Top 10 Conservative Idiots #15-13: Dawn Of The Planet Of The MAGAs Edition

[Top 10 Idiots]

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #15-13: Dawn Of The Planet Of The MAGAs Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yooooooooooooooooooo!!!! What’s up, Las Vegas, how you guys doing? You doing fucking good? Great! It’s great to be back in Sin City at the MGM Grand, and we’re ready to have some fun! Whew, man, what a week last week was! We made some huge gains in the 2023 election that we can’t wait to tell you about! And also, I say this with the utmost sincerity – but fuck Fox News and Tate Reeves to the hottest of hells. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, can you believe that we have just 3 Top 10s remaining before we pack it in for the year? Of course the year will end with our annual attempt to squeeze an entire year’s worth of entries into six short entries. So I want to start with this. You know, we’ve put a temporary ban on Trump rallies and public appearances for the time being, because he seems to have one like every other day, and they're all the same, and he spews the same hateful bullshit at all of them. I know! And this is a show that started covering his crap all the time. But the reason why we did is just because we’re sick of his bullshit, and there’s too much of it. And he’s literally just dragging everyone down to his level. So because of that, no Trump rallies, UFC appearances, or other crap. But we do want to lift that ban temporarily because we got to talk about what went down at UFC 259 in Miami this last weekend and it’s awesome. First off, Trump showed up with his posse – the Below Average White Supremacist Band consisting of Kid Rock and Tucker Carlson, and whoever these douchebags are. But while he was walking to his seat before the fight… this happened. Can we show that?



Yeah so can we all agree that we’re feeling the same as Bill Burr’s wife, Nia Renee? I know that I sure as hell am! That’s why we’re sick of his shit! OK, enough of the intro. We have a lot of idiocy to get to, but first John Oliver is back and he talks about the Isreal – Hamas conflict in terms we can uinderstand, and I will say that it’s very difficult to watch but must be done:

So where do we begin for this week’s edition? Well to start with, how many people are pleased with the results of the 2023 midterm elections? We most definitely are, and we’re going to bring you some of the highlights (1) and a couple of lowlights of the 2023 elections. In the second slot, speaking of lowlights, we’re going to bring you all the lowlights from the latest GOP debate shit show (2) and of course you know that the guy who currently owns the GOP, that guy who we inexplicably used to call president, Donald J. Trump, has to go and ruin everything, right? Of course you knew that! Taking the third slot this week, you’ve been hearing about it in your online circles, but we need to talk about this subject because it's truly the stuff of nightmares. The Heritage Foundation in conjunction with Fox News and Steve Bannon have been developing something called “Project 2025” (3) which is basically the blueprint to install a fascist military dictatorship in the US. And it is, believe us when we say it, pure fucking evil. In the number 4 slot this week, our long national nightmare is finally over as the SAG / AFTRA Strike finally comes to a close (4) and this will effectively end an incredibly long and extremely frustrating year of labor disputes! In the number 5 slot this week is another installment of our award winning investigative journalism segment Top 10 Investigates (5) and this week, as automotive technology is on the rise, we ask the question – “Is your car spying on you?” to which we provide the answer: probably! In the number 6 slot this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” and this week, our resident pastor is going to take a look at an extremely controversial anti-porn spyware app called Covenant Eyes (6) that was made famous by new House speaker Mike Johnson and marketed directly to fundamentalist Christians. Is it really as bad as they say it is? Probably. In the number 7 slot this week, we add the new Fox News approved MAGA loyalist, er stooge and new governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry (7) to the ever-growing list of People Who Somehow Got Elected! Taking the number 8 slot this week is our weekly venture into the never-ending world of online tin foil hat nuttery in Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week, our old friend Marjorie Three Names has figured out a way to deal with people she doesn’t like, and that is to just reduce their salary to $1, but this has set off an incredibly bizarre and extremely dangerous trend, and yes, there may be a Price Is Right reference in there or two! In the number 9 (NEIN!!) slot this week we have a new edition of People Are Dumb (9) because of course they are! Finally this week, it’s Round 6 of our ongoing battle between red state governors and blue state governors in My Governor Is An Idiot (10) and this week we’re pitting Kentucky’s newly reelected governor Andy Beshear against collegiate rivals Alabama and their Fox News installed governor Kay Ivey! And to close things out, we have Australia’s reigning kings of psychedelic rock, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard joining us! Buy their new album Petrodragonic Apocalypse or you’re no friend of this program! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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[font size="8"]Highlights From The 2023 Election
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We always talk about all the bad shit that’s going on the world, and it does get super depressing at times. So you know what? Before we get into the bad shit that happened in the 2023 election this week, why don’t we start with some good news? Then we’ll get into the bad news. That’s what we do – we give you the good shit first, then follow it up with a chaser. Yes, while most of the rest of the civilized world is waiting and holding their breath to see if the United States chooses to prosper or chooses an authoritarian dictatorship in Biden V Trump II: This Time It’s Personal! Ha ha ha ha ha! Or how about we call this Rise Of The Planet Of The MAGAs? Yeah you could do a whole series of these – Dawn Of The Planet Of The MAGAs, Revenge Of The Planet Of The MAGAs, War Of The Planet Of The MAGAs, Beneath The Planet Of The MAGAs… you get the idea! So the good news is that people are waking up to the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. Seats are being flipped, and districts are turning blue that were previously red. And some big initiatives won in places that you would not have expected them to. So here’s more.

Democrats had plenty of good news to celebrate in Tuesday’s off-year elections and more evidence that they can win races centered on the national debate over abortion.

Abortion rights supporters won an Ohio ballot measure and the Democratic governor of beet-red Kentucky held onto his office by campaigning on reproductive rights and painting his opponent as extremist. A Democrat won an open seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after campaigning on his pledge to uphold abortion rights. And Democrats took full control of the Virginia statehouse, blocking Republicans from being able to pass new abortion restrictions and delivering a defeat to Gov. Glenn Youngkin that may douse any buzz about a late entry into the GOP presidential primary.

The victories won’t be enough to make Democrats feel secure heading into next year’s presidential election. The off-year elections have major implications in all of those states and provide a snapshot of American politics heading into 2024. But two big names — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — weren’t on the ballot this time. How Americans view them will be a huge factor in shaping next year’s race.
https://apnews.com/article/election-2023-highlights-868a21bf3537a0533ae3fd8007d07eef

Yeah let’s expand on that for a minute – the Ohio abortion rights measure 1 victory was fucking huge, and it’s a slap in the face to the people who voted to overturn Roe V Wade in 2016 and 2020. And keep in mind, much like we’ve said that Vladimir Putin isn’t stopping at Ukraine, the right wing nuts aren’t stopping at abortion. They’re going full totalitarian dictator on this one and you never want to go full totalitarian dictator. Which I said that they’re not stopping at abortion and I’m not kidding. In fact they’re doubling down on their quest to remove abortion completely from the US landscape. And they’ll lose again.

A Republican state representative in North Dakota has urged authorities in Ohio to "ignore the results" of Tuesday's election, in which voters backed a motion entrenching the right to an abortion in the state constitution.

Ohioans voted by 56.6 percent versus 43.4 percent to support Issue 1, which inserted the "right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions" into the Ohio constitution. The poll was just one of a string of GOP reverses on Tuesday, which also saw Democrats take control of both chambers of the state legislature in Virginia and extend their majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Abortion access has become highly contentious at the state level since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that made abortion access a constitutional right, in June 2022. In response, some Democratic-controlled states have sought to entrench abortion rights in their own constitutions, while a number of their Republican counterparts have introduced restrictions.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, North Dakota State Representative Brandon Prichard argued Tuesday's Issue 1 vote in Ohio should be ignored.
https://www.newsweek.com/republican-pushes-overturn-ohio-election-result-1842226

Yeah that’s pretty much the way that the GOP is going on abortion. And if they lose and don’t like that the outcome doesn’t favor them? They’ll overturn the popular vote, because that’s the kind of out of control psychopaths that we’re dealing with here. So there are encouraging signs here. Yes, you should pay attention to the polls right now. And no, the polls don’t mean shit a year out from the actual presidential election. But the reason why we say that you should pay attention to the polls is because they can be a huge factor in the outcome of an actual election. And the independent voters will make a huge difference in this election and elections to come.

Issues 1 and 2 passed with almost the same margins on Tuesday. But Issue 2 – legal marijuana – won in 40 counties, and Issue 1 on abortion rights won 25 counties – so the maps of election results look very different. Exit polls show independent voters had an impact on the election results.

