Thu Mar 16, 2023, 05:11 PM
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-7: We Don't Need No Sex Education Edition
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-7: We Don't Need No Sex Education Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooooooooo!!! What’s up Washington, DC, how you all doing? You doing fucking good? Great! It’s good to back in the nation’s Capital, while it’s still under democratic control! I don't know if you saw our announcement or not, but it looks like our big shindig in France is going to get rescheduled. That's right - the edition that will be airing on 3/30 is not the true edition #300. That is being saved for 4/20. It gives us time to regroup though. And we will be canceling our 4/6 edition and replacing it with a Best Of because of a travel delay and I don't feel like we can bring you the full, proper Idiots that you know and love. But don’t worry – it will not be affecting Stupidest State because Round 1 Week 4 will still go on as scheduled! Enough Top 10 business. Do we have time for the thing? Of course we do! We got to talk about voting for a minute. You know it’s every American’s civic duty to vote, and I’m sure that everyone in this audience does their part every year. I mean come on, we’re here in Washington DC, our nation’s capitol. But you know who didn’t vote? Paris Hilton. Now look, unless it’s something absolutely batshit insane we generally don’t talk about reality TV stars but this one we did feel that we had to break our rules a bit. Because what Paris Hilton did, even if it’s on accident, was expose exactly what the fuck is wrong with our electoral system: people don’t vote. I mean yeah in 2016, we had the most qualified person to ever be president in arguably American history, and we had a guy who sold shitty steaks through the fucking Sharper Image. And that guy won. So people, just go vote, that’s all I’m saying! Vote like your life depends on it, because it just might! OK, that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first, John Oliver touches on That Asshole Nigel Farage (although the real segment is absolutely batshit crazy) : &t=16s Where do we begin this week? There are many ways we could go, but taking the number one slot is Fox News (1). Yes, the “We Report, You Decide” network is in some extremely hot water because of the lawsuit coming from Dominion Voting Systems, and we will definitely be here for the systematic destruction of that terrible network! And speaking of that terrible network, the second slot this week is Tucker Carlson (2). That’s right – ol’ Tucker is in a heaping helping of trouble after he grossly and intentionally misinterpreted the footage from January 6th as a harmless vacation, and wait until you see how fast republicans try to change the subject! Taking the third slot this week is the House Oversight Committee (3). Yes, the Oversight Committtee had a vote on whether or not to denounce white nationalism and the controversial “Great Replacement” theory, and guess what? ALL 26 republicans unanimously voted no, in a not at all shocking move! Taking the number 4 slot this week is our old friend Lauren Boebert. Yes, the poster child for why we need sex education is railing against sex education, after announcing that she’s going to be a grandma at 36! Don’t be too proud of that! In the number 5 slot this week is highlights from the annual clusterfuck known as the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, which is basically just a glorified Trump rally. Though his popularity is definitely dwindling. HUGE CROWD SIZES! BIG, the biggest! In the number 6 slot this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” (6) and this week, our resident pastor is dumbfounded that the religious right’s war on drag queens has turned into a literal holy war and a full blown, 80’s style Satanic Panic! Hey, wait until they find out about the Catholic Church! In the number 7 slot this week, we have a new edition of “This Fucking Guy” (7) and this week we’re going to profile Fox contributor, anti-“woke” crusader, and last place presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. This guy is crazy! And speaking of crazy, in the number 8 slot this week is a new edition of Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week we’re going to be taking a look at some of the more ridiculous things that our old friend Marjorie Three Names has been saying lately, and it’s some crazy shit. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) this week is a new “I Need A Drink” and this once again firms our stance that social media is going to kill us all, and the latest Tik Tok challenge involves college students drinking a drink called a “Borg” – which is basically just a big ass gallon of pure alcohol and is sending kids to the emergency room in record numbers. Come on people, you have to earn that level of drunkenness! Finally this week it’s time for Stupidest State! This week it’s Round 1 Week 1 and over in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference, it’s a Beltway battle between #3 Ohio and #4 Wisconsin, while over in the Gun Nut Conference, #3 Montana is bringing their big guns to the dance against #4 Idaho! We’re live in Los Angeles at the fabulous BMO Stadium with all the festivities! Plus to close things out, we’ve got live music from our good friends Anti-Flag! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! 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[font size="8"]Fox News    [br] [/font] Fox News. You know them as the “We Report, You Decide” network. It’s more like “You will think what we tell you to think and anyone who dares to speak out against us will get sent to Sea Org.”. Oh wait, that’s Scientology. But Fox News isn’t really that far off from being its’ own religion. I mean we’ve talked about it being an addiction in the past. I personally know people who watch it 24 hours a day on like multiple TVs in the house. So of course they’re doing their best to play the “nothing to see here, please disperse” card when it comes to what happened on January 6th. In our last edition, we talked about how evil and stupid it was that Kevin McCarthy basically gave Tucker Carlson a blank check in the form of 40,000 hours of unaired footage from the Capitol riots. But of course, with the GOP’s morphing into a bloodthirsty, deranged, conspiracy theory cult complete, one can’t have any independent thoughts whatsoever. By early January 2021, Fox News hosts and executives were ready to move on from then-President Donald Trump and his insistence that the election was stolen.
"it's been 8 weeks and none of them has produced anything tangible or verifiable. and now he wants thousands of his supporters to go to DC without shelter or food to demonstrate," host Lou Dobbs texted a producer on his show on Jan. 3. "I believe the election was stolen — but without evidence we can do nothing significant." "We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights," Tucker Carlson wrote in a Jan. 4 text to an unidentified person. "I truly can't wait." "I hate him passionately," he continued. "I can't handle much more of this." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fox-news-executives-denounce-trump-myth-january-6-riot-rcna73669 
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Lou, you don’t get to “please disperse” your way out of this one. We had Trump because Fox News put him on a pedestal because of all the shit talking that he did about Obama when Obama was president. This wasn't a friendly vacation. It's not like it's National Lampoon's MAGA DC Vacation. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Remember when Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid only played characters like that? But this is like - remember that episode of the Simpsons where Homer becomes coach of the Pee wee football team after heckling Ned Flanders out of the job? The way Trump became president is almost literally like that. And come on, these were people who were looking to murder and execute half of Congress. And their own sitting vice president to keep Man Baby in charge. How fucked up is that? A lot. The face of Fox News is doing everything in his power to sanitize the horrific violence the nation saw unfold in real-time at the U.S. Capitol in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
And on Monday night, he had a major assist from Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who granted him exclusive access to tens of thousands of hours of January 6 security camera footage. After continuing to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election (“it is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy”), Tucker Carlson used the footage on Monday night to portray those who broke into the U.S. Capitol as mostly peaceful patriots who simply felt wronged by the system. Carlson, who falsely claimed the footage provided “conclusive” evidence proving Democrats “lied” about the events of January 6, aired footage showing some people taking selfies and meandering through the U.S. Capitol. “Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6th was an insurrection,” Carlson claimed. “In fact, it demolishes that claim.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news-january-6/index.html 
No, no riots needed here. And we also don’t need the Tucker reaction cam. Because if he’s the face of Fox News, he only has one facial expression. And that is pale, white, pasty, and his eyebrows and mouth don’t move. Now you know how we always say around here that art begats art, right? Like we can’t have the art house flicks that win Oscars without having the billion dollar blockbuster superhero flicks like the Avengers. But because of what Tucker Carlson did with the footage, it inspired a whole new wave of online terrorism. Tucker Carlson's portrayal of the deadly Jan. 6 attack as a largely peaceful event on his prime-time Fox News show set off a dangerous new wave of social media chatter that includes death threats against Capitol police officers and Democratic leaders, according to experts who monitor extremism and a report from Advance Democracy shared exclusively with USA TODAY.
The segment that aired last week downplayed the violence at the Capitol two years ago, recasting the Washington mob that breached the Capitol as an “orderly and meek” gathering of “sightseers.” Carlson’s claims, which accompanied clips of Capitol security footage, drew an angry reaction from right-wing users who fired off threats on Twitter and in pro-Trump forums directed at politicians who have made public inquiries into the violence, especially the congressional Jan. 6 committee. Those threats came in far greater numbers than before the broadcast, according to the Advance Democracy report. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2023/03/14/fox-news-tucker-carlson-jan-6-social-media-violence/11445250002/ 
They came at us with pitchforks and torches!!! Torches!!! Come on, you can’t downplay an event as catastrophic as what happened on January 6th ,it’s impossible. And by the way we won’t even have time to discuss the ridiculous song that Trump released on iTunes – which was basically a poorly recorded version of the National Anthem with him talking over it. Yes, that’s a thing. And the MAGAs bought it, because they’ll basically buy anything with flags and Bibles on it. But as you can imagine, the footage released was exactly what you’d expect. Fox News is a “fact free” and “spin” zone. Despite a chorus of widespread attacks on Fox News host Tucker Carlson for his portrayal of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — including from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended his decision to hand over more than 40,000 hours of related security footage.
