodata Corporation. To date, sales are down 10.8 percent from their performance during the first three months of 2017.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2018-04-30/american-car-continues-to-fade-as-ford-drops-small-models

[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
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Let’s hit it!

Of course you know that by now people are people and people are dumb. So who is dumb this week? Why there are a lot of people out there, sir! First off, you know that old adage about yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. And you especially don’t do that in a sold out movie theater showing Avengers: Infinity War, one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Well, there was a preacher out of Redlands, California, who did just that.

REDLANDS (CBSLA) — An outing to catch one of the season’s most anticipated films turned into a panic-filled afternoon for some moviegoers Friday.

Armed officers rushed to the Harkins Mountain Grove 16 theaters in Redlands, where people had just finished watching the latest installment of the “Avengers” franchise, fearing there might a gunman inside. Witnesses said when the movie was over, a man stood up and started yelling in what sounded like a preacher’s sermon.

“I think when he said, ‘If you were to die tonight, would your passage to heaven be guaranteed?’ — something along those lines — I think that’s when people started panicking,” Susie Arias told CBS2 News.

Arias said she and her partner were able to walk out, but they said people behind them started running and pushing in an effort to exit quickly.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/04/27/redlands-preacher-michael-webber-avengers-panic/

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It was kind of like that. Well to give the guy credit, at least he got his message out! Next up this is a perfect example of life imitating art. Remember that Breaking Bad episode where a Los Pollos Hermanos truck got hijacked ? Well this isn’t anything that crazy, but we’re not surprised.

On Thursday, Centralia police said 126 pounds of methamphetamine were found in a truck hauling Starbucks products between California and Spokane.

The truck was stopped and police say suspicious activity led to the request of help from a narcotics K-9.

The truck’s interior was searched, and police said they found 40 bundles of meth in a television box on the top bunk of the sleeper berth.

Under a mattress, police said they found another 50 bundles of meth, 2.4 pounds of suspected heroin, several thousand Oxycodone pills and a few grams of cocaine.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/126-pounds-of-meth-found-in-truck-hauling-starbucks-products-in-washington-police-say/739922133

Next up – Legos! And if you’re being investigated by police for selling stolen goods, maybe you don’t sell stolen goods to undercover police. Get how that works? Well, this guy in Portland certainly didn’t.

Police said that investigators posed as thieves offering Azar stolen goods at far below the retail price. Authorities said Azar requested to purchase $13,000 of stolen goods from the undercover investigators.

He was arrested on April 26 after authorities say he purchased supposedly 'stolen' items from undercover officers.

When they searched his southeast Portland home, police said they found “a large quantity of stolen Legos [sic]”. The Lego and other toys that had been taken from Fred Meyer stores alone was worth $50,000, according to police.

That estimate did not include recovered merchandise that originated from other retail outlets, police said.

Authorities believe Azar would solicit stolen items through websites like Craigslist and OfferUp, purchasing them from thieves for low prices, before selling them on Craigslist, eBay and OfferUp for a profit. Those stealing the items to sell to Azar were often drug addicts, police added.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/portland-man-accused-of-dollar50000-stolen-lego-racket/ar-AAwx96E?li=BBnbcA1

Ha ha, Lego Batman was a great movie. Next up in People Are Dumb – Youtube! Yes, Youtube has brought out a ton of crazy people. And what happens when a guy comes in and pretends to be the CEO of a legendary burger chain? Well this is beyond stupid.

(Newser) – In-N-Out Burger isn't laughing about a YouTube prankster who claimed to be the company's CEO making a surprise visit. The burger chain has gone to court to seek a restraining order against prankster Cody Roeder, whose videos appeared on his popular "Trollmunchies" YouTube channel, the OC Register reports. In two now-deleted videos filmed earlier this month, Roeder visits Southern California In-N-Out burger locations dressed in business attire, claiming to be the acting CEO and demanding free food for a "taste test." He claims to be the ex-husband of Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson, the granddaughter of chain founder Harry Snyder.

According to court papers, at one location, Roeder berated employees for "contamination" of the food and grabbed a burger from a customer believed to have been his assistant. Roeder "proceeded to throw the burger on the ground in the middle of the restaurant and step on it, telling the customer it was 'garbage,'" the legal filing states. In a statement, the chain said it has seen "an increase of visitors to our stores, who are not customers but instead are intentionally disruptive and who then try to promote themselves through social media." The legal action seeks a restraining order banning Roeder and his accomplices from the chain's restaurants, as well as damages of more than $25,000.
http://www.newser.com/story/257087/in-n-out-burger-seeks-to-ban-youtube-prankster.html

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Man why did you have to waste the cheeseburger? Dude should be arrested. I mean what did the cheeseburger ever do to you? Next up – you know it’s been a while since we heard from our good friend Florida Man but not a week goes by where he’s not up to his usual tricks! In a scene straight out of the movie Super Troopers, there’s this!