Issue 1 won in all 7 counties won by President Biden in 2020, and in 18 counties won by former president Trump in 2020. It failed in 63 counties, all of them rural or exurban. The seven counties Biden won were among the 40 counties where Issue 2 passed, and it was approved in 33 counties that Trump won. It failed in 48 counties.

More than a third of voters were 45-64 years old, the largest block by age. And once again, predictions of young voters flocking to the polls fell flat – they were 12%. Both issues won all age groups except voters over 65, with approval rates decreasing as age increased.

On Issue 1, the gap between women and men was seven points on Issue 1 and only three points on Issue 2.

https://woub.org/2023/11/13/exit-polls-showed-independent-voters-decided-ohio-election/

Come on people, stop your rabbling! There is some bad news from the 2023 election though – is that while we’re celebrating huge gains, so is the right. Yes, we know that they flipped the Louisiana governor’s seat with a hard lined MAGA psychopath (don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a minute) and also fuck Tate Reeves. But that just shows how deep the divide is in this country, and the red states are getting that much redder. So take this as both a warning and a preview of what’s to come – 2024 is going to be that much of a shit show and even worse than we could think if we don’t vote in numbers too large to be manipulated by Fox News.

Democrats are projected to notch several key wins across Tuesday's elections, indicating both that abortion remains a motivating factor for voters and that the party can remain successful, including in red states, even in the face of President Joe Biden's poor approval ratings.

A referendum to guarantee abortion access in Ohio was set to pass by a hefty margin, and Democrats in Virginia were projected to flip control of the entire state Legislature, as the party had loudly warned that unified GOP control in Richmond would result in a 15-week abortion ban.

Meanwhile, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, won a second term in a part of the country that just three years ago was handily won by former President Donald Trump, dealing a setback to Daniel Cameron, a rising star and state attorney general who was Republicans' nominee in the race.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/6-election-night-takeaways-democrats-win-big-gop/story?id=104696780.

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[font size="8"]The GOP 2023 Debates: Fight! Fight! Fight!
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We’re witnessing the last remnants of a party that is desperate to hang onto the power that it did during the Trump years and the Bush years. The fact is that the United States is getting more liberal every single election cycle and we’ve got the facts and the evidence to prove it. But as for the rest of the country, I want to say this: WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE!!! We’ve got to get our shit together! You know all those reports that say that the United States is one election away from being a full blown authoritarian dictatorship? Well they’re not kidding. The GOP is getting more embarrassing every single election cycle. And what we learned by watching last week’s GOP debate is that the GOP has basically split into two. There’s the MAGA cult wing of the GOP, and there’s the Fox News cult wing of the GOP, and the 500 clown car participants are basically running to be the MAGA cult wing leader’s vice president should he slime his way back in the White House. Gee, after the way he treated the last guy, why would anyone want that job? Well, the entire thing was an absolute shit show as you can imagine, and also as you can imagine, NONE of these clowns are people who you wouldn’t trust to run a Waffle House, let alone the White House. No matter who won last week’s debate, they’re all losers.

For the first time in weeks, it looked like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley — the two candidates vying for second place in the GOP primary — might start competing not strictly with each other, but with the frontrunner, too.

For a few minutes, they did.

DeSantis, the Florida governor, called Donald Trump a “different guy than he was in 2016,” saying he’s “sick of Republicans losing.” Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, accused the former president of going “weak in the knees” on foreign policy.

But it didn’t last. Instead, the duration of the night was spent on foreign policy, or President Joe Biden, or in combat with Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur.

Coming one day after GOP losses in the off-year elections, the third debate offered the candidates an opportunity to go after Trump. But asked in their closing statements to explain why Republican primary voters should choose them over him, not a single candidate mentioned the former president by name..
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/08/third-republican-debate-who-won-takeaways-00126264

Well that’s what happens when you replace your critical thinking skills with talking points manufactured by News Corporation. And before you point out that Trump held a rally in Iowa to spite the GOP debates, probably because he wasn’t invited, I do want to say that we put a temporary ban on covering Trump rallies and public appearances because they’re all the same, and we don’t want to be covering Trump for all 10 entries every edition. However, I do want to show this clip of Roseanne’s warm-up speech because it’s shockingly bad. And it sums up just how crazy the MAGA party is.

https://www.twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1722600954908835999

We could, but we choose not to! But really, do we need to go through this shit when the MAGA king himself is already going to be the nominee no matter how much the GOP try to distance themselves from it?

Tonight’s Republican primary debate is not a real event. It is a performance, a show, a pantomime: a shiny object with virtually no relevance to the outcome of the 2024 presidential primary. Donald Trump is solidly over 50 percent in the national polling averages, and no one else in the primary field has anything that looks like momentum. No opponent has been able to find a line of attack that could hurt him; many of them aren’t even trying. The great GOP establishment hope, that Trump’s legal problems might torpedo his campaign, was a mirage. If anything, the four indictments helped him in the primary.

At this point, the only things that could stop Trump are his death or incapacitation. Everyone in the political world — including the debate’s organizers and non-delusional rival candidates — is aware of this fact. Trump isn’t participating in the debates because he doesn’t need to: He would be lowering himself to share a stage with people who pretend to be rivals, but are really just the warm-up act for his coronation. That doesn’t mean the debate is entirely pointless. The other candidates get something out of being on that stage, like improving their future political prospects or satisfying a need for attention. And if you squint, you might get an actually interesting window into the policy debates that will define a post-Trump Republican Party.

But, of course, we are not yet even close to “post-Trump.” In presenting it as an actual presidential debate, rather than a discussion between somewhat prominent Republicans, the debate’s organizers are lying to you. With Trump absent, and facing no serious challengers, this is all make-believe politics — a ritual the party goes through to cover up the dark reality of what the party has become. The debate is fake. Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP is not.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218309450

Well there is some good news is that the GOP clown car is getting smaller. There’s a couple of fringe candidates that dropped out and we’re just like “Who?”. But really what this debate is doing is it’s showing just who kisses Trump’s ass the most, and who the biggest tool of News Corporation and Fox News is. Right now, our country is being held hostage by the Heritage Foundation and Sean Hannity because they’re mad that Orange Man Baby is in charge, and that democracy triumphed over American fascism. But really, are professional tools and social media trolls like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis the answer to America’s problems? Hell no. They’ll just make things worse.

The Republican presidential candidates vying to be the leading alternative to front-runner Donald Trump fought — sometimes bitterly — over abortion rights, U.S. support for Ukraine and the type of experience needed to manage an expansive federal government during the first debate of the 2024 campaign.

But when it came to arguably the most consequential choice facing the party, virtually everyone on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night lined up behind Trump, who declined to participate, citing his commanding lead. Most said they would support Trump as their nominee even if he is convicted in a series of cases that range from his handling of classified documents to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in making hush money payments to a porn actress and other women.

“Let’s just speak the truth,” said tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century. It’s a fact.”

In the face of such an unprecedented moment in American politics, that sentiment was a reminder of the power Trump continues to wield in the party and the reluctance of most GOP White House hopefuls to directly confront him or his norm-breaking activity. And it spoke to the struggle of any single candidate in the crowded field to emerge as a credible counter to Trump with less than five months until the Iowa caucuses formally jumpstart the GOP presidential nomination process.

https://apnews.com/article/first-republican-debate-2024-elections-gop-89812d5aa1ed6a4ebe7373ff36858250

TELL THE TRUTH!!!! LMAO, that’s your definition of the truth? No, Vivek, he’s legit the worst president we’ve ever had, OK? And now he’s going full Hitler which means there will be mass murder in the United States’ future if we don’t do the right thing and arrest this man and give him the one way ticket to Rikers Island that he so greatly deserves. But seriously, the debates are just getting absolutely ridiculous at this point and it’s way past time to stop the madness. There is a clear bad guy in this equation, and he lives at 1100 Ocean Blvd in Miami Beach. None of these clowns have the chance to stop him, and Fox News and the Heritage Foundation are bent on giving Americans the full third world dictator experience. It’s time to shut them all down. No more food fights.

While Donald Trump avoided questions from the Fox Business moderators and his Republican rivals for the GOP's presidential nomination at the Ronald Reagan Library in California on Wednesday, he spoke with the right-wing outlet Daily Caller on Thursday to complain about it all.

"They have to stop the debates," the former president demanded. "Because it is just bad for the Republican Party."