Carlson and his team had exclusive access to the security tape surrounding the attack thanks to McCarthy, drawing concerns the host would use it to spread a new wave of disinformation. McCarthy said on Tuesday evening that he didn't watch Carlson's show the night before, where Carlson falsely stated that the attack on the Capitol was "mostly peaceful chaos" and that "the footage does not show an insurrection or riot in progress." "I continue to hold that my job here, just like I was asked long before, is to make sure all the transparency comes out and that's exactly what I'm doing," McCarthy said. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161686255/fox-tucker-carlson-jan-6-security-tapes-mcconnell-manger 
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[font size="8"]Tucker Carlson  [br] [/font] [br]
OK so now that they have the footage of January 6th, and the reaction from Fox News is exactly what you’d expect on the subject by now, it seems that our old buddy Tucker Carlson has really stepped in, to use a technical term, some deep doo doo. Oh come on, stop it. We don’t need the Tucker reaction cam for this one! So what did Mr. Testicle Tanner himself do to put himself on the White House’s radar? Well of course you know that he absolutely doctored the footage that was basically gifted to him by Kevin McCarthy. Because the GOP has turned into a deranged, bloodthirsty cult that’s out for absolute power and one party rule. Well, to stand up to the scary cult that the GOP has become, it takes a lot of balls and, well, a lot of balls. And no, those balls aren’t tanned in a testicle tanning booth. But the thing is that we’re not going to be expressing our sympathy for the January 6th rioters any time soon. So we still side with the Capitol Police, we’re not going to side with Ashlii Babbitt’s mom. The White House lashed out at Fox News host Tucker Carlson Wednesday in an extraordinary rebuke of the late-night commentator who has been airing false depictions of the January 6, 2021, attack this week.
Carlson, given access to about 40,000 hours of US Capitol security camera footage by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has aired carefully selected clips to portray the pro-Trump mob as peaceful patriots. Carlson falsely claimed that the footage provided “conclusive” evidence that Democrats and the House select committee that investigated January 6 lied to Americans about the day’s events. According to the Justice Department, 140 officers were assaulted at the Capitol that day, including 60 Metropolitan Police officers and 80 US Capitol Police officers. The Fox News host was roundly lambasted by the Capitol Police, Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans this week. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates added to the condemnation Wednesday. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/media/tucker-carlson-white-house/index.html 
But the thing is – what Kevin McCarthy did was absolutely shameful and Tucker Carlson really stepped in it. We’re talking like obstruction of justice stepped in it. But of course, because there ain’t no justice in this world, nothing will happen to Tucker or Hannity, or any of the scumbags who are actively trying to rewrite history and stage a coup. Now, even the White House is saying that Tucker Carlson might have gone too far. Which for him, is really not that much of a stretch. But really Tucker is this week’s contestant on The Biggest Loser, and we’re not talking about how much weight he’s lost. He really is that much of a loser! The fix was in. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to sensitive Jan. 6 security camera footage, and there was no great mystery as to what would happen next: The controversial host, with Republican leaders’ blessing, would cherry-pick footage that bolsters a predetermined political narrative.
This was an unavoidable outcome given the television personality’s established record. As an Axios report recently noted, Carlson has “repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as ‘vandalism.’” A CNN report added, “[H]e has devoted significant airtime to the false claim that liberal ‘deep state’ partisans within the FBI orchestrated the insurrection as a way to undermine former President Donald Trump. He has conducted sympathetic interviews with some of the rioters who were subsequently charged by the Justice Department.” In other words, given Carlson’s ridiculous record and unsubtle agenda, everyone knew exactly what to expect when the host started sharing the results of his special access. Last night, as NBC News reported, he fulfilled his role in this sad little drama. Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them “sightseers,” not “insurrectionists.” Naturally, the Fox host chose not to present the evidence that was at odds with the story he set out to tell. The result was a show that, as NBC News put it, “falsely depicted” an insurrectionist riot as a peaceful gathering. HuffPost published a related report, noting that Carlson exploited his special access to “falsely claim” that there was effectively no riot on Jan. 6..... https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tucker-carlson-pushes-bogus-jan-6-story-wanted-tell-rcna73712 
Because it is! When your party turns into a bloodthirsty cult, it’s all about scoring points and winning the support of Dear Leader, whoever Dear Leader happens to be in 2024. It’s no secret that the GOP is the party of suck ups, ass kissers, and bootlickers. They’ve got the fix for the probe into the January 6th committee. The first step was taking out Liz Cheney and replacing her with a hard lined MAGA bootlicker, which they did. Now comes the attempt to erase what happened! Yeah Fox News is out for blood and they don’t care who they stomp on to get it. Former federal prosecutor and Mueller investigation alumnus Andrew Weissmann said Tucker Carlson jeopardized himself and Fox News with his attempt to gaslight viewers about the 2021 Capitol riot.
On Monday’s show, Carlson aired snippets of footage from the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where Congress gathered to certify the 2020 presidential election. The Fox News host was given access to more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Carlson showed several trespassers not engaged in violence in an attempt to draw attention away from the very real violence of that day. “The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson alleged. “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.” Carlson also repeated the lie the 2020 election had been “unfairly conducted.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tucker-carlson-really-hurt-himself-and-fox-news-andrew-weissmann-says-defamation-lawyers-are-licking-their-chops/ar-AA18lgJD 
Seriously it’s been two fucking years since the damned election! You guys really need to let it go already, but I guess that Mike Lindell needs a few more lunatics to add to his growing echo chamber. And they call it an echo chamber because there’s thousands of shows out there, all literally selling the exact identical talking points. It’s madness and it needs to stop. The thing is, though is that it really is a House Of Cards, so to speak. Take out the top one and the rest will fall like dominoes. Fox being the king of the crop, they need to go first. And this is exactly why. US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger on Tuesday ripped into Fox News host Tucker Carlson over his commentary about footage from the January 6, 2021, insurrection that he aired Monday night, saying the host “cherry-picked” from the footage to present “offensive” and “misleading” conclusions about the attack.
“Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack,” Manger wrote in an internal department memo obtained by CNN, adding that Carlson’s show didn’t reach out to the police department “to provide accurate context.” “The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments,” Manger said. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted Carlson access to more than 40,000 hours of the Capitol security footage from January 6. Carlson, who used the footage in an attempt to downplay the violence and defend the pro-Trump mob, claimed he checked with Capitol Police before airing the footage. The Capitol Police has continuously warned that release of all security footage from the Capitol could pose a potential security risk for the building. Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/politics/capitol-police-tucker-carlson-january-6-footage/index.html 
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[font size="8"]House Oversight Committee  [br] [/font] [br]
For those of you who don’t know how Congress works, allow me to explain it a bit for you. See, Congress is divided up into different committees. Which come together to recommend and pass laws that should be for the good of the nation. Well, that’s how it works in theory. See, recently, after the 2022 election, things got fucked up and took a turn. But this week something so evil happened that sounds like it could be something out of a Saturday Night Live sketch, but it wasn’t and somehow seems even more even than it should on the surface. I mean come on, we fought an entire World War against Nazism and white nationalist ideals. But now it seems that Hitler is becoming popular again. So what happens when a vote is held that denounces white nationalism on the House Oversight Committee? Well, wait for it because when you see who’s involved in the No vote, it will start to make sense. All 26 Republicans on the powerful House Oversight Committee have refused to sign a simple, two-sentence statement denouncing white supremacy.
"We, Members of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, together denounce white nationalism and white supremacy in all its forms, including the 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory. These hateful and dangerous ideologies have no place in the work of the United States Congress or our Committee," the statement (copy below) from Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) reads. It comes after several Oversight Committee Republicans "invoked dangerous and conspiratorial rhetoric echoing the racist and nativist tropes peddled by white supremacists and right-wing extremists," during a February hearing on the "border crisis," Ranking Member Raskin said in a March 5 letter to Committee Chair James Comer (photo, top.) The Washington Post first reported on Raskin’s letter. "In particular, some Members repeatedly described the number of migrants arriving at the border as an 'invasion,' and even went so far as to falsely accuse the Biden-Harris Administration of implementing a plan 'to deliberately open our border' for purposes of 'changing our culture'—mirroring language often used by MAGA extremists who believe that pro-immigration policies are designed to replace white populations with non-white immigrants and other racial minorities," Raskin's letter says. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/all-26-house-oversight-republicans-refuse-to-sign-statement-denouncing-white-supremacy/ar-AA18niP8 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! That’s right – not one, not two, not three, but *ALL* 26 conservative members of the House Oversight Committee voted *NO* on whether or not to denounce white nationalism and the “Great Replacement” theory. We’ve covered the Great Replacement Theory on this program before. But it seems like the far right theories, like the Great Replacement and 7 Mountains are becoming increasingly popular. And that’s scary. It’s this kind of shit that leads to things like mass murder and genocide. And they’re not stopping there, it seems the new and improved Oversight Committee is going all in on the racism. The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee has disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which focused on issues including voting rights, freedom of assembly and criminal justice reform policies.
