Top 10 Idiots
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Member since: Wed May 30, 2018, 12:44 PM
Number of posts: 532
Number of posts: 532
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This is the official DU account for the new format Top 10 Conservative Idiots separate from the host account Initech. The new format Top 10 will launch June 13th, 2018 and all posts related to the Top 10 (promos, etc) will be posted from this account only. If you wish to contact the Top 10 you may do so here:
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Journal Archives
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-8: I Wanna Be Woke With Somebody Edition
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-8: I Wanna Be Woke With Somebody Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooo! What’s up Miami? How are you guys doing? You doing fucking good? Hey look, I’m not going to get arrested for making fun of Ron DeSantis, am I? Because that guy is a fucking nutjob and we’re ready to unload tonight! You know we make fun of Florida a lot on this show, but you know what? We love Florida. After all, Ron DeSantis is giving me plenty of material for the next several years! Oh don’t worry, we will get to him once we get started with our program. Also by the way, we told you on Mastodon that our source for all the wacky clips we bring you – Right Wing Watch – is back! And to celebrate, we’re going to be sprinkling in some of our patented (patent pending) Clips Without Context! First off, congratulations to Japan for winning the World Baseball Classic. And as an Angels fan, how cool was it to see Shohei Ohtani face off against Mike Trout for the final out? That was utterly surreal! And I’m sure it was for them too. Do we have time for the thing? Of course we do. So Broadway’s got a disgusting problem on its’ hands. And it’s mainly happening at the Shubert Theater – a favorite Broadway venue of New York’s elite and traveling celebrities. Currently they’re running the musical version of Some Like It Hot. Well, two celebrities happened to be in attendance – Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. The problem that the Shubert Theater is having? They have a serial pooper on the loose. That’s right – some guy pooped in the middle of the aisle during the performance. Now, the official policy here at the Top 10 is that we believe poop belongs in the toilet. This of course caused the right wing conspiracy world to go into overdrive, and we may have expand on this in next week’s Conspiracy Corner. But yeah that happened… hey stop that guy!!! Security!!! Whew. OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first John Oliver is back and he delves into the subject of Timeshares, which are about as hard to get rid of as bad weeds and unwanted house guests: Where do we begin this week? Well if I could sum up the entire week in question in one word, that word would be “woke”. It has dominated the news this week. So as such, our number one idiot this week is of course Ron DeSantis (1). Yes, the governor of Florida has been going off the deep end lately and we’re going to dispel some of his nuttier actions lately! And speaking of woke, in the second slot this week, we got to talk about how conservatives (2) don’t know what the word woke means, they just know that because Tucker Carlson said it, it makes it the most dangerous thing on earth. In the number 3 slot this week, is that former president’s hidey hole on the internet, Truth Social (3). Yes, the social media of choice for MAGA insurrectionists is under investigation by the DOJ for being a money laundering front for Russian oligarchs! Shocker, I know! In the number 4 slot this week is the SVB Bank Collapse (4) and guess what Fox News and other conservatives are blaming for the collapse, despite that it's an archetype product of conservative design? Wokism. That’s right. Sigh, this is why we can’t have nice things, people! And speaking of not being able to have nice things, in our segment on exponentially increasing corporate greed, Late Stage Capitalism (5), we have to talk about the feud between Robert Smith of the legendary 90s band The Cure, and Ticketmaster. Because Ticketmaster once again, reminds us how evil of