On Wednesday night, Trump was directly challenged by the other Republican candidates for skipping his second debate.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a one-time top Trump adviser, said the businessman now "hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won't show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-debates-second-gop-face-155122885.html

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I was trying to figure out the best way to introduce this next segment. But you know when you first hear something in the news and your first thought is the old classic Scooby Doo line “Call it a hunch, but I got a bad feeling about this?”. That was our first thought when we first heard about Project 2025. Now in case you’re wondering what Project 2025 is, it’s basically a blueprint for how to install the right wing’s dream authoritarian military dictatorship in the United States keeping within the confines of the United States Constitution. Now before you boo, just wait until I tell you who’s behind it! In case you’re if this is part of the right wing’s “give me that it’s mine” strategy, you’re right. So who’s behind it? Well, Project 2025 was authored by the Heritage Foundation in conjunction with Oracle in order to root out government employees who aren’t loyal to the new GOP administration. Yeah it’s some absolutely frightening shit that only gets worse the more you dig into it. But before we get into it, we first have to explain exactly what it is, and it’s the stuff of pure, unfiltered, fucking evil.

Earlier this year we learned that the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank in Washington, is spearheading a project to staff a future Trump administration with tens of thousands of pre-vetted appointees, who would be tasked with “dismantling the administrative state from day one.” On Monday, Axios published details about what the vetting process looks like, and it appears custom-tailored to generate an army of mindless Trump loyalists.

Heritage’s initiative, called Project 2025, has a reported budget of over $20 million, and it is designed to help Trump transform the federal government overnight if he wins the 2024 election. During his first term, Trump was routinely hamstrung in executing policies and abusing power because he either failed to fill key bureaucratic positions or he was foiled by resistant appointees. This time Trump allies are focused on gutting the federal government’s existing bureaucracy and replacing it with sycophants.

Heritage helped Trump with staff members hired during his first term; Johnny McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, is a senior adviser to the project. Heritage’s president told Axios that the project is “orders of magnitude” larger than any other such project for a party out of power. If Trump were to win, it could cause a major rupture in the way the federal government operates.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-project-2025-hire-government-loyal-rcna125137

Yeah Trump’s plan the first time to install an army of loyalists at the federal level didn’t exactly go as planned, so it’s back to the drawing board. But the fact that the Heritage Foundation is behind this is truly frightening. We’ve often said how evil the Kochs are, but this is some next level evil. And they’re not stopping at federal employees. In fact if you’re simply living in the United States – as a citizen or not, this is something that could potentially get really ugly really quickly. The fascist thugs want to know if you’re a citizen on the census. And that is fucked up.

A coalition of conservative groups is preparing for a chance to shape the country's next set of census results in case a Republican president returns to the White House in 2025.

Their playbook includes reviving a failed push for a citizenship question and other Trump-era moves that threaten the accuracy of the 2030 national head count.

The plan also calls for aligning the mission of the government agency in charge of the next tally of the country's residents with "conservative principles." Many census watchers, including a former top Trump administration official, tell NPR they find this position particularly alarming.

The policy proposals — led by The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank — are part of a broader "Project 2025" plan for dismantling aspects of the U.S. government. "For too long, conservative presidents' agendas have been stymied by liberal bureaucrats who put their own agenda over that of the President, whom they serve," Paul Dans, a former Trump appointee who is Project 2025's director, claims in a statement.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/28/1204936155/republicans-census-project2025-trump-citizenship-question

Damn right! But this Project 2025 is some absolutely frightening shit. And it’s all about expanding republican powers and authority. You think that our paranoia about people being murdered in the streets and mass imprisonment and public executions aren’t warranted? Well I got some news for ya, Jack. If Trump wins, the United States will be entering uncharted territory. Trump will claim himself to be dictator for life, and he will be expanding the power and authority of the republican party to rule the country with an iron fist. That’s authoritarianism. And authoritarian dictatorships – wait for it – aren’t good.

Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in several polls with the 2024 election now less than a year away. The former president reportedly has long planned to overhaul the government in his image should he win another term, and Axios reported on Monday that his team is busy screening thousands of loyalists in the hopes of installing an army of up to 54,000 MAGA diehards to expand the president’s power.

Trump is clearly not happy with many of his key hires during his first term in office, regularly slamming former lackeys like Attorney General Bill Barr, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Adivser John Bolton. Axios reported in 2022 that Trump planned to ensure the loyalty not just of his high-profile appointments, should he win in 2024, but of thousands of mid-level staffers working throughout the government. Political views, rather than credentials or experience, are driving the process.

The outlet reported on Monday that the effort is well underway — and it’s sophisticated. The campaign is contracting “smart, experienced people, many with very unconventional and elastic views of presidential power and traditional rule of law,” according to Axios, to ensure new hires are fully onboard with the brutal policy proposals Trump has floated. It’s also using AI to vet potentail staffers, including by scrubbing their social media.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-allies-vetting-loyalists-2025-1234876512/

Yes, this is the stuff of pure fucking evil. You know, the MAGA / Q crowd sure loves to talk a good game about things like martial law and military tribunals. But just wait until they put these things into practice, none of these things are good! We’ve fought entire wars to prevent shit like this from happening in the United States. And using AI to vet potential candidates is some absolutely frightening, third world dictator shit there. In case you’re wondering who’s behind this evil project, the people who are behind it are the people who you wouldn’t trust to run a Waffle House, let alone the White House. In fact let’s pull back their masks and see who’s really behind it! Steve Bannon???? And he would have got away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling liberals!

The podcast hosted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is the media home of a sprawling right-wing effort, known as Project 2025, that’s designed to prepare policy papers and staffing assignments should a Republican win the presidency in next year’s election.

Bannon’s show, War Room, is a hub of election denialism, anti-immigrant bigotry, and promises to carry out retribution against insufficiently loyal Republicans — all hallmarks of former President Donald Trump’s first term in office and his campaign to retake the White House. Although Bannon has at times found himself isolated from Trump, he is once again “one of Trump’s most important advisers,” according to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

As a leading advocate for the MAGA wing of the conservative movement, Bannon has been a champion of Project 2025, organized by the increasingly far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation. The initiative has brought together more than 80 groups to provide hard-right personnel and white paper proposals for Trump — or another Republican administration — should he win next November.
https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/bannons-war-room-media-home-project-2025-and-trumps-retribution-plans

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[font size="8"]The End Of The SAG AFTRA Strike
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Enough bad shit, can we talk about something good that happened for once? We don’t want you to think that our fine little program is all about negativity, no sir / madam! Well here we are. It’s been one long and incredibly frustrating year of labor disputes and it seems like it is one after another after another. We’ve been covering the SAG and WGA strikes for the better part of a year now, and now that they’re finally over, we have to ask – was it really worth it? The answer is most definitely yes. The good guys won on multiple levels. But the thing you probably don’t want to hear is that this most definitely isn’t the last time we’ll hear of Hollywood’s billionaire elite speaking of using artificial intelligence and streaming services to craft entertainment for new generations. Because – wait for it – hiring actors and actresses and directors and writers and key grips – is expensive. And it’s not good for the bottom line of the greedy billionaire CEO. Why don’t we cut *THEIR* salaries and give them to the people who need it? Then nothing of value would be lost! I’m getting ahead of myself! But that said, this is a very historic strike and a very historic agreement. So what happens after the seemingly never ending set of strikes finally ends?

After a grueling 118 days on strike, SAG-AFTRA has officially reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with studios, a move that is heralding the end of the 2023 actors’ strike.

The SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved the agreement in a unanimous vote on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced. The strike will end at 12:01 am Thursday. On Friday, the deal will go to the union’s national board on Friday for approval.

The performers’ union announced the provisional agreement on Wednesday, after about two weeks of renewed negotiations. The development on Wednesday came not long before a deadline of 5 p.m. that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had set for the union to give their answer on whether they had a deal.

The union is so far being mum on the details of the agreement, which will likely emerge in the next few days prior to the union’s ratification vote. If the deal is ratified, the contract could soon go into effect, and if not, members would essentially send their labor negotiators back to the bargaining table with the AMPTP.

Read more: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sag-aftra-deal-reached-studios-union-contract-terms-1235607563/

Yeah how about that? But like we said, don’t settle down too quickly. This isn’t the last we’ve heard of AI and streaming being a problem for actors, actresses, directors, set, prop and costume people.. all of these are required to make the movies and TV shows that you and I enjoy on a daily basis. So now you might be wondering – how did they reach this conclusion? Well they sat down with our billionaire overlords to talk about the future of movies. Yes, as we have said before, our paranoia is real when we say that Skynet will eventually become self-aware and enslave humanity. But let’s celebrate that the WGA strike is over, and the SAG strike is over!