In a committee meeting on Tuesday, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said this doesn’t mean topics related to these issues can’t be brought before the committee. “Let me be very clear: any topic that’s not mentioned in the subcommittee jurisdiction is reserved for the full committee,” Comer said. “We can have a committee hearing in this committee on basically anything we want.” A spokesperson for the panel told The Hill that “Oversight Republicans are realigning subcommittees to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies. Going forward, subcommittees will now be better equipped to meet our mission, identify problems, and propose meaningful legislative reforms for the American people.” Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-house-oversight-committee-disbands-subcommittee-on-civil-rights-and-civil-liberties/ar-AA16XAlc 
Yeah the House Oversight Committee seems like they’re going all in on the racism. And that’s fucking scary. So what are they doing there? Well they’re exactly carrying out the every evil deed of the Murdoch empire for starters. Yes, this is the House that Rupert Murdoch bought and paid for and he’s getting exactly what he paid for. So what are they planning to do, you might ask? Well not only are they going all in on the racism, they’re also going all in on all of the batshit crazy internet conspiracy theories that pop up on your creepy uncle’s Facebook page! As we’ve been saying around here, it’s going to be a ridiculously long two years isn’t it? Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said Wednesday they are planning a visit with some defendants who are being held in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also sits on the panel, told ABC News that the committee is planning to send a letter this week to lawmakers regarding the planned visit to the Washington, D.C., detention facility. Greene said the visit would focus on the conditions of those jailed over Jan. 6, including what she claimed to be “reports of abuse." "They're pretrial and they haven't even been convicted and they're not allowed to see their families, many times are not allowed to see their attorneys -- the food has been a major complaint," Greene alleged. "There's been complaints of it tasting like cleaner.” Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-republicans-plan-visit-jan-6-defendants-jail/story?id=97714486 
Yeah fuck off with that shit! The January 6th crusaders aren’t political prisoners. They’re criminals. And the prison conditions? You can thank 40 years of conservative deregulation policies that led to the rise of for profit prisons that brought them there. So really, Marjorie, take a look in the mirror as to how they got to that point. And guess what else is on the table? That’s right – we can expect two more years of the MAGA conspiracy theorist lunatics probing Hunter Biden’s laptop at every possible opportunity, which at this point is becoming the Benghazi of Pizzagates. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has turned “investigating” President Joe Biden and his family into a 24/7 crusade. His rationale? According to a tweet blasted out Friday, Comer is merely trying to determine whether or not the president “has compromised national security.”
It’s a bold accusation, especially due to the lack of evidence. The committee began with a hearing earlier in February purportedly investigating U.S. intelligence efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media. But that hearing revealed no bombshells — and very little information. It was a predictable outcome, but a frustrating one, nonetheless. Because if House Republicans are so concerned about foreign influence over a first family, all of Washington, D.C., is aware of a case ripe for congressional scrutiny. In (another) eye-opening report published by The Washington Post in February, Michael Kranish explored financial links connecting former President Donald Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rep-james-comer-is-on-a-crusade-to-expose-a-president-s-son-too-bad-it-s-the-wrong-son/ar-AA184dYV 
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[font size="8"]Lauren Boebert    [br] [/font] [br]
You know say what you want about Lauren Boebert. Of course you know her as the Congresswoman who ran a gun themed restaurant called Shooters that was shut down by the FDA after serving rancid meat to its’ customers and married a guy who was a registered sex offender. But lately we can’t tell if she’s stupid, evil, extremist, or all of the above. We’re going with a mix. But this week was truly the stuff of stupidity. Because Boebert announced that her 17 year old son got a girl knocked up. Who is under aged! And you know what’s even scarier? Is that the Christian right *LOVES* this shit. I mean people voted for this crazy moron twice. Twice! Think about it – we saw what an idiot she is after the 2020 election and even the 2022 election. And people still voted for her! Just… it truly boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Well, the people of CO-4 got exactly what they voted for this week when Boebert announced that she was going to be a grandma at 36. 36!!! This is the world that the Christian right wants – they want kids to have kids, and kids to be laborers and gig workers. That’s truly insane, they’ve gone so far off the deep end. Well this is what you get when you vote for that. Rep. Lauren Boebert revealed that her 17-year-old son Tyler is about to have a son in April, which will make her a grandmother at 36.
The Colorado Republican praised the high rural teen birth rates as she said it was evidence these communities "value life." "I'm going to tell you all for the first time in a public setting that not only am I a mom of four boys but come April, I will be a 'gigi' to a brand new grandson," Boebert said while speaking Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event earlier this week. She said that she and her husband Jayson "are so excited to welcome this new life into our family." Boebert dropped out of high school to have her first child when she was a teenager and later got her GED in 2020. https://www.businessinsider.com/rep-lauren-boebert-announces-grandmother-36-2023-3 
Yeah seriously, this is not a good thing, MAGAs! It’s insane to me that they’re cheering the systematic destruction of America’s abortion rights so quickly after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and praising this shit. They view babies as a symbol. Kids should not be having kids of their own. Look, for swing voters who might be in the audience, support the party that doesn’t want your kids having kids and being slave laborers. I think the choice should be fairly obvious! But this is the last person on earth who I want lecturing us on sex education, because she’s the poster child for why we need it! Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., announced that her 17-year-old son will be making her a "36-year-old grandmother" in April.
Boebert, who called to cut funding to schools that teach students comprehensive sex education at last week's CPAC, announced at a Moms for America event that her son Tyler and his girlfriend are expecting a baby boy. Boebert during the announcement took at dig at LGBTQ Americans, saying that she and her husband are raising their four boys "to be men before liberals teach them to be women." Boebert then revealed that "come April, I will be a Gigi to a brand new grandson." "Now, any of you who have young children who are giving life, there's some questions that pop up. There's some fear that arises," Boebert said in a video posted by Patriot Takes. ..........................(more) https://www.salon.com/2023/03/09/lauren-boebert-trashes-ed--then-announces-teen-son-is-making-her-a-36-year-old-grandmother/ 
Yeah what the fuck indeed! By the way I want to use this space to highlight just how unpopular the current MAGA agenda is. People who aren’t batshit crazy lunatics who harass school boards for the sake of harassing school boards hate it! And yes, more parents are on the side of that we need to teach children things like affordable child care, free community college, and gun safety. Of course it’s people like Boebert who come up with the wrong answer to everything. And I do mean everything. Even a broken clock is twice once a day! U.S. parents are less interested in laws that would ban transgender youth from accessing health care or prohibit the teaching of critical race theory than they are in policies that zero in on issues like affordable child care and gun safety, new polling from Navigator showed.
Majorities of independent voters, Republicans and parents of all political affiliations back Democratic-led policy proposals like expanding family and medical leave for workers and creating more affordable child care options for families, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,000 registered voters nationwide in February. A majority of voters also ranked proposed policies, including offering free community college and reimplementing an expanded tax break for certain families with children high on their list of priorities. Expanding universal preschool education for 3- and 4-year-olds and doubling college scholarships for future teachers are also popular among U.S. voters, regardless of their political affiliation. Overall, voters said they were mostly opposed to banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools and barring transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming health care or using school facilities that match their gender identity. https://pix11.com/hill-politics/laws-banning-gender-affirming-health-care-critical-race-theory-rank-low-on-priority-list-of-parents/ 
Yes, booooooooooo!!! I mean I still can’t emphasize enough how fucking insane it is that people willingly voted for someone like this moron twice. And the even scarier thing - they'll vote for her again! They knew how insane she was but still voted for her anyways! Just… ahhhhhhhhh!!! OK I got that off of my chest. But the one thing is for certain is that we certainly don’t need Ms.We Don't Need No Sex Education… ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! We don't need no sex education... we don't need no thought control... HEY! TEACHER! We certainly don’t need Boebert, or anyone who believes in lowering the minimum age of consent, to lecture us on proper sex education. If anything, people like Boebert are the reason why we need proper sex education in the first place! Representative Lauren Boebert (CO-03) introduced the Defund Planned Parenthood Act (H.R. 128) to Congress on Jan. 9. According to a Jan. 20 press release from Boebert’s media office, this legislation would prohibit federal tax dollars from going to Planned Parenthood and have them redirected to “community health centers.”
These community health centers, “crisis pregnancy clinics,” according to the press release, would instead receive the federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood. The Sopris Sun reached out to Boebert’s office multiple times for an interview and was denied. Her press secretary, Jake Settle, emailed a response containing language from the original press release. The press release from Boebert stated, “The nation’s largest abortion provider has no business receiving taxpayer dollars.” https://soprissun.com/reproductive-healthcare-services-walk-a-tenuous-tightrope/ [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"]CPAC Highlights  [br] [/font] [br]
Of course being off last week, we missed the clusterfuck of the year that is known as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. But this year it was even more insane given the recent sexual assault allegations against CPAC’s founder, Matt Schlapp. And this year too it basically just morphed into a glorified Trump rally. Which we will get to in a minute. But one thing it did expose is the rift growing in the republican party. It seems the hardline MAGAs are splitting with the more traditional conservatives. Let’s face it, at this point, CPAC has basically just become a glorified Trump rally, but becoming more increasingly authoritarian with every single year. I’m convinced that if you still support Trump at this point, it would be like playing Super Mario Bros, except that you’re rooting for Bowser to straight up murder Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach. And if that happens, you should probably seek professional psychiatric help. Well, here’s what happened at this year’s clusterfuck – which was actually held in the US this year and not in an authoritarian country. This week's CPAC conference underscored the difficulty Republicans will have in keeping their increasingly fractured coalition together for 2024.