A Florida man was arrested after he tried to dump narcotics out of his car window in Martin County, authorities said.

Tyko Dean, 41, of Oakland Park was pulled over on I-95, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies said Dean pulled his car over initially, but fled when he was asked to leave the vehicle.

With the help of air and K-9 units, Dean’s car was forced to stop. Deputies said Dean tried to toss illegal narcotics out of his car window.

However, detectives said they recovered 359 grams of cocaine and 31 grams of heroin from Dean’s car.
https://www.statesman.com/news/florida-man-arrested-after-tossing-drugs-out-car-window-police-say/LpxBs47tkbgKyH0Py6oqvM/

Finally for People Are Dumb this week – campaign ads! Yes, even our elected officials or people running to be elected officials aren’t immune from stupidity. You know in this day and age when people are actually fighting against the gun lobby and the NRA, maybe you don’t lead with an ad that praises a “healthy admiration for the 2nd amendment”. Let’s show the ad first.

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Something tells me I wouldn’t want to date this guys’ daughters – he seems like the “Dads Against Daughters Dating” type. Remember those assholes?

Political candidates have long appeared with guns in campaign ads — holding guns, firing guns, and even assembling guns blindfolded. Earlier this month, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Hunter Hill aired an ad showing him loading an assault rifle. The video title? “Liberals won’t like this.”

Now, a new ad in the race for Georgia governor — in which a candidate points a gun at a teenager — did not sit well with some Georgians. After all, it aired just one state away from the Florida high school where 17 people were killed in a mass shooting

In the campaign ad, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, sits in a room surrounded by firearms — handguns on a table to his right, rifles on the table in front of him, and what appear to be two AR-15-style guns leaning on the wall behind him. Across his lap he holds a double-barrel shotgun, cleaning it off as he speaks into the camera. Next to him sits a young man in khakis and a tucked-in flannel shirt.

“I’m Brian Kemp, this is Jake, a young man interested in one of my daughters,” he says, motioning to the teenager next to him. “Yes, sir,” Jake responds, looking nervous as he fidgets with his fingers.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/02/georgia-governor-candidate-aims-gun-at-teenager-in-campaign-ad-get-over-it-he-tells-critics/?utm_term=.8ccf38490ec9

That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Stupidest State Contest: Round 2 Week 3
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16 states will enter, but only one will be crowned the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State!

Welcome back! I hope you all filled out your brackets! We are deep into Round 2. Not quite that deep, sir. Man, the audience has been bringing it this week! Last week – it was an absolutely shocking end to the Family Values championship as the long time reigning kings of the conference – Alabama – got sent home this year after a buzzer beater from Missouri sent the champs home packing. This week we’re live at the home of the Portland Trailblazers – Moda Center – for the Batshit Conference championships – Kentucky. Virginia. Both young teams looking to tangle for the conference title. But Virginia had one of the best records of the entire league during the regular season, but Kentucky continues to stack its’ team with lots and lots of crazy talent. Who will out crazy them all? Let’s find out!

[font size="6"]Batshit Conference Championship: Kentucky Vs Virginia [/font]

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

My old Kentucky home!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, we are back in the Bluegrass State everybody! Yes, the state that was literally the first state to call for @realDonaldTrump as our new president probably knew what they were doing. I mean they also gave us Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Ron Paul – who may crawl out from his troll cave in Russia soon, Kim Davis, and Matt Bevin, has shown us no signs of slowing down when it comes to producing the freshest batshit in the country. Yes, this state can outrival Florida in the sheer number of crazy things that happen – and that’s saying a lot! So what has the Bluegrass state been up to lately? Well they’re so crazy that even their own is starting to channel his inner Bart Simpson.

Matt Bevin has been governor of Kentucky for three legislative sessions and the best he can come up with is: It’s not my fault.

From the beginning of his administration, Bevin has used politicians, judges, teachers, the media and any other constituency or individual he can find as political pinatas — someone else is always to blame.

Don’t like the budget? It’s the legislature’s fault.

Frustrated by the process? Blame former House Speaker Jeff Hoover’s sordid, sex scandal, which, he claims, ruined our plans for a special session.

That pension crisis? Inherited that problem from years of irresponsible, incompetent politicians.