When the Wonka trailers dropped, there was much chatter around the fact that its star—the incomparable Timothée Chalamet who, according to the film’s director Paul King, has a singing voice like legendary crooner Bing Crosby—isn’t actually shown singing one of the film’s barnstorming new original songs, set to be performed across its seven showstopping musical numbers. Warner Brothers has yet to correct this egregious oversight, but now the man himself has—well, sort of.

On November 11, the Oscar-nominated actor took to the Saturday Night Live stage to host the show for the second time the only way he knows how—in a glittering blazer, with that signature Lil Timmy Tim grin, and the unbridled confidence of someone who’s fully aware of his status as Hollywood’s golden boy.

He opened his monologue with a joke about being mistaken for a masked Winona Ryder during his last stint on SNL in the midst of the pandemic, before addressing the elephant in the room: that he was the first performer to appear on the show since the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which had brought the industry to a standstill for almost four months. “I do feel lucky to be hosting after the strike ended, because up until two days ago—and I know this is what we were all thinking about—actors couldn’t talk about their movies,” he deadpanned. Cue him being handed a glass orb-topped cane and busting into a rendition of Gene Wilder’s “Pure Imagination” from 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with the lyrics altered to “...a world of shameless self-promotion.” Sublime.
https://www.vogue.com/article/sag-strike-over-timothee-chalamet-saturday-night-live

So now that the strikes are over, can we get back to making some movies and TV shows? And come on, can we get some original content too? I’m personally tired of sequels and remakes and reboots and connected universes. How about something we haven’t seen? How about some new franchises and new characters? It’s way past time. But before we get to that, here’s what the actors and actresses are getting out of the deal while we had to sit through nearly a year of no content being produced. Nobody said that coming out of a world ending pandemic was going to be easy!

The actors strike is over, with the union representing performers last week approving a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios. Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) characterized the deal as a big win, with the contract achieving significant breakthroughs on actors' pay and putting guardrails on the industry's use of generative AI.

Here's a rundown of what actors will get under the new contract, which SAG-AFTRA members must still ratify.
1. Minimum compensation increases

Performers will earn a 7% wage increase effective immediately. That initial pay hike will be followed by a 4% increase on July 1, 2024, and a 3.5% increase on July 1, 2025.

Background actors, stand-ins and photo doubles will immediately earn an 11% wage increase, followed by the same 4% and 3.5% hikes as general performers in 2024 and 2025.
2. Streaming bonuses

The new contract calls for actors to earn "a success payment," along with the usual residual payments, if they work on streaming projects that attract a significant number of viewers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sag-aftra-contract-deal-agreement-actors-ai/

Yeah thankfully we’re avoiding that going on any longer! But is the SAG / AFTRA strike getting the happy ending (phrasing!) that it deserves? Thank you Archer. Actual actors and actresses are happy with most of the provisions in the strike, but not all of them are. And remember what we said about this not being the last of hearing about movies and TV shows being made with AI to please our billionaire overlords? It is true – we haven’t heard the last of it. In fact, while we are celebrating the end of the SAG / AFTRA strike, the war over creative freedom in Hollywood is just beginning. Get ready for next year’s sequel, then the reboot, then the remake!

Justine Bateman is deeply disappointed with the tentative agreement in place between SAG-AFTRA and the major studios, which ended the strike. While speaking with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, she explained that members of the union should approve the deal after voting begins Tuesday only “if they don’t want to work anymore.”

Bateman added, “If they want to be replaced by synthetic objects that are made by generative AI, why not?”

-snip-

“I mean, soon they’ll have customized films for you based on your particular viewing history,” she added. “And they won’t bother to copyright them because it’ll be like Kleenex. They’ll make a million of them an hour, it won’t matter to them.”

Bateman added, “The train track is split. One train track is going, ‘OK, we’re going to participate in this sort of negotiation with the cannibals and we’re going to talk about just how you’re going to be cutting my foot off, and are you going to grill it or boil it, and what kind of sauce are you going to put on it?’”
https://www.thewrap.com/justine-bateman-sag-aftra-deal-generative-ai-artificial-intelligence/

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[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Is Your Car Spying On You?
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It's time to investigate beyond the headlines! This is Top 10 Investigates!

Automotive technology is the most advanced that it’s been since the invention of the automobile. Now 100 years later, cars sport things like advanced navigation systems that run on Google and Apple operating systems. In the future, this technology will be powered by artificial intelligence. But with advanced technology comes a price. And it’s something that you may not want to hear after purchasing your brand new vehicle. Is that sometimes your navigation system may be too advanced. And with advanced technology comes new ways to track your movements while you are using your new vehicle to get to your destination. And the people who own and operate those navigation systems that are in your car may in fact be spying on you. To which we ask this question – is it 2023? Your electronics most likely have tracking sensors and monitors on them. All so that Google and Apple can figure out various ways to inject more Progressive and State Farm insurance advertisements into your every day activity. As if we need more of those. So you might be wondering – if your smart car is spying on you, what kind of data is it collecting? Well the answer is that it’s collecting a lot of data on you, and you will most likely be horrified at what it’s collecting.

Cars are getting an “F” in data privacy. Most major manufacturers admit they may be selling your personal information, a new study finds, with half also saying they would share it with the government or law enforcement without a court order.

The proliferation of sensors in automobiles — from telematics to fully digitized control consoles — has made them prodigious data-collection hubs.

But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest “Privacy Not Included” survey Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers’ track record of susceptibility to hacking.

“Cars seem to have really flown under the privacy radar and I’m really hoping that we can help remedy that because they are truly awful,” said Jen Caltrider, the study’s research lead. “Cars have microphones and people have all kinds of sensitive conversations in them. Cars have cameras that face inward and outward.”
https://ktla.com/news/carmakers-fail-privacy-test-give-owners-little-to-no-control-on-data-collected/

Yeah as if it wasn’t obvious enough, if you’re putting your name, location data, and face out there, that you should probably expect at this point that someone is going to be tracking you. But what’s even more shocking is how much tracking data is in your car after you get past the surface. And not just one manufacturer in particular is guilty of this practice. A recent study conducted by Mozilla, you know them as the creators and supporters of the popular Firefox web browser, found that not just one manufacturer is guilty – but they all are! Doesn’t matter if it’s Honda or Subaru or Mitsubishi or Mercedes or BMW, nearly all cars have some sort of built in spyware.

“While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines,” the report’s authors wrote. “Machines that, because of all those brag-worthy bells and whistles, have an unmatched power to watch, listen, and collect information about what you do and where you go in your car.”

None of the 25 brands were spared Mozilla’s warning label for collecting “more personal data than necessary and uses that information for a reason other than to operate your vehicle and manage their relationship with you.”

The brands studied were Acura, Audi, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dacia, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Jeep, Kia, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Renault, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen.

The foundation said cars were the worst category of products they have ever examined within the context of consumer privacy and that the investigation, which took over 600 hours, “was one of the hardest undertakings we as privacy researchers have ever had” because of the opaque policies and companies’ incentives to obscure the nature of their relationships with customer data.
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/09/11/is-your-car-spying-on-you--almost-certainly--new-report-says

But here’s the thing – like most pieces of electronic equipment or anything that’s connected to the internet, your car probably comes with a terms of service agreement, that you most likely didn’t read, crumbled up, and threw away in the trash. But if you had read it, you’d see that it probably says that the operating system of your navigation unit may be collecting and transmitting data to marketing parties without your consent. Again, probably because we are lacking Progressive and State Farm insurance commercials in our lives. And they probably make these terms agreemens to long in hopes that we don’t read them, because if we did, we’d opt out immediately.

Cars have been equipped with onboard computers and sensors for a while now. The tools’ applications have always been rather practical—letting you know when your fuel tank is close to empty or when your machine is due for an oil change, even allowing you to get full system diagnostics via Bluetooth. But as technology advanced, so did the role of electronics within every vehicle. Now cars can help you master parallel parking, respond to your voice commands, and even alert you to the presence of other drivers as you change lanes.

“A lot of this can be used as safety features, but [car companies] are not going to let the opportunity to collect data and make money off of that slip away. They’re not just doing it for safety,” says Jen Caltrider, program director for Privacy Not Included, a series of privacy-focused consumer product reviews, at the Mozilla Foundation.