Why it matters: The Republican Party once was defined by its general ideological unity on three core conservative principles: free markets, a muscular foreign policy and traditional social values. Those pillars made up the Reagan revolution. * But the MAGA movement, which dominated this year's CPAC conference, has moved the GOP's center of gravity toward a more protectionist, populist and belligerent outlook. * The driving theme of the conference was fighting "wokeness," one of the few issues that still unites the GOP. What happened: Companies showcasing progressive values that embrace diversity — such as Disney and PNC Bank — came under attack. * Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), meanwhile, urged defunding the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies if they don't get "back on our side" — a reference to the many investigations of GOP officials, including himself. He received a standing ovation. * Venture capitalist and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for the FBI to be shut down and replaced with something else. https://www.axios.com/2023/03/05/cpac-trump-exposes-conservative-split 
Yeah so let’s get this straight. There’s a divide in the GOP right now between hardline MAGA conservatives and the more traditional voters. Make no mistake that if Trump doesn’t get the nomination in 2024 – which is becoming more increasingly likely – that he will split the vote and take his extremist cultist base with him. If I was a betting man, I’d bet on Desantis to win the 2024 GOP nomination and if he does that could have potentially serious consequences if he wins the presidency in 2024. One thing we can laugh at though is that CPAC this year was very poorly attended and the speeches were complete disasters. The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) made one thing especially clear this week: This is former President Trump’s convention.
“I’m not at CPAC. I’m at TPAC,” said John Fredericks, a conservative radio show host who served as the chairman in Virginia for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “CPAC is long gone. The Trump forces, the America First movement and the populist movement, of which I’m a key member of and a protectionist, has hijacked CPAC. We own this convention.” CPAC has long been a major event for conservatives of all stripes to gather and mingle with some of the most popular figures in the Republican Party. But this year’s event has underscored two realities: One, that the annual conference is drawing thinner crowds than it has in the past, as the auditorium where the major speeches was held was often half-full; and two, that most in attendance weren’t particularly interested in seeing party luminaries besides the 45th president. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3883452-trump-reigns-supreme-at-a-diminished-cpac/ 
Yes, let them fight. While the GOP is fighting with each other, the Democrats should be using this to their advantage. The lunatics really have been let out of the asylum here, and 2024 is shaping up to be one hugely interesting matchup between crazy people, and even crazier people. I mean they worship a guy who has talked about bringing back public executions, while the other guy has been busy taking over colleges and private enterprises because they were mean to him and didn’t support his fascist agenda. But you know the old saying and I think it applies here – with friends like these, who needs enemies? Last Friday I took a look at the first day of this year's CPAC gathering where it was obvious that the attendees were overwhelmingly Trump followers but the crowds were also thinner than usual, which says something —but nobody can agree on exactly what it is. Since that dispatch reporters and other observers of the event have characterized this CPAC as an unusually desultory affair that didn't improve much as the days wore on. Speeches were sparsely attended and the presentation was lackluster. Everyone seemed bored with the outrage.
Could it be that after seven long years of Trump-style politics, they're finally getting worn out? According to this report from Laura Jedeed at The New Republic, attendees she spoke with felt that having the event in Washington was a mistake. They suggested that instead it should have been held in Orlando, as it was last year. After all, Florida is now the center of the Republican universe. Florida Governor Ron Desantis, the new GOP dreamboat, didn't show up, instead opting to spend the weekend at a donor retreat, signaling that he didn't think it was worthwhile to mingle with the MAGA faithful. Apparently, he believes that his record of destruction in Florida will be enough to bring them into his fold. Jedeed also pointed out that CPAC has competition from the more exciting Turning Point USA confab called AmericaFest. She describes its December event as "a bacchanale, an indoctrination session: ComiCon for politics nerds" where "speakers emerged onstage to thundering bass, a light show, and often pyrotechnics." Poor old CPAC could only come up with this: The GOP has been declared to be cracking up many times and it didn't happen so I'm not going to suggest that. But the truth is that there is a growing schism around the Trump cult of personality and many of the rest of the party who are anxious to move on. It's not about ideology, around which the aspiring presidents club is pretty much in agreement: "woke" is bad, China is bad, Democrats are bad and America First blah, blah, blah. What's starting to happen is some very serious infighting and calamity among important players and it includes the right-wing media apparatus as well as the political actors. .............(more) https://www.salon.com/2023/03/06/cpac-brings-simmering-tensions-to-the-surface/ 
Yes, let them fight! And I’d personally rather jam a flaming q-tip directly into my eardrums than sit through a Kimberly Guilfoyle speech. And what the fuck was that entrance? That wasn’t politics, I’ve seen better fanfare for WWE wrestlers! Of course they have to distract you with the shiny objects because otherwise it’s just crazy people yelling into a megaphone for 30 minutes, and I could bang my head against the wall for 20 minutes and it would have the same outcome as Guilfoyle’s speech. That I can assure you! But one thing is for sure, the conservative bubble is bursting and we’ll be here for all of the infighting! And the other thing – we’ll be venturing into “please clap” territory before you know it! Two dueling high-profile Republican gatherings this week – one featuring former President Donald Trump and the other Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – showcase the deepening divide within the GOP as it barrels toward its 2024 nominating process.
Trump is scheduled to headline the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland this week along with several conservative stars who have pushed election conspiracy theories and are closely allied with the former president. Meanwhile, DeSantis, who is expected to launch his own 2024 bid later this year, will skip the annual conference and is instead expected to be the main draw at the conservative group Club for Growth’s private donor retreat in Florida this weekend. Club for Growth, an anti-tax group at odds with Trump, is one of the biggest outside spenders in Republican politics. Trump was the only major 2024 hopeful not invited to the group’s Palm Beach donor retreat, which is expected to be attended by several potential 2024 Republican candidates who have opted not to attend CPAC. Club for Growth plowed $2 million into DeSantis’ reelection campaign for governor last cycle, according to Florida campaign filings. As the group focuses on DeSantis, it is also weighing launching a large-scale effort to boost an alternative to Trump in four early voting states, according to a source familiar with the discussions. A Club official said the organization was “exploring a number of different strategies,” but had nothing to announce yet. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/politics/cpac-club-for-growth-events/index.html 
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[font size="8"]Holy Shit: Anti-Trans Satanic Panic  [br] [/font] [br]
Gather around my fair brothers and sisters! It’s time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate, for the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it’s time to remind you that the holiest among us are the most full of: 
My fair congregation! Please be seated! You know we live in some dark times right now, and I’ll be the first to admit that not every segment we do here is fun. We do poke a lot of fun at fundamentalist Christians on this program because they seem like they’re the ones who have the shortest of short fuses. But what I’ve been the most troubled by lately is that their war on drag shows and the LGBT community seems to be escalating with more restrictions being imposed, and it seems like it just gets progressively worse the more you dig into it. Of course you know that these are people who do not worship GAWD or JAYSUS, even though they pretend that they do. Instead these are people who worship the unholy, ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a man so foul, so vile, and so disgusting that his name DARE NOT be spoken in my church! But of course, my fair congregation, we must first look at how we got to this point. I give you the Dark One’s minion and enabler, Marjorie Three Names. Who of course never shuts up. “The left has told us something that should put fear into the heart of every parent,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene began her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday morning. “They said they’re coming for our children.” Dressed in a light pink blazer and with straightened bleach blonde hair, Greene painted a gruesome (and fictional) picture: a multibillion dollar industry preying on kids and eager to subject them to life-altering surgery.
“I am going to be introducing my bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender care on children,” she said. The crowd roared in applause. At CPAC, held this past weekend at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in National Harbor, Maryland, trans bashing—and talking about kids’ genitals—was a main theme. Panels were dedicated to it, speakers harped on so-called “transgender ideology,” and politicians threw out one-liners about trans people when they were short on applause. CPAC is a place where rhetoric and strategy are typically tested, where politicians get a sense of what lands with their base, and this past weekend, Republican politicians eagerly deployed transphobia for their gain. As they denied trans people’s existence, CPAC’s speakers paired their attacks with efforts to galvanize the conservative base ahead of 2024 and to take over public schools. The panel following Greene’s provides some insight as to how we arrived at this place. Terry Schilling of the anti-LGBTQ American Principles Project took the stage with Chloe Cole, a woman in the process of reversing her transition, and Riley Gaines, a former Division 1 swimmer at the University of Kentucky who lost races last year to Lia Thomas, a trans woman. After describing the “transgender lobby” as “evil,” Schilling belabored the state of women’s sports. https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-cpac-republicans-weaponize-transphobia-in-a-sign-of-whats-to-come/  ?w=580
Yes, he does. And today’s devil can take on many forms. But perhaps you might know him by the Mark Of The Beast, which is a red hat that says “Make America Great Again”. But make no mistake that the anti-trans hatred is coming fast and fierce. And it seems to be increasingly escalating every single day and it’s not getting any better any time soon. There are some truly evil forces at work here in the United States, my fair congregation! This much I can assure you, though we saw the light in the 2020 election away from the unholy Dark One, the devil is still very much at work here. In fact we need to look at the group that’s currently pushing these laws and seeing how far they can go. They are most certainly evil and must be stopped! On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this will be an uphill battle when we get to session,” Deutsch warned the group. “As always, please do not share this with the media. The longer we can fly under the radar the better.”