Read more: https://www.leoweekly.com/2018/04/matt-never-blame-bevin/

Yes while Bart Simpson is the original prankster, Matt can’t out crazy Bart Simpson. I mean come on, Bart went to rehab for pranking people! And that’s saying something. And if you think that’s crazy, wait until you see what he said about the teacher protests!

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) suggested Friday that children were physically harmed because they were at home during the statewide teacher strikes, when teachers gathered at the capitol to protest school funding.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them," said Bevin, who sought to shut down bills aimed at expanding the state education budget. "I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn't have enough money to take care of them."

Bevin reportedly complained of the teachers sprawled across the capitol grounds, telling reporters he saw them smoking and "leaving trash around."

Because of the protests, "hundreds of thousands of children" were likely left at home without childcare, he said.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/383152-kentucky-gov-i-guarantee-children-physically-harmed-because-they

Quick! To the Pedomobile!

That joke never gets old. You know what is it with Christian conservatives where their mind just immediately goes to the most fucked up sexual perversions they can think of? What are they trying to tell us? I could just go all day on how fucking crazy Matt Bevin is. We may have to do a deep dive on him for “People Who Somehow Got Elected” at some point because he’s fucking crazy.

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- In a rare public rebuke, Kentucky's top House leader on Wednesday chastised fellow Republican Gov. Matt Bevin for criticizing teachers who have mobilized to oppose a plan to revamp one of the nation's worst-funded public pension plans.

Acting House Speaker David Osborne told reporters that the governor's remarks were "inappropriate" and "show a lack of understanding of the people who are impacting the lives of young people in our state."

In an interview on WVLC radio, Bevin said Tuesday that teachers opposing the pension changes were "ignorant" and were "throwing a temper tantrum." He said if protesting teachers get what they wish, there won't be a pension system for the next generation. He called that "remarkably selfish and shortsighted." He also said teachers protesting the pension bill would be like people during World War II protesting rationing of food and steel to help the troops.

"It's about just straight up wanting more than your fair share," Bevin said.

Osborne said Wednesday that the governor deserves credit for seeking greatly increased state funding to support the pension plans. But he said Bevin's comments about teachers on Tuesday and in recent months have made it much more difficult for lawmakers to pass a pension bill.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/article205182419.html

Yeah going mad without power is boring, no one listens to you! Like I said I could go on all day about how crazy Matt Bevin is, and we could just focus on him here for the Batshit conference championship, but I don’t have that kind of time! Matt is so crazy that his own house is rebelling against him! But I will leave you with this.

As always, Bevin has the back of the NRA, saying it’s not guns. Saying that it's about the violence in movies, on television, in video games and music.

He did it on Leland Conway’s show on WHAS radio and he did it in a video he posted Thursday night on his Facebook page.

The problem is, there is absolutely nothing to back the claim that video games and music and movies and television have anything at all to do with increased gun violence.

The American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics warn against allowing children to play video games but stop short of saying the games cause violent behavior.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/joseph-gerth/2018/02/16/matt-bevin-school-shootings-violence-joseph-gerth-column/345840002/

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

So Virginia is a relative newcomer to the tournament. And while we already covered all of the things that Virginia is the home of – let’s get some facts straight. The Commonwealth state is right next to our nation’s capital – Washington, DC. It also is home to the world’s largest cemetery – Arlington National Cemetery. But Virginia is also the home to some of the most hardcore racism in the entire country. After all, it’s the state that helped give birth to the Confederacy. But it’s good to know that our nation’s current crop of white supremacists can rival just about anything produced in the 1850s!

Christopher Charles Cantwell, a self-described white nationalist and alt-right activist from New Hampshire, was arrested on March 31 in Leesburg for public swearing and intoxication, according to the Leesburg Police Department.

Leesburg Police Officers observed Cantwell trying to cross the street in the 500 block of Market Street. When they made contact with him, “he did show signs of drunkenness. He smelled of alcohol, couldn’t keep his balance,” Sam Shenouda of Leesburg Police told the Times-Mirror.

“At that point, we’re responsible for the person’s safety so he was taken into custody and held until sober,” said Shenouba.

Cantwell was later released on his own recognizance. Shenouda told the Times-Mirror there was no further investigation as to what he was doing in Leesburg. He also said that Cantwell was not investigated in relation to KKK literature that has been distributed throughout Loudoun County over the past year.

Read more: https://www.loudountimes.com/news/white-nationalist-chris-cantwell-known-for-role-in-charlottesville-riots/article_44905e3a-473e-11e8-8cb8-437f3a7f4973.html

So Virginia is the home of Charlottesville. And the University Of Virginia And what’s in Charlottesville? Well it was home to the absolute shit show that was the Charlottesville riots last year that were started by Alt Right assholes. Well the good news is that UVA has its’ head on a bit more straight than the rest of Virginia does!

Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler is no longer allowed to set foot on University of Virginia property.

He will still be able to go to the UVA Medical Center, as well as attend paid events on university property.

The university announced Friday, April 27, that it is in the process of serving Kessler, a UVA alum, a no trespass warning. The university made its decision after hearing multiple reports that he threatened students in person, targeted them through cyber-bullying and cyber-harassment, and targeted them based on protected characteristics.

The university also believes Kessler intentionally and purposefully misled the UVA Police Department regarding the torch-lit rally on August 11, 2017, held by members of the 'alt-right' and white nationalists. Kessler had helped to organize that event, as well.
http://www.nbc29.com/story/38058286/kessler-no-trespassing-warning-04-27-18

So Virginia’s got a massive white supremacist problem. And they’re not giving up their beliefs any time soon. Yeah we just hope that this racist shit is only a fad, right? At least I want to hope that it is! I mean come on Virginia is home to a guy who calls himself “The Crying Nazi”! Worst WWII movie ever, BTW.

Bond conditions have changed for Christopher Charles Cantwell, the man charged in connection to a torch-lit white nationalist rally at the University of Virginia last summer.

Cantwell has been out on a $25,000 bond after being charged in Albemarle County with illegal use of tear gas. He is accused of spraying tear gas during a white nationalist rally at UVA on August 11, 2017, one day before the Unite the Right rally.

An Albemarle Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday that the 37-year-old New Hampshire man will be held behind bars until he gets an alcohol bracelet.

The ruling comes after Cantwell was charged for public swearing and intoxication in Loudon County on March 31. At the time he was released on his own recognizance.

The judge said Thursday that she is not concerned the defendant will not show up to court, but believes Cantwell could pose a public danger when drinking.
http://www.nbc29.com/story/38052313/christopher-cantwell-court-04-36-2018

Virginia is also the home of uber right wing fundamentalist Christian college Liberty University. And their president is hardcore Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. We’ve profiled him many times on the Top 10 but he’s gone off the rails lately in his admiration of Trump. They love Trump. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

When evangelical leader and author Shane Claiborne wrote Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. to request that they meet and pray together this weekend, Liberty responded with a written threat that Claiborne will be arrested if he steps foot on any property owned by Liberty or by Thomas Road Baptist Church. Claiborne has been publicly challenging Falwell to debate whether Jesus would support President Trump.

Claiborne is the leader of The Simple Way in Philadelphia and co-director of Red Letter Christians, a group that “mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings,” including opposition to materialism and capital punishment. “It’s time for a Christianity that looks like Jesus again,” the group says. Claiborne’s co-director, evangelist Tony Campolo, told Baptist News this week, “As evangelicalism moves more and more to the right, it’s safe to say evangelicalism looks more and more like the Tea Party,” something he called “dangerous.”

Claiborne will be in Lynchburg this weekend for the “Red Letter Revival” that his group is holding and he asked Falwell for permission to hold a prayer vigil on campus with Liberty students and alumni. His email invited Falwell to attend the revival and said the campus prayer vigil was planned for Saturday afternoon.

Claiborne shared his letter and the response from Liberty University’s police department on his Facebook page Thursday night. The letter warns that under Virginia law, trespassing is a misdemeanor “punishable by confinement in jail for not more than twelve months or a fine of not more than $2,500, or both.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liberty-u-bans-threatens-to-arrest-christian-critic-of-falwell/

[font size="4"]And the winner is… [/font]

Oh god this wasn’t even a game. Kentucky came out of the gate strong and absolutely annihilated Virginia. Sorry Virginia, you can’t out crazy Kentucky, no matter how many tiki torches you sell. Final score: 86 – 61. Kentucky routes Virginia by a final score of 25. They have stunned Virginia and they will move on to the Final Four. Virginia will go home. Cut the net guys, you earned it!

Oh and can we get some “My Old Kentucky Home”?

[font size="6"]Next Week [/font]

It’s the last single round elimination before we head into the Final Four. Next week we’re live from the beautiful new home of the Sacramento Kings, Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, for the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference championship. Wisconsin vs West Virginia. The winner will face Kentucky, the loser will go home!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Rancid[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen my next guests are a legendary punk band from Northern California. Their latest album is called “Trouble Maker” and you can see them at the Montebello Rock Fest in Montebello, Quebec on June 15th. Playing their song “Ghost Of A Chance”, give it up for Rancid!

See you next week!

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Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: City National Grove Of Anaheim, Anaheim, CA
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Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

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