The same navigational tool that guides you to your destination, for example, is collecting your location data, and the sensors that show which passenger hasn’t buckled up can tell if you’re alone or not, where people are sitting, and if there’s any movement. Those capabilities alone provide hundreds, if not thousands of data points every day that go straight to the car manufacturer’s servers. It’s hard to tell if any of that information is encrypted or not, Caltrider says.
https://www.popsci.com/diy/car-data-privacy/

So in case you’re wondering if your car is spying on you now, there’s two questions that you should ask yourself. The first question is – does my car have a navigation system? And two – does my car have satellite radio? If you answered yes to both of these questions, the answer is simple – your car is spying on you. Now you might be asking yourself – how do we fight back against the data collectors, and what kind of data are they collecting on me? Well you’re in luck because there is a group out there that launched a new site dedicated to helping consumers keep track of the data that’s being collected on them and from predatory collecting agencies. But the next time, we should all collectively read the terms of service agreements and opt out wherever possible.

If you remember the computer-chip shortage that continues to slow automakers, it's because modern vehicles are computers on wheels and yours is probably spying on you.

The average new vehicle has more than 1,400 microchips in it, with features that find where you're going, keep you connected, and call for help, among some things you never imagined.

Now, a new website offers to let you know what information it's sharing, and what you can do about it. Most vehicles would be stuck on the side of the road, without all those computer chips. On top of that, many of their convenience features, like GPS, Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto mean much of your personal information is used, as well. It's also getting saved and shared.

"Cars are massive data-collection devices that's not any different from the laptop we're on today, or your phone," says Privacy4Cars founder Andrea Amico.
https://www.fox26houston.com/news/your-car-is-spying-on-you-but-a-new-website-helps-you-learn-whats-being-shared

That’s it for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

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



My fair congregation! Please be seated! You know the last couple of weeks we’ve been following the bizarre saga surrounding Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. Yes, he was once an unknown representative in Congress. Now he’s the new House Speaker and third in line for the Presidency Of The United States, and I don’t need to tell you that he’s given us no shortage of material for the next several editions of our fine program. For Mr. Johnson does not represent GAWD or JAYSUS. No! he represents the unholy, ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a man so foul, so depraved and disgusting that his name DARE NOT be spoken in my church! I say DARE NOT, good sir! But after last week’s sermon, we got absolutely flooded with requests to do a deep dive on the subject of this week’s sermon. Snooping. Is it OK to? So we turn to our Good Book for this one, and it does say thou shalt not snoop. OK maybe not in those exact words, but you know what I am saying. But this is one of the more bizarre aspects of the man who is now third in line for the United States presidency. And while we do want to say we’re shocked about this kind of thing, it’s not really that shocking. We know that fundamentalist Christians are prone to exercising their sexual urges, and we know they can easily give into temptation. And our man Mike Johnson isn’t much different from any of us. But he does have an interesting quirk.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022.

During a conversation on the “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana representative talked about how he installed “accountability software” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from internet porn and other unsavory websites.

“It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it,” Johnson told the panel about the app.

“It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-johnson-son-monitor-porn-intake-covenant-eyes-1234870634/

Yeah now this represents a rather interesting phenomenon that ONLY seems to affect Christian men. So remember what I said about giving into temptation? They seem to be doing that, but on a rather regular basis. Like seriously how perverted are you that you can’t look at your phone for five minutes without wanting to venture into looking at porn that you need a software app that essentially acts as the angel on your shoulder? Well in this case, there’s also the devil, but the devil pimp slapped the angel Will Smith style and sent him packing. The interesting thing about this app is that it’s marketed directly to Mike Johnson types.

Last weekend, a 2022 interview with new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson recirculated, in which the ascendant Republican leader described how he and his son monitor each other’s porn-viewing habits. Specifically, they use software called Covenant Eyes to make sure neither of them looks at smut online. Sort of like a Netflix subscription, Covenant Eyes is $17 per month for a family plan that allows up to 10 users on unlimited devices to keep an eye on each other in case a sinful mood strikes. It doesn’t block pornographic websites (you have to pay for an “add-on” feature for that)—the software instead tracks browser history and sends a report to an “accountability partner” of your choosing. For Johnson, that person was his son. And for his son, his accountability partner was his dad.

The subsequent headlines about the interview make the story sound outré and salacious: “The House speaker admitted to a wild new detail about his personal life,” one read. But in the world Johnson occupies—conservative evangelical Christianity, and its particular dictums about men and masculinity—porn accountability software is commonplace, not something to be ashamed of but rather a ubiquitous technology to live by. I’ve written previously about how and why so-called pornography addiction is considered normal among evangelical men (and the sometimes tragic consequences of this framing). The revelation that Johnson and his son used Covenant Eyes should not be surprising—but it is telling, not only about the man but the kind of leader he aims to be.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/11/mike-johnson-republican-speaker-interview-covenant-eyes.html

Now look, we don’t mean to kink shame, but whatever floats your boat, am I right? To me what’s really insane is that Christian males get off (phrasing!) on this kind of thing. But one thing we did discover in doing our research for this segment is that Covenant Eyes apparently has a fan base. He’s got coooooooooooovenant eyes… yes he’s coooooooooooooovenant eyes… OK I’ll refrain from singing that song any further. But the thing that we’re wondering about all of this is – of all the people who you could choose to be your porno accountability partner, why do you choose your dad? That just opens up all sorts of creepy and weird vibes.

Newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a recently surfaced video from 2022 shared how he and his 17-year-old son, Jack, hold each other accountable when it comes to their porn intake by using a third-party software called Covenant Eye to patrol all of their electronic devices. The app creates a monthly habit report for a designated "accountability partner," according to The New Republic. "What it does, real simply, is it has an algorithm and a software—it’s way above my head how it works, but—it scans, you obviously opt into it, but it scans all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop, what have you. We do all of it. Then it sends a report to your accountability partner,” Johnson said in the clip. “My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice,” he added. “I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate,”

Some Twitter/X users raised security concerns over the House speaker's use of the app. "A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he's watching or not watching.... I mean, who else is accessing that data?" one user questioned. "'Covenant Eyes' – a third party software monitoring all your devices, Mike Johnson? – WTAF?! With any public office holder, but particularly someone who's second in line to the Presidency, this is a profound national security risk," another user wrote.
https://www.salon.com/2023/11/07/mike-johnson-and-his-sons-use-of-app-to-monitor-each-others-porn-intake-sparks-questions/

Yeah I’ll say! But again, we don’t mean to kink shame, but this software is insane. And we mentioned earlier that it has celebrity fans like Josh Duggar and Lamar Odom, and we all know how well that worked out for them. Did I mention that this man is third in line for the presidency? We could spend all day talking about this, and we will, don’t you worry! In fact, we may have to do a deep dive on the subject in the future, because there’s a lot of these Christian accountability apps and they all have jobs, and their job is to keep you safe… from yourself. And your manly urges and temptations. Do not be afraid to give in, give in!!!

Covenant Eyes is part of a multimillion-dollar ecosystem of so-called accountability apps. These apps are marketed to both churches and parents as tools to police online activity, and they charge a monthly fee to do so. Some of these apps monitor everything their users see and do on their devices, even taking screenshots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eavesdropping on web traffic, WIRED found. The apps then report a feed of all of the users’ online activity directly to a chaperone—an “accountability partner,” in the apps’ parlance. When WIRED presented its findings to Google, however, the company determined that two of the top accountability apps—Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You—violate its policies.