The message was one in a trove of emails obtained by Mother Jones between Deutsch and representatives of a network of activists and organizations at the forefront of the anti-trans movement. They show the degree to which these activists shaped Deutsch’s repressive legislation, a version of which was signed into law in February, and the tactics, alliances, and goals of a movement that has sought to foist their agenda on a national scale. In messages back and forth, some members of the group pushed Deutsch to make the bill even more restrictive. Vernadette Broyles, the president and general counsel of a Georgia-based law firm called the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, urged him to raise the age threshold to 18. Broyles, who is also affiliated with the conservative Christian legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), warned that other religious-right groups might not support the bill if “you start by giving away 16 and 17-year olds right from the outset.” Others, including Andre Van Mol—a member of a fringe, conservative doctors group that calls itself the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds)—raised concerns that the bill as written might backfire by accidentally blocking healthcare providers from “attempting to change…a child’s perception of their sex” when kids identify as transgender. Deutsch agreed to rewrite the section. At the time, there was little precedent for such bills, and Deutsch’s legislation, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was killed in the Senate after doctors showed up at the South Dakota statehouse to argue they should not be sent to prison for following the medical consensus. “Though our session in SD is now over and our efforts to protect gender-confused vulnerable children failed, I continue to receive ugly email and social media posts,” Deutsch complained to the group in March 2020. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/anti-trans-transgender-health-care-ban-legislation-bill-minors-children-lgbtq/ 
What the hell are you guys talking about? I can guarantee that you haven’t protected one child from one “groomer”, whatever that is. If there’s anything that we should be protecting kids from, it’s predatory youth pastors, and there are plenty of those out there! . Like this scumbag youth pastor in North Carolina. Or this scumbag youth pastor in Texas. Or this scumbag youth pastor from Alabama. Or this scumbag youth pastor from Colorado. Anyway you see where I’m going with this? Well anyway we can assure you that the legislation being passed is getting worse the more you go down the rabbit hole on the subject. And of all of the laws we saw, these are some of the worst of the worst, being proposed by pretend Christians who really only preach hate and worship the Dark One! Less than two full months into 2023, over 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have now been introduced in state legislatures around the country.
Legislative researcher Allison Chapman made note of the grim statistic on Twitter on Thursday, including a screenshot of the LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking spreadsheet compiled by her and fellow trans activists Alejandra Caraballo and Erin Reed. Chapman wrote that the largest number of bills, 91, aim to ban gender-affirming care, followed by 44 “Don’t Say Gay” style bills, 39 trans sports bans, and 27 drag bans. Other categories of bills include trans bathroom bans, birth certificate change bans, and forced misgendering. “We are in truly unprecedented times,” Chapman wrote. Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD noted in a statement that this number is “nearly the entirety of bills introduced during the whole 2022 legislative session.” In 2022, 315 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in states across the nation, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The LGBTQ+ Legislative Tracking spreadsheet also includes a map that shows where anti-LGBTQ+ bills are most concentrated, and a map that ranks states by their anti-trans laws. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida are classified as having the “worst active anti-trans laws,” with Texas, Alabama, and Montana additionally ranked as having introduced the highest number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year thus far. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-2023 
Yes, let the hate flow through you, for it has made them powerful! My fair congregation, do you see where I’m going with this? The hate in this country is strong, intense, and getting so far out of control that we don’t know what can be done! The unholy Dark One and his followers and enablers have fully embraced the Dark Side! We know they would carry out Order 66 if the Even Darker One somehow managed to become president! And we hope to GAWD that doesn’t happen! Because in his state, which is full of Dark One worshippers, this apparently didn’t go far enough! I mean what more do they want from us? They will destroy this country if given another term! Florida lawmakers will consider a major expansion to the state's controversial gender and education law — which critics have dubbed "Don't Say Gay" — that would target transgender and nonbinary students and ban schools from teaching about gender identity until high school.
The bill, HB 1223, would forbid "classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity" from pre-K through eighth grade, and would expand the restriction to apply to private programs and charter schools. HB 1223 would also require "every public K-12 educational institution" to acknowledge that "a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex." If passed, the bill would bar teachers from calling students by pronouns that don't align with their sex at birth and students from asking for a teacher to use preferred pronouns. The legislation is among many that have been introduced as the Florida session prepares for its 60-day legislative season that begins March 7. The bill's creator, GOP state Rep. Adam Anderson, said in a statement to Insider: "The appropriate time and place to have sexual orientation and gender identity conversations is at home between children and their parents, not in the classroom, and not on the public dime." https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-lawmaker-pitching-major-expansion-of-dont-say-gay-bill-2023-3 
But these are people who are incapable of feeling bad about themselves. These are people who are leading the US down a very dark path that embraces mass murder and totalitarianism, and they must be stopped at all costs! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]This Fucking Guy: Vivek Ramaswamy          [br] [/font] [br]
This week’s This Fucking Guy is Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s a Fox & Friends contributor and one of the instigators of this whole “anti-woke” controversy that we’ve been seeing that’s just been dominating the news lately. For those of you who don’t watch Fox, and if you’re here, it is because you don’t watch Fox unless you’re a left wing blogger who’s paid to monitor what’s being said on Tucker Carlson. But if you’re wondering where this whole “war on woke” thing came from, it’s because of people like this fucking guy, Vivek Ramaswamy. And not only that, but he’s got much bigger aspirations than being a commentator on the morning chucklehead show. That’s right – he’s got – wait for it – aspirations of being the next president of the United States! Don’t boo yet! Boy, Trump really lowered the bar as to what passes for being the president these days, didn’t he? Well in case you don’t watch Fox, here’s what your local MAGA neighbors might be discussing. Fox News has imposed a “soft ban” on Donald Trump appearing on the channel, his inner circle is reportedly complaining, even as the broadcaster extends a warm invitation to other Republican hopefuls in next year’s presidential election.
The news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September. Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are currently frequent guests on Fox. Media Matters for America, a watchdog that keeps a close eye on the network’s output, has counted seven weekday appearances by the former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley since she launched her presidential bid last month. Even the lesser-known right-wing activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who threw his hat into the ring last week, has appeared four times on Fox. Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to compete with Trump though he has yet to declare, is also repeatedly seen on the network. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-reportedly-imposes-soft-ban-on-donald-trump/ar-AA18amUa 
Seriously, how ,low does the bar get? I mean it’s totally insane that someone who appears on Fox News a total of four fucking times thinks that he can run for president. Is that how America is going to be run from here on out? Someone who sucks up to the right wing Fox News Christiofascist megachurch cult can just think that they’re automatically presidential material? Well have you seen the quality of their Congressional candidates lately? There’s the world’s shittiest dentist, a crazy woman who takes internet conspiracy theories literally (and won’t shut up), and another crazy woman who failed her GED 3 times and used to own a gun themed restaurant that gave its’ patrons food poisoning. So yeah there is always that. But it’s proof that if you suck up you too can have high aspirations! Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy biotech entrepreneur and investor and the author of “Woke, Inc.,” has entered the Republican race for president.
In a video released Tuesday night, Ramaswamy, 37, formally launched his longshot bid by decrying what he called a “national identity crisis” that he claims is driven by a left-wing ideology that has replaced “faith, patriotism and hard work” with “new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology." “We have obsessed so much over our diversity and our difference that we forgot all the ways we’re really just the same as Americans," he says. In a Wall Street Journal editorial published at the same time, he pledged to repeal civil service protections for federal workers if he wins, as well as work to eliminate affirmative action, including directing the Justice Department to prosecute “illegal race-based preferences." https://www.yahoo.com/news/woke-inc-author-vivek-ramaswamy-024004297.html Holy shit! That’s definitely some racist MAGA policies there, and talk about someone who is clearly voting against their best interests there! At least he does bring some diversity to the table besides, extremist Christian white guy, extremist Christian white guy, extremist Christian white woman, and um yeah that’s about it. But this whole “anti-woke” bullshit that Fox has been peddling for the last year has definitely been an exercise in how far they can go, and it’s definitely a test for future hard lined fascist policies. But make no mistake that conservatives are getting more exponentially shittier with their policies and this guy might be to blame for it. Ohio biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s railed against “woke” investing based on environmental, social and governance principles, has launched a battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Ramaswamy, 37, had said he was “strongly considering” a run and on Tuesday filed a statement of candidacy and created a presidential committee with the Federal Election Commission. An individual who’s raised or spent $5,000 on a presidential run is required to register as a candidate with the FEC. A native of southwestern Ohio, Ramaswamy didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. But he has been meeting power brokers and giving speeches in Iowa and key states, highlighting his belief that the US has moved away from its founding values. He would bring business expertise to what could be a crowded Republican field in 2024. By going after ESG, he is targeting one of the favorite lanes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also expected to jump into the race. The other declared GOP candidates so far are former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/anti-esg-crusader-takes-on-trump-haley-for-2024-gop-nomination/ar-AA17LC10 
Yeah after the last guy, I think our expectations are already lowered enough! There’s really no need to lower them any further! But there’s no mistake that stochastic terrorism is a very profitable business to be in right now. As we’ve said on this program before, there’s literally thousands of channels that you can choose from and you can get it custom tailored to your level of racism / sexism. And we can thank people who are on the forefront of the anti-ESG movement like Vivek Ramaswamy as to how we got to this point. So the next time your Fox watching friends and neighbors are complaining about things being too woke for them, you can trace it back to where they first heard about this nonsense. So yeah we can thank this fucking guy. Until recently, there were two iron laws in investing. One, popularised by Milton Friedman, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, posited that a company’s responsibility above all else was to provide returns to its shareholders. The second, promoted by Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, an investment firm, held that asset-management fees must be driven to the lowest level possible.
The growing importance of environmental, social and governance (esg) criteria has weakened Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy, perhaps fatally. Global esg funds manage $7.7trn in assets, having doubled in size in the past seven years. Even the Business Roundtable, a talking shop for American bosses, declared in 2019 that companies must place the interests of a variety of clients, customers and communities on equal footing with shareholders. But like all revolutions, this one has generated a reaction. The anti-esg backlash is flourishing. Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “Woke, Inc.” and co-founder of Strive Asset Management, announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on February 21st. The firm he left to pursue his political ambitions promotes exchange-traded funds (etfs) and proxy-voting services that push back against what it sees as the politicisation of corporate governance. But in defending Friedman’s law, the anti-esg crowd is struggling with the other part of the investing canon—the importance of low fees. At the moment, taking a position against esg is much more expensive than going with the crowd. This is particularly true when it comes to anti-esg laws, which are more preoccupied with bashing esg-promoting firms than with prioritising shareholder returns and cutting costs for taxpayers. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/03/02/the-anti-esg-industry-is-taking-investors-for-a-ride 
That’s anti-woke crusader, and last place CPAC presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – this week’s:
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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner [br] [/font] [br]
Welcome back to our segment that attempts to explain the unexplainable, Conspiracy Corner! Of course conspiracies exist when people simply don’t want to read the article past the headlines and just flat out make shit up. We of course are coming to you live from our underground doomsday shelter from deep within the New Mexico badlands. Undisclosed location, of course! Let me just adjust my trusty tin foil hat for maximum government interference. They are trying to read yours and my thoughts after all! Ah there we go! So folks this week, I don’t need to remind you that one of the craziest and stupidest people ever to unfortunately grace the halls of Congress is none other than Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q – Batshit). Marjorie Greene is proof that you don’t need much in order to become a republican elected representative. You just need to constantly talk, say what conservatives want to hear, and appear on right wing talk shows 24 hours a day. But we’re not going to examine Marjorie’s off the wall lunacy here today because you’ve probably heard her crap all the time. Instead, we’re going to take a page from the Joker movie and examine why crazy happens. Here’s more. In a recent campaign video, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, likened Democrats to destructive feral hogs allowed to range free and destroy the American countryside.
But Marjorie had a solution: As the camera followed her, she grabbed a rifle and climbed aboard a waiting helicopter, where she tracked down and shot a fleeing hog. In the next scene, quite pleased with herself, Greene posed next to her dead prey and invited supporters to enter a free drawing, with the winner accompanying her on her next hog-killing expedition. In a healthy political climate, members of both parties would unite to condemn such a message. But that is not the climate in which we live. To the contrary, lest anyone have moral qualms about the message of such a video, Greene offered an answer for that too. At a Trump rally in Michigan this month, she told the crowd that “we are all targets now though, for daring to push back against the regime…. I am not going to mince words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings.” So … kill or be killed. It would be nice to be able to dismiss that talk as the rantings of a loon, which on one level it is. But the rantings are being delivered by a loon invited to speak at a series of rallies by the former president of the United States, a man who remains the favorite for becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, which implies a high level of support for such sentiments. https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/10/20/top-republicans-embrace-marjorie-taylor-greenes-violent-rhetoric/ 
Yeah make no mistake that the GOP’s got a problem on their hands. Marjorie is calling for a Civil War and a National Divorce, and her followers seem to embrace the crazy. But let’s also face the facts for a minute here. The main fact is that her idea for a National Divorce is grossly unpopular. Hell it’s so unpopular that even former Breitbart manager and guy who looks like he sleeps in a coffin full of Red Bull, Steve Bannon, wouldn’t even go there. Now that’s pretty fucking unpopular. So let’s extrapolate that for a minute here. The thing with a national divorce is that it would be an absolute disaster on multiple levels. Is it news that people are angry with Marjorie Taylor Greene?
This week, the Georgia Republican took advantage of Twitter’s newly liberalized character restrictions to do what she does best: suggest something unhinged, and sit back while her political opponents’ heads explode in white-hot rage. “We need a national divorce,” she tweeted. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.” The next day, she followed up by elaborating that she would like to see “a legal agreement” that would separate states to resolve ideological and political disagreements “while maintaining our legal union.” Rearranged this way, Americans can decide where and how to live, Greene concluded, and “we don’t have to argue with one another anymore.” The Republican representative’s words prompted the outcry you’d expect from Democrats and columnists who questioned both her loyalty to the country and Republican leaders’ cowardice in refusing to rein her in. But Greene’s ideas are not as radical as some might be inclined to think. First, because what she’s calling for sounds not unlike Ronald Reagan’s idea of federalism. Second, because Greene is hardly the first person to suggest that the political party in power is making the United States wholly unlivable. I’m old enough to remember all the liberals who swore they’d move to Canada if Donald Trump won in 2016. (They didn’t!) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/states-disunion-secession-movements-richard-kreitner/673191/ 
But while the idea of a “national divorce” is seriously unpopular, there is a bill that was filed in the Texas Senate last week called the “Texas Secession Bill”, or “TEXIT”. This is too fucking hilarious. Because have you seen how unpopular the actual Brexit movement is and what an absolute clusterfuck it’s been for the last 6 years? The Texas secession bill is the American equivalent of that. Setting up their own country and system of government isn’t going to be easy. And for the people who don’t believe that government should exist, this is going to be fucking hilarious! A Texas state lawmaker filed a bill on Monday that would set a referendum for voters to decide whether the state should explore the possibility of seceding from the United States.
If the measure — known as the TEXIT Referendum Act — passes, a referendum on whether Texas “should reassert its status as an independent nation” would be scheduled for the next general election on Nov. 7, 2023. The bill would also require potential plans to be presented to the state legislature. “The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people,” Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) wrote in a statement. “After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.” A coalition of Texas lawmakers — including Slaton — filed the same bill in March 2021, which was referred to the State Affairs committee. It did not, however, receive a hearing or a vote. Slaton said this time around, he was filing the bill 187 years after the fall of the Alamo. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3886527-texas-lawmaker-files-texit-bill-to-spur-vote-on-exploring-secession-from-us/ 
Yeah who is the crazy ones here? Imagine if you will, living in the Continental United States and having a hostile foreign entity literally on your own border. And Texas is so poorly run that we can imagine there’d be tons of Texas refugees attempting to cross the border illegally. Because once again, conservatives fuck up and destroy just about everything that they touch. So if Marjorie Three Names wants a national divorce, they really ought to think about what they would stand to lose. It would be a hell of a lot, and don’t say we didn’t warn you! Once again, a bill filed in Austin aims to give Texas voters a choice on whether the state should secede from the federal government.
HB 3596, known as the "Texas Independence Referendum Act," or TEXIT, was filed by state Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, on Monday. If passed, Texans would be able to vote in the next general election on the possibility of Texas becoming an independent state. Then if there is a majority vote by the people, a committee will plan the next steps in the state seceding from the Union. It's a recurring theme in Texas to flirt with the idea of state independence, since it became its own country when it separated from Mexico in 1836 and didn't join the U.S. until 1845. The bill was filed on the 187th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. "The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people," Slaton said in a press release. "After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard." https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/texit-bill-secession-texas-independence-from-us-17824407.php 
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[font size="8"]I Need A Drink: The Oscars’ Crisis Team  [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink! 
Of course you know the idea behind this segment is that we have some drinks. And while we’re drinking we talk about literally anything in the news as long as it doesn’t involve politics. Because there’s a lot of incredibly dark shit in the news right now and our stance is that drinking and talking about politics usually never ends well for anybody involved. This week – folks, you know our firm stance here is that social media is probably going to kill us all, right? Well the latest Tik Tok challenge has people who participate in the challenge going to the emergency room in record numbers. It’s called the “BORG” challenge, which stands for “blackout rage gallon”. Which is basically just a mix of hard alcohol and energy drinks. So tell me bartender, what goes well with a story about a BORG? We’re going to do an actual BORG? OK. Mixing hard alcohol and highly caffeinated energy drinks? What could possibly go wrong there? Well, a hell of a lot if you pay attention to the news headlines! College campuses’ latest party trend may be to blame for putting students in danger, a university warns.