The omniscience of Covenant Eyes soon weighed heavily on Hao-Wei Lin, who has since left Gracepoint. Within a month of installing the app, he started receiving accusatory emails from his church leader referencing things he had viewed online. “Anything you need to tell me?” reads one email Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED. Attached was a report from Covenant Eyes that detailed every single piece of digital content Hao-Wei Lin had consumed the prior week. It was a trail of digital minutiae accumulated from nights spent aimlessly browsing the internet, things Hao-Wei Lin could barely remember having seen—and would have forgotten about had a member of his Church not confronted him. The church leader zeroed in on a single piece of content that Covenant Eyes had flagged as “Mature”: Hao-Wei Lin had searched “#Gay” on a website called Statigr.am, and the app had flagged it.
https://www.wired.com/story/covenant-eyes-anti-porn-accountability-monitoring-apps/

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So there is a devil among us, and that devil is you! You are your own devil according to the newly unfolding Christian spyware industry! Give in to temptation, my fair congregation! Give in! You only live once! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:




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[font size="8"]People Who Somehow Got Elected: Jeff Landry
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Politicians at the state and local levels who are so toxic, you wonder how they’re able to get away with the things they get away with. This is:



This week – Jeff Landry. We’re not going to say he’s the newly elected governor of Louisiana. No, he was selected, promoted, and installed by Fox News because they just take things that do not belong to them, much like the common schoolyard bullies that they are. Yes, this MAGA approved cretin is just another one in the very long list of extremely terrible politicians who were installed by Fox News into positions of power that they don’t belong in. Now he’s not the official governor of Louisiana yet, that position still belongs to Jon Bel Edwards, even though he can’t run again. But while democrats are looking at what went wrong, we should explain how Jeff Landry slimed his way into the Louisiana governor’s office and it was absolutely shocking how he won. Louisana has a very different method of selecting governors than a lot of the United States does. And Jeff Landry was able to get MAGA, GOP, and of course Fox News support in his victory over democratic candidate Shawn Wilson. And yes, he also has the support of that guy who we inexplicably used to call president.

Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.

The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.

“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”

By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.
https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-governor-race-election-2023-ed79c5a80af6e59593985c9be4ce5dc8

Yes – BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! You won, you suck, now get on with it. But this is definitely sounding alarms within the Democratic party. No matter how much we want to admit it, there’s more to the Bayou State than just the city of New Orleans. And it’s also a testimony to how many people just simply do not vote. And in case you’re wondering what his policies are, they very heavily skewer towards extreme MAGA. In fact they’re bordering on just straight, pure fucking evil. One of his more controversial opinions centers around denying funding for Louisiana’s crippling water infrastructure unless women are prosecuted for abortions. That’s right – he’s punishing the rest of the state for a very small percentage of the population.

In September, the city of New Orleans and some surrounding parishes in south Louisiana began to prepare for at least three months of saltwater intrusion in the local water supply. President Joe Biden then declared the crisis a federal emergency and authorized funding for FEMA and other state agencies to mitigate the burgeoning crisis.

While months of extreme, record-high heat and lack of rainfall in and around the Crescent City are responsible for the crisis, some are pointing at current Louisiana Attorney General and Louisiana governor-elect Jeff Landry as partially responsible for the city’s ability to address the now circumvented crisis, as well as the decayed state of the city’s entire water infrastructure. Landry personally solicited the Louisiana State Bond Commission last year to withhold millions in funding from the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board due to the city government’s refusal to arrest and prosecute women in the wake of Louisiana’s total ban on abortion. The New Orleans Sewage and Water Board remains in desperate need of funding to tackle necessary repairs to its four water intake structures—one of which that has been inoperable for 34 years.
https://www.essence.com/news/louisiana-governor-withholding-water-infrastructure-funds-reproductive-rights/

Oh and that’s not the only extremely evil position that Mr. Landry is taking. In fact most of these are designed to please his Fox News overlords. After all, he doesn’t want his regional manager Sean Hannity to come down there and give him a pep talk, would we? No, we wouldn’t. And in fact, as Florida and much of the Gulf Coast is getting pounded by extremely strong hurricanes that seem to get progressively worse every year, rather than combat the problem, Mr. Landry is going to shut down the one agency that’s actually trying to help things. So really, Louisiana GOP, any tragedy that results because of your gross negligence is entirely self- inflicted.

With coastal erosion and rising sea levels threatening to swallow the state, many Louisiana residents are familiar with the effects of climate change.

It was with these issues in mind that Gov. John Bel Edwards formed the Climate Initiatives Task Force in 2020—Louisiana's first-ever foray into studying and forming strategies to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, Edwards is leaving office, and three years after its inception, the task force held its final meeting Thursday under Edward’s administration.

As Gov.-elect Jeff Landry plans his transition into office, the future of the task force is unknown.
Shortly after winning his second term as governor, Edwards formed the Climate Initiatives Task Force by executive order in August 2020.
https://www.lsureveille.com/news/future-of-louisiana-climate-task-force-uncertain-as-jeff-landry-transitions-into-governors-office/article_eb2b27ee-80cb-11ee-b888-df762fbdc1d6.html

Come on, Louisiana, and especially the city of New Orleans. You saw the horrors of republican negligence during the dark days after Hurricane Katrina practically destroyed the city. Do you want to live through that again? Well we all know that none of us wants that. But that’s what you get when you elect far right MAGA cretins like Jeff Landry. In fact he’s using his transition into the governor’s office to signal out the city known as the Big Easy. And why? It’s all because of Fox News generated culture war bullshit. So yes, once again, a MAGA conservative is taking his frustrations out on the state’s most populous city. Be forewarned, Louisiana, this guy is bad news. And fuck you, Fox News, for forcing and installing this MAGA psycho on us.

Gov.-elect Jeff Landry's list of exploratory committee topics for possible policy changes and priorities includes one outlier: the city of New Orleans.

Why it matters: The Republican state attorney general often champions social issues at odds with the liberal city. Orleans Parish voted overwhelmingly for Landry's sole Democratic opponent, Shawn Wilson, so with little clarity on Landry's plans for his New Orleans Council, the singling out raised a few eyebrows among locals.

What's happening: Landry announced the formation of 14 "councils" last week, tasking each with identifying "solution-driven ideas for the challenges we are facing," Landry said in a press release.

Among the topics are policy areas familiar to Louisianans, like agriculture, the coast and environment, crime and public safety, chemical, infrastructure and K-12 education.
Included in that list is the New Orleans Council, led by former Bollinger Shipyards CEO and Landry donor Boysie Bollinger.
https://www.axios.com/local/new-orleans/2023/11/06/jeff-landry-transition-committees-new-orleans

That’s the new Fox News improved, anti-environment, anti-woman governor elect Jeff Landry, yet another toxic politician to add to the ever-growing list of:




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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner
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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. Ah, there we go! They are trying to read yours and my thoughts after all! This week, we all have ways of dealing with people who we don’t like, or people who don’t share your particular political beliefs. Well, this week, our old friend and frequent contributor to this segment, Marjorie Three Names (Q – Batshit) is taking those ways to some new and completely and utterly ridiculous streams. Well of course the Fox News “border crisis” continues to dominate the right wing echo chamber, but the rest of us who aren’t in the echo chamber simply don’t give a shit. Well, Marjorie has a plan here, and we’ll expand on this in a minute.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for the salary of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to be cut to $1, saying he has "failed in his role" and accusing him of jeopardizing the "national security of the United States."

The Georgia Republican said her pay cut plan had been offered as an amendment to H.R. 4365, the 2024 defense appropriations bill now before Congress.

She posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday that her amendment would "receive a vote on the Floor of the House of Representatives later today."

Greene's vote did not go ahead, however.

A procedural vote to advance the spending bill had been scheduled for September 13, but it was canceled as Republican infighting in the House continued. Members of the Freedom Caucus and other GOP hardliners are pushing back against Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he tries to pass spending legislation, avoid a shutdown and hold on to his job.
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-green-lloyd-austin-pay-cut-defense-bill-1826994

Uh…………….. fucking what???? What the hell is she talking about here? What the hell is she smoking and it must be some pretty strong shit! Also interesting use of the word “henchman” here. Turn off the hyperbole, Marjorie. If anything, you’re the henchman here. Nothing Trump or his goons and minions are doing is normal, and you’re one of his enablers. You’re the Harley Quinn to Trump’s Joker – a professional ass kisser and clown who does things hoping he’ll notice, but he’ll throw you under the bus because he doesn’t care. But apparently there is an obscure rule that would allow this to happen in the event it actually passes.

Republican lawmakers have attempted to cut US Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to just $1.

The legislation, which is not expected to make it through the House or Senate, was introduced by far-right Republican US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

“Pete Buttigieg has failed to serve the American people as the Secretary of Transportation,” Ms Greene said on the House floor ahead of the vote.

“Deserving a taxpayer-funded paycheck is about job performance not about personalities of identity politics,” she said.

The amendment was passed via voice vote as part of the 2024 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill. No lawmaker opposed the amendment as part of the spending bill.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-try-cut-transport-secretary-005908613.html

How about this – why don’t *WE* slash Marjorie Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz’ salaries to $1, and then take away their social media accounts and access to Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones? Then nothing of value would be lost! Thank you audience! But the fact of the matter is that the GOP just won’t let their inane and banal conspiracy theory bullshit go. You know what’s too much though? Is how much time these clowns spend on social media and right wing talk shows. Then they go and complain that the democrats aren’t doing their jobs. It’s the circle of shit and it screws us all!

A Defense spending bill passed the House Thursday night with an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., to reduce Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1 ? and she said even a buck is too much money.

The bill passed the chamber along party lines with a 218-210 vote.

“Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been a failure for our military and for America,” Greene wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Last night, the DOD appropriations bill passed the House with my Holman rule amendment to reduce his salary to $1. But even that’s too much..”

The Holman rule “allows amendments to appropriations legislation that would reduce the salary of or fire specific federal employees, or cut a specific program,” according to the House Rules Committee.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/09/29/mtg-defense-bill-austin-1-salary/71003796007/

Once again, we don’t know why we have to keep saying this, but we will repeat it until we’re blue in the face – Fox News is the reason why we can’t have nice things. This whole thing is totally unprecedented and it’s just flat out fucking bullying. Marjorie just got into office because she bullied and threatened to murder the other guy. And now this shit is not only in Congress, it’s tolerated by MAGAs. Hell it’s not just a bug, it’s a feature! Well in case you’re wondering, there is some good news in Congress as the MAGAs and Marjorie Shit For Brains are just flagrantly abusing their power. Move along, nothing to see here. It’s all about the right asserting their dominance and quest for absolute, authoritarian power, and that’s it.

An amendment approved by House Republicans on Wednesday reducing U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's salary to no more than $1 is expected to garner no widespread support as a government shutdown is just four days away. Experts told Newsweek the amendment shows the polarization in D.C.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced the amendment, approved by voice vote as part of a Department of Defense (DoD) spending bill. Greene later said she was "proud" to invoke the Holman Rule that originated in 1876 and allows House members to propose amendments to appropriations bills that target specific programs or individuals, either by slashing pay or terminating them altogether.

The amendment was cheered on by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the hardline conservatives who has gone toe to toe against Speaker Kevin McCarthy on behalf of a small but seemingly formidable group of Republicans who have repeatedly rejected the notion of approving a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running as usual.

Greene said on the House floor that even a dollar is "too much" for Austin and that "he is destroying [the U.S.] military."
https://www.newsweek.com/magas-win-congress-about-cut-short-1830427

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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
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Hit it!

Of course you know by now that people are people, and people are dumb. And before we go any further, we always have to start by clarifying just what exactly makes a People Are Dumb story. A guy robbing a bank? That’s not a People Are Dumb story. A guy robbing a bank and then posting about buying a BMW on social media with the money he stole? That’s a People Are Dumb story! And also for the sake of privacy, we’re omitting any real names and addresses used in the stories that we bring you this week. I want to start with this insane story out of Alabama. We’ve been part of the group that’s been wondering how confederate statues are still a thing in 2023. Well, one man went out of his way to steal a relic that was going to be destroyed and well, his plans for it I’m sure were not what they had in mind when they first built these statues. Like really your plan was to convert this statue into a usable toilet? And you’d accomplish this how, exactly? I have so many questions!

A group calling itself White Lies Matter issued written threats to urinate and defecate on the chair if its owners – the United Daughters of the Confederacy – did not hang a particular banner outside their headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, by 9 April 2021, the 156th anniversary of the Confederate surrender ending the US civil war.

The banner boasted a quote from a Black Liberation Army activist wanted in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper that read: “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

After a $5,000 reward was put up for the chair’s recovery, officials were tipped off that the monument was being held inside a storage room of a tattoo shop that Warnick co-owned in New Orleans’s Marigny neighborhood, more than 300 miles away from the Selma cemetery where the relic sat.

Police in New Orleans arrested Warnick, his co-owner and another person on counts of possessing stolen property after officers said they found surveillance video showing several people hauling the stone chair out of the pair’s shop and into the back of a rental van
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/22/confederate-monument-ransom-plot-charges-dropped

Next up – OK look, we love Halloween around here, as you can tell from our last Halloween spooktacular edition (see: Idiots #15-11 ). Well I can kind of get where this next guy is coming from, but at the same time, how do I put this? They probably should have at least seen what the hell is going on. It’s Halloween, I get it – there’s going to be decorations of skeletons and zombies everywhere. But maybe don’t, I don’t know, mow around a dead body that you think is a Halloween prop. Yeah this is a thing that happened, it’s like a scene from the movies where a guy is totally oblivious to what’s going on in the background.

A groundskeeper mowed around a body in a North Carolina yard because he thought it was a prop for a Halloween display, officials said.

Police in China Grove said the body of 34-year-old Robert Paul Owens was found near an abandoned house on Oct. 10.

Police said they received a call about a dead body in the area and arrived to find Owens in the grass.

Investigators found that a groundskeeper initially saw the body on Oct. 9 when he was mowing the property. However, the worker told police he thought the body was a dummy used as a prop, so he did not report it.

https://www.whsv.com/2023/10/17/groundskeeper-mows-around-dead-body-thinking-it-was-halloween-prop-police-family-say/

Next up – you know one thing we always say around here is that conservative idiocy isn’t just a problem that’s unique to the United States. Even though we’re US based and from Southern California and we see it first hand on a daily basis. It’s a global problem – there’s idiots everywhere! This story comes out of Warsaw, that’s in Poland, don’t you know? And this story – you know you see those movies with chase scenes and some guy gets beat up and then they walk out wearing the beat up guys’ clothes? So this is kind of like that, but this guy was posing as a mannequin in an attempt to rob a store, and well, got caught as you can imagine. Yeah that’s a People Are Dumb story!

A man has been accused of posing as a mannequin in a Warsaw shop window to steal jewellery after closing time.

The 22-year-old was pictured standing still and holding a bag in a window of the store, which police have not named.

Police said the accused went "hunting" in various departments after closing, before settling on a jewellery stand.
...
Warsaw Police said that staff and shoppers failed to notice anything unusual as the man stood in the window, and blended in with several mannequins.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67155928

Next up – you know of course we can’t get out of here without mentioning everyone’s favorite state – you know which one I’m talking about! I am of course talking about the Sunshine State. America’s wang or penis depending on which show you’re referring to. Florida! Hell if you missed last week, we brought you the tale of the upcoming Florida Man Games where you can live like Florida Man without fear of getting arrested (see: Idiots #15-12 ), and it’s insane. Well here’s another story of what happens when people take the concept of Halloween way too far, and maybe don’t dress like a marbled statue for your costume. Also, maybe don’t impersonate an FBI officer for your costume, either.

Halloween ended in a felony arrest for a 20-year-old Florida man who got tricked during a visit to a local haunted house.

(omitted), donned in an "FBI jacket," body armor, and carrying an Airsoft BB gun resembling a Glock pistol, entered the Seminole, Florida, home of a 47-year-old man hosting a free haunted house event, according to a criminal complaint.

The haunted house was advertised with the question, “Are you brave enough to make it through the manor and get some treats???” The front lawn of the house was decorated to appear as a cemetery.

Inside the home, police said (omitted), who is 6 foot 4 and weighs 210 pounds, “went around a corner to where the victim was standing.” The victim was wearing a costume but “was not acting as a scaring player at the time,” according to the complaint. ................(more)

https://themessenger.com/news/florida-man-hits-haunted-house-host-with-bb-gun-thought-he-was-a-statue

Finally this week – and before we go any further, I want to especially thank our good friends over at r/FloridaMan over on Reddit for the source for a lot of the Florida Man stories that we bring you every week. But this story comes out of Miami-Dade County, where a man who has been immersed in online conspiracy theories takes his beliefs just a bit too far. But even if you’re being exposed to secret government rays, maybe don’t take your frustrations out on others. It’s one thing to wear your tin foil hat with pride, it’s another to start destroying property because the voices in your head (or late night right wing talk radio) start telling you to. Holy crap do we live in some absolutely strange times.

A man who was arrested after getting caught on camera slashing the tires of multiple cars in a southwest Miami-Dade neighborhood appeared in bond court saying he was "demonized" and that he was "exposed to government information."

(omitted), was charged with 27 counts of criminal misdemeanor after slashing the tires of 17 cars in the (omitted).

The 27 counts are for each of the tires slashed.

"I need an attorney. Also, I want on the record of dealing with secret government influence, commonly known as Masonic or federal. And, I mean, you know, I want I want to just let that be known. I'm dealing with a federal case," (omitted) stated despite a court official warning him about self-incriminating himself.