Officials at the University of Massachusetts Amherst announced Saturday that its fire department handled 28 ambulances linked to “a significant number of alcohol intoxication cases.” That night, students were seen “carrying plastic gallon containers, believed to be ‘borgs.’” These containers, also known as “blackout rage gallons,” contain a mix of alcohol, water, and electrolytes. The #borg TikTok trend, which has accumulated over 82 million views, depicts people dumping out about half of the gallon’s water and filling it up with alcohol, typically a liquor like vodka, along with juice or electrolytes. “It’s essentially a hack to drink a bunch, have a crazy night, and not feel terrible about it the next day,” one TikToker explains as they assemble their concoction, which includes a full fifth of alcohol. “Gen Z just like drinks this.” https://fortune.com/well/2023/03/07/borg-tiktok-binge-drinking-trend/ 
OK… Ok… OK. OK. First off, I can handily tell you, as someone who has had my fair share of drinks in my lifetime, that there’s no such thing. Believe me, people have tried. There’s no way you can drink a metric fuck ton of alcohol and not feel bad about it the next day. That’s why god invented hangovers! And second, U Mass reported 28 ambulances? Holy shit, you can’t just go from zero to 60 on alcohol, my friends! You have to build your tolerance levels. Just like eating spicy foods, you can’t expect to have zero experience eating spicy foods, and then all of a sudden eat a Carolina Reaper. Because that will send you to the hospital. And probably destroy your digestive system on top of that. And this is also what happens when people aren’t properly educated on the subject. The #borg TikTok trend involves taking a gallon container (3.7 litres) of water, emptying half of it and then mixing in alcohol, often vodka, flavoured powder, electrolytes and sometimes caffeine.
Views of the trend on TikTok have rapidly passed 82 million. Many videos on TikTok have touted the supposed benefits of drinking a borg, claiming it wards off dehydration and the cap stops any attempt to drug the drinker. But health officials have cautioned that diluting the alcohol doesn't change how students would be affected by the alcohol they consumed. Other videos show students documenting their "borg" drinking day, checking in with updates which portray their descent towards intoxication. https://www.9news.com.au/world/dangerous-borg-tiktok-drinking-trend-sending-us-students-to-hospital/4b6382b7-4483-4a6e-869f-73d9ba2a0a57 
Yeah we need some Jack, that’s more my wheelhouse! But seriously, in addition to the possibility of getting alcohol poisoning and severely damaging your liver, how do you not get severely dehydrated on top of that? That seems like that would just be a toxic formula for that. Look, here’s our position on the subject – yes, our segment is called “I Need A Drink”. Yes, we drink heavily! But we practice responsible drinking here! You guys may see our segment here, but you don’t see the aftermath! Which I can assure you that I don’t want to be the janitor who has to clean the bathrooms afterwards. Though the addition of water and sometimes electrolyte drink mixes may help slow down alcohol consumption and reduce the risk of hangovers, Nicole Barr, direct services coordinator at the University of North Carolina Wilmington's Abrons Student Health Center, says there is still concern about the size of borgs encouraging binge drinking.
Barr has mostly seen recipes that call for a fifth of alcohol, which is about 16 drinks or so. "That's a lot for any person to ingest, especially in one sitting. So that was a huge concern," she says. A standard serving of 40% or 80 proof vodka is 1.5 ounces; Koob has seen some borg recipes that call for a half gallon, which equals about 43 servings of alcohol. "Consuming this much alcohol would be fatal for the vast majority of people, even if spread out over a full day," he notes. "It is unknown how many students actually follow borg recipes that call for a half gallon of vodka, but doing so could turn deadly depending on how much they end up consuming." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-a-borg-college-drinking-trend-explained/ 
Yeah let’s think about this here – it’s a whole fucking GALLON of alcohol and potentially dehydrating beverages that you’re consuming here. That fatigue you’re experiencing? It’s not from the booze, it’s from the lack of water. But let’s ask actual health experts what they think about the subject. And they’ll probably mostly agree that consuming an entire gallon of alcohol and caffeine is bad for you no matter how you try to spin it. Needless to say if this trend keeps up, in a few years, I see ERs filling up with tons of potential liver transplants. A borg, which stands for “blackout rage gallon,” is a viral alcoholic drink that college students are swearing by on TikTok. This drink is typically made with half a gallon of water, vodka, and a few squirts of a water enhancer like MiO for flavor. Some even add caffeine and Liquid IV, which is packed with electrolytes.
All the water and electrolytes in a borg are supposed to prevent hangovers, according to some TikTok creators. But with recipes that call for as much as 17 shots of vodka, most experts are not convinced. “That is an extraordinary amount of alcohol. If you make it through the night, I promise you, you will have a hangover,” Tavis Glassman, MPH, PhD, a professor of public health at The University of Toledo, told Verywell. A borg is similar to other communal party punches like jungle juice, but some people might try to finish a borg on their own. If someone makes a borg with an entire 750 ml bottle of vodka, it’s the equivalent of about 17 alcoholic drinks. “They are crossing both the binge drinking limit as well as weekly heavy drinking,” Vatsalya Vatsalya, MD, PgD, MS, MSc, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, told Verywell. https://www.verywellhealth.com/does-borg-prevent-hangover-7113448 
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[font size="8"]Stupidest State 2022: Round 1 Week 1: Single Elimination Round   [br] [/font] [br]
16 states will enter and only one state will become the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State! 
Welcome back to Stupidest State 2023! This is it folks, we’re here at the starting gate for exciting Round 1 Week 1 action! This week it’s two heavyweights from the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference going for broke in the first round, while over in the Gun Nut Conference, #3 Idaho takes on #4 Montana by bringing their big guns to the dance! We’re live at the home of the world champion Los Angeles Football Club, the LAFC if you will, at the fabulous BMO Stadium in downtown Los Angeles for all of the exciting action! Let’s go to the floor, shall we? [font size="4"]Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference Round 1 Week 1: Kansas Vs Nevada [/font] [font size="2"]Kansas [/font]  ?v=1546976537
The Sunflower State is back for another year everybody. Of course Kansas is a long time favorite in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference. Once one of the reddest states in the country, Kansas is showing a bit of backlash against our billionaire overlords. But Kansas is hurting so much for money right now – again partly in thanks to our billionaire overlords – that they’re resorting to finding money any way they could, and that includes selling fireworks year ‘round. That’s right – you’ll be able to blow your thumbs off the entire year, not just on July 4th anymore! Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow firework sales year-round, a move that could help small businesses and the state's coffers collect more revenue.
The Senate Commerce Committee held a Tuesday hearing on Senate Bill 378, which expands the existing season for firework sales around the Fourth of July while also permitting year-round retail sales. The bill was introduced at the request of Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, who said constituents Sarah Beagel and Brent Aiello had approached her to ask for the legislation. "This isn't for the big business people," Tyson said. "This is literally for the mom and pops. And I appreciate you guys reaching out. This is how the process is supposed to work." Read more: https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/03/kansas-firework-sales-would-legal-year-round-under-senate-bill-sb-378/9300442002/ 
Yeah I’m sure that guy is the poster child for greed. But greed isn’t good! And the one thing we certainly can’t do – though we absolutely should – is tax the damn billionaires! I mean come on, when guys like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have the gross domestic product of the entire continent of Africa, then that’s a huge fucking problem. We should be going after them, not the people who need it the most. I mean come on, do we really need to be policing food stamps? In 2023? Seriously? Senate President Ty Masterson’s “broader picture” for tax policy changes came into focus Monday with a plan that involves rolling back tax relief on food so the state can afford to cut income taxes for the highest wage earners.
The Senate tax committee passed a flat tax plan that would lower the income tax rate for all wage brackets to 4.75% at an estimated cost of about $566 million in the next calendar year. The impact on state revenue would be lessened by applying the sales tax on food to just “healthy” items. “Is this meant to only help those less fortunate? I think the answer is no,” Masterson said. “They’re to be helped, but it’s to help all Kansans, not just those less fortunate, because the structure’s there. The best thing for them is a job. We can’t keep on the train of buying economic development. You have to put a tax structure in place where those jobs remain. And so that helps everybody.” Masterson’s proposal would repeal the gradual elimination of state sales tax on food, which would reduce annual revenues by about $450 million when fully implemented on Jan. 1, 2025. Instead, Senate Bill 248 would exempt select food items from both state and local sales tax, reducing state revenues by about $284 million in the next fiscal year. https://hayspost.com/posts/65f31844-6f53-4d7b-9a41-bf70c05dedfa 
[font size="2"]Nevada [/font] 
The Silver State is back for another year everybody! You know in the 2020 election, Nevada shocked the world by becoming a blue state. Even better, it turned even bluer in the 2022 election. Of course Nevada is one of the only states in this country that is home to legalized gambling. And of course with the casino industry comes rampant crime and corruption. Las Vegas is now also home to two major league sports teams – the Las Vegas Raiders and the Las Vegas Golden Knights. It’s also the home of a greedy Mormon cult that ended about the same way that the cult in Kevin Smith’s Red State ended. Las Vegas investigative reporter Jeff German was slain outside his home on Sept. 2; a Clark County official he had investigated is charged in his death. To continue German’s work, The Washington Post teamed up with his newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, to complete one of the stories he’d planned to pursue before his killing. A folder on German’s desk contained court documents he’d started to gather about an alleged Ponzi scheme that left hundreds of victims – many of them Mormon – in its wake. Post reporter Lizzie Johnson began investigating, working with Review-Journal photographer Rachel Aston.