"I was exposed to secret government information. I'm dealing with a federal case, and I'm being sabotaged. I And I'm being sabotaged, too. I'm being demonized. I warned the CIA that. That if I'm not that if I'm being demonized more like a government building on fire that's unoccupied. So I'm just I'm letting I'm letting that be known," (omitted) continued to blurt out.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/florida-man-charged-with-27-counts-for-slashing-tires-claims-hes-being-demonized-and-was-exposed-to-government-info/3151606/

That’s it this week for:

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[font size="8"]My Governor Is An Idiot Round 6: Beshear Vs Ivey
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Welcome back to our segment that pits red state governors against blue state governors in My Governor Is An Idiot! In the last couple of weeks, we’ve pitted Arizona’s fake governor against its’ real one, and last week, we pit Texas’ Greg Abbott against Illinois’ JB Pritzker. This week, we’re heading to the South where Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, who survived reelection, is taking on Alabama’s Fox News installed governor Kay Ivey! Alabama may have the Crimson Tide, but Kentucky has the Wildcats, and both universities are pretty consistent sports rivals! So who will come out on top? Will we be rolling the tide or will we be singing some bluegrass? Only one way to find out!

[font size="4"]Beshear:[/font]

You know, Kentucky gets a lot of crap for traditionally being a red state, but really they’re more purple than you could possibly imagine. We’ve been to Lexington, home of the University Of Kentucky, and we’ve been to Louisville, home to the University of Louisville, and the audience pretty much in both cities consists of rednecks and rocket scientists. How did Governor Beshear triumph over all in last week’s reelection despite that the odds were heavily stacked against him? Well Beshear ran on a good old fashioned GOTV campaign, and guess what? That worked!

The GOP controls nearly everything in Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump carried by 26 points in 2020. Republicans hold both U.S. Senate seats and five of Kentucky’s six House seats; they dominate both chambers of the state legislature.

What Republicans don’t occupy—and won’t for the next four years—is Kentucky’s most powerful post. The state’s governor is Andy Beshear, a Democrat elected in 2019 who won a second term tonight. Beshear defeated Daniel Cameron, the state’s 37-year-old Republican attorney general, allowing Democrats to maintain one of their most surprising footholds in southern politics.

Beshear, 45, owes his success in a deep-red state to a combination of competent governance, political good fortune, and family lineage. His father, Steve, was a popular two-term governor who governed as a moderate and won the admiration of fellow Democrats for implementing the Affordable Care Act in the face of conservative opposition. The Republican governor whom Andy Beshear defeated in 2019, Matt Bevin, was widely disliked, even by many in his own party. Soon after taking office, Beshear earned praise for his steady leadership during the coronavirus pandemic and then later in his tenure during a series of natural catastrophes—deadly tornadoes, historic flooding, and ice storms. The crises have made the governor a near-constant presence on local news in the state, where allies and opponents alike usually refer to him by his first name. “I joke that Andy Beshear has 150 percent name ID” in Kentucky, Representative Morgan McGarvey, the lone Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, told me. “It’s because everybody knows who he is. And they actually know him.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/kentucky-governor-race-beshear-cameron/675908/

And hey look people, can we PLEASE, for the love of every single god in the book, stop with the X person is going to run for president bullshit? Come on, we can’t even get our heads straight on the current forthcoming election. Let’s get this one settled before we start speculating on the next one. And seriously, anything can happen, for better, or for worse. And we’re seriously hoping for the better, because we can’t take another four years of Vladimir Putin and Fox News being Trump’s puppet master, we just can’t. Stories like this certainly aren’t helping things. But for now, congrats Gov. Beshear!

Democrats have criticized Beshear for giving scant help to legislative candidates, but in a state that keeps trending Republican, the party’s priority had to be re-electing him. Absent that, the party would be practically defunct, since it holds no other statewide elective office.

Now, re-elected by a relatively comfortable margin of 5 percentage points, and prohibited from seeking another consecutive term, Beshear has political capital to spend. He can raise money for candidates, campaign with them and perhaps lend them some of the longstanding, resilient popularity that was key to his defeat of Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

Republicans’ legislative majorities are huge, and could be long-lasting, but as party leader, Beshear has an obligation to his fellow Democrats to help them regain relevance. At the same time, playing the traditional party-leader role – which also includes recruiting candidates – conflicts with the olive branch Beshear offered legislators the day after he was re-elected.
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2023/11/13/beshears-for-presidential-could-happen-2028/71533227007/

[font size="4"]Ivey: [/font]

Alabama has been in the news a lot lately because of some serious gerrymandering going on in that state – republicans have rigged multiple elections this way and they’re trying to rig them again for 2024, but it doesn’t matter because the GOP and Fox have a strangehold on that state. And Kay Ivey is a true product of Fox News because her woke derangement syndrome is showing. Remember when we made fun of Sarah Sanders for banning “woke” language? Well Kay Ivey seems to be one-upping this game, and once again, it just proves why Fox News is the reason why we can’t have nice things in this country, because we’re fighting over this stupid bullshit.

Barbara Cooper, head of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education, was forced to resign after state officials found the department was distributing teacher training materials that included so-called “woke concepts.”

According to a statement released Friday by Gov. Kay Ivey’s office, state officials were alerted last week about a pre-K educator resource book that they said contained “content that is simply not in line with what the Ivey Administration or the people of Alabama stand for or believe.”

The resource in question was the fourth edition of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Developmentally Appropriate Practice Book, Ivey’s spokeswoman Gina Maiola confirmed Friday.

In the news release, Maiola said Ivey was concerned that the book tells teachers there are “larger systemic forces that perpetuate systems of White privilege” and that “the United States is built on systemic and structural racism.” She was concerned, too, Maiola said, with the directions that “LGBTQIA+ need to hear and see messages that promote equality, dignity and worth.”

Additionally, Maiola said the book’s glossary “includes equally disturbing concepts that the Ivey Administration and the people of Alabama in no way, shape or form believe should be used to influence school children, let alone four-year-olds.”.............................................................

Read more: https://www.al.com/educationlab/2023/04/gov-kay-ivey-denounces-woke-preschool-training-book-ousts-state-official.html

Yeah seriously, once again this proves that republican right wing propaganda is a drug that has destroyed more minds than any amount of crack, coke, heroin, meth, fentanyl, or LSD ever would or could. And by the way, you know how the Simpsons always predicts things first? Remember the episode where the PTA goes on strike, and then at the end of the episode, Principal Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel realize that they could make money when they converted part of Springfield Elementary into a federal prison? Well it certainly seems like things are heading that way in the Crimson Tide State.

Gov. Kay Ivey has some strange things she wants to do with Alabama’s $2 billion education budget surplus, including bailing out broke sports events and subsidizing a really expensive whitewater boat ride.

The World Games would get $5 million, and Ivey’s budget proposal directs $25 million of education money to a water park — a Montgomery tourist attraction still under construction, over budget and behind schedule, despite having received more than $50 million of county and city tax dollars already.

But those might be the second and third-worst things in the governor’s shopping list.

Take that $25 million, multiply it by four, and that’s how much education money Ivey’s administration wants to spend — on prison construction.

Last year the state allocated $1.3 billion to build two new 4,000-bed mega prisons, which included $400 million of COVID-relief funds from the federal government.

https://www.al.com/news/2023/03/alabama-governor-wants-100-million-of-school-funds-for-prison-construction.html

[font size="4"]And The Idiot Is: [/font]

It’s easily Kay Ivey in this contest. No question!

[font size="4"]Next Week: [/font]

When we come back on the 30th, for round 7, we’re heading to the Central US where Iowa’s Kim Reynolds is going to take on Minnesota’s Tim Walz!


[font size="4"]And Now This: [/font]
[font size="4"]King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard [/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest just announced a massive 58 city tour going through the next year, there’s too many dates to name. Their latest album is called Petrodragonic Apocalypse, Or: Dawn Of Eternal Night & The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation. Playing their song Gila Monster, give it up for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard!

Thank you Vegas! Thanks to the MGM for hosting us, we had a lot of fun, we’ll be back soon! We’re taking a short break next week for Thanksgiving, we’ll be back on Thursday, 11/30 with a brand new edition live from Oxnard! Also, don’t forget – episode 3 of Holy Shit: The Sunday Sermons coming this Sunday 11/19 at 2:00 PM!

See you in two weeks! Happy Thanksgiving!

Credits

Host: Initech
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Appear Courtesy Of: KGLW Inc.
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, NV
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