Authorities had long suspected {Matthew} Beasley of running a massive Ponzi scheme with his business partner, Jeffrey Judd, that mainly targeted Mormons, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are often called. The investment was pitched as a nearly risk-free opportunity to earn annual returns of 50 percent by lending money to slip-and-fall victims awaiting checks after the settlement of their lawsuits. ... There was just one problem, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a civil complaint. None of it was real. For five years, the SEC said, Beasley and Judd paid existing investors with money from new clients — a classic Ponzi scheme. The most notorious fraud of this kind, run by Wall Street financial guru Bernie Madoff, cost investors billions of dollars. By comparison, one expert said, the alleged Vegas scam was distinguished less by its size and more by its victims: It came to be known as the “Mormon Ponzi scheme.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/01/mormon-ponzi-scheme-vegas-fbi/ 
Yes that is a good question! What is wrong with you? I mean come on people, greed isn’t always good – it’s the opposite of what they preach in the movie Wall Street! By the way, in case you’re wondering how bad deregulated capitalism is in the Silver State, well, it’s pretty bad. Casinos aren’t just limited to Las Vegas. They’re also in Reno and Tahoe, and well Tahoe got hit pretty bad in the tourism industry after COVID hit and we’re just beginning to see the after effects of the total shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. But you know what? We ain’t seen nothing yet! The sign to the Tahoe Biltmore Lodge and Casino welcomed visitors to the Nevada side of North Lake Tahoe for generations. The legendary property is set for demolition on May 1.
Photo By Andrew Pridgen The front door to the Tahoe Biltmore Lodge and Casino didn’t budge. I smashed my face up against it to get a better look inside and couldn’t make out much through the tinted glass. What I could see didn’t look promising. ... I tried the door next to it — frozen shut. It appeared I’d missed partaking in the final hours of the legendary North Lake Tahoe casino and hotel’s existence. Although the marquee above the main entry said it’d remain open till April 23 for a “last hurrah” (demolition is slated for May 1), maybe someone had mercifully ended its run 10 days in advance. As I was getting ready to give up and go, the door at my original entry point opened up. A woman wearing a backpack and a beanie stormed out. Ignoring me, she took two steps out onto the sidewalk, pockmarked from years of salt thrown out for winter safety, and lit a cigarette. “Is it open?” I asked, wondering whether she’d also come to pay homage to the iconic three-quarter-century-old institution, even in its disrepair. ... She took a drag. “I wouldn’t say that,” she said as smoke flared out of her nostrils. I ducked in the door as it began to close behind me. ... Whoever she was, she was dead on the mark. https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Tahoe-Biltmore-to-be-demolished-17080738.php 
[font size="2"]And The Winner Is: [/font] Ooh, ladies and gentlemen – we have our first round of 2023 in the books!! Kansas has the ball with less than a minute and a half remaining… the score… it’s good! Now a foul… Kansas for two! Yes! And that’s all she wrote, folks – Kansas wins this one, they advance to the next round! Final score: 80 – 73. [font size="4"]Gun Nut Conference Round 1 Week 1: Idaho Vs Montana [/font] [font size="4"]Idaho [/font] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sthZX5CNfdw/T_SiqjVTvII/AAAAAAAAA0s/uy9JcPW6Dbk/s1600/idaho+XTRLG.jpg The Gem State is back for another go round in this tournament. Idaho makes no contest about why they’re one of the favorites in the Gun Nut Conference. Outside of Boise, Idaho is farm country, and farmers are packing some serious heat. Numerous attempts have been made to ban assault weapons in the Gem State, but instead the opposite has happened. The gun laws just keep getting nuttier and nuttier and nuttier. Like for instance this one that would just flat out allow guns to be carried on campuses, because you know, shall not be infringed. And what could possibly go wrong? In the Idaho and Wyoming statehouses, it's a very different conversation. An Idaho bill would prevent university leaders from regulating or prohibiting carrying concealed weapons on campus. And a Wyoming proposal would explicitly allow for concealed carry at public schools, the legislature and other public spaces.
Geller says she’s excited to see some states in the region – namely New Mexico and Utah – considering waiting periods for some gun sales. Though another bill proposing a waiting period for assault weapons in Utah failed in committee. “If we put time and space between an individual who is suicidal and the weapon itself there are significant reductions in suicide, because firearms are the mostly lethal means of suicide,” she said. CDC data from 2020 shows that Wyoming had the highest death rate due to suicide in the country, followed by Alaska, Montana, New Mexico and Idaho. The agency has called suicides “especially concerning” in rural areas. https://www.kunc.org/regional-news/2023-02-03/gun-bills-in-mountain-west-state-legislatures-go-in-very-different-directions 
Yes, that is a good question! What could possibly go wrong? Well a hell of a lot. Even worse is that there’s another bill that would allow public terrorist groups, er, militias. No, let’s call them terrorists to meet on public grounds. Yes, we have our own versions of ISIS, the Taliban, and Al’Qaeda already operating on US soil. Last thing we need to do is give them permission to act out their own version of Project Mayhem. Like come on really, read the room people. Oh wait, conservatives are incapable of doing that. The Senate State Affairs Committee moved a bill forward Monday that would allow militias to parade in public with firearms, Ruth Brown of Idaho Reports writes.
Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, sponsored Senate Bill 1056, stressing that all gun laws would still apply to anyone parading with a gun. The bill would repeal a section of code that prohibits anyone other than the National Guard to parade with firearms and prohibits cities or towns from paying to arm or organize any militia. Legislators repeatedly referenced incidents in Lewiston, when armed protesters attended a Black Lives Matter protest, and another incident in Coeur d’Alene. https://www.idahopress.com/eyeonboise/bill-to-allow-militias-in-public-moves-forward/article_076f4e2a-b7b0-11ed-818b-1359a7276fc0.html 
[font size="4"]Montana [/font] 
The Big Sky State is back for another go-round in this tournament. They’ve gone very far, but have yet to win it all. The state known for its’ beautiful mountains, cowboys, and land as far as the eye can see, is also a hotbed for religious nationalist policies and a test market for how far the far right can go. Its’ governor is Greg Gianforte, a guy who became famous for body slamming a reporter who asked an innocent question, while its’ sole Congressional representative is Ryan Zinke, you may remember him from the Trump administration as their Parks Dept. head. So what nutty gun laws does Montana have on the books in 2023? Well for starters there’s a bill that would ban gun “discrimination”. Yeah that’s apparently a thing among gun nuts! A customer forgot a firearm at a business last week, and the business was disappointed with the irresponsible conduct, said Charles Robison, with the Montana Chamber of Commerce.
Now, that business is considering putting up a “No weapons” sign to avoid similar problems in the future. “Should a business like this lose the right to compete for state contracts?” said Robison (he didn’t name the business; avoiding proper names is protocol in committee). Robison shared the anecdote Wednesday in testimony against Senate Bill 361, largely opposed by the finance industry in Montana. Sponsored by Sen. John Fuller, R-Kalispell, SB 361 aims to prohibit “discrimination concerning firearms” against people or businesses by financial institutions and in state contracts. https://dailymontanan.com/2023/02/22/montana-finance-industry-opposes-firearms-discrimination-bill-attorney-general-supports/ 
Come on, even Marge is packing some heat! In a time when mass shootings are at an all time high and people are afraid of leaving their houses in fear of getting shot, well, guess what? The Montana House of representatives plans on going full Dirty Harry. Because you know, it shall not be infringed! I mean come on, this is some next level batshit insanity. Guns have more rights than people do in this country and the last thing we need with a gun problem is more guns! That’s like giving the alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet! Expanding access to guns is again a top priority for Montana Republican lawmakers. During marathon floor sessions Wednesday, both the House and Senate advanced pro-firearm policies ahead of a looming deadline.
All general policies must pass from one chamber of the Legislature to the next before end of day Friday to survive the transmittal deadline, including several that aim to protect or expand access to firearms. Republican Rep. Jedidiah Hinkle from Belgrade says House Bill 631 will give Montanans recourse if a government entity limits their right to bear arms. “How are you going to have the finances to take the government to court to take back your rights?” Hinkle said. “The vast majority of the people won’t because financially they cannot.” The bill says government entities cannot limit residents’ right to bear arms, and would require that those entities cover the legal costs of any residents who bring a successful legal challenge over gun restriction. https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2023-03-02/state-legislators-advance-pro-firearm-policies-ahead-of-coming-deadline 
[font size="2"]And The Winner Is: [/font] Oh this one is no surprise here - Montana has come out guns blazing, they have shot their way to the top! Final score – 91 – 85! They are celebrating on the court and they will advance to the Elite 8! [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] Next week it’s Round 1 Week 2 and we’re live from the home of the Vegas Golden Knights, the amazing T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for all the action! It’s a battle for Batshit supremacy as conference favorite #1 Florida takes on fan favorite #2 Kentucky! Meanwhile, over in the Family Values conference, red hot newcomer #3 Utah takes on finalist #4 Oklahoma! It’s getting exciting, folks! Be sure to follow [email protected] on Mastodon for updated brackets, stats, and bracketology! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]Anti-Flag[/font] 
Folks, my next guest has a great new album out called “Lies They Tell Our Children”, you can see them on tour with Flogging Molly through the end of March. Playing their song “The Fight Of Our Lives”, give it up for Anti-Flag! Thank you Washington DC! This was fun, we’ll be back soon! We’re off to Miami next! See you next week!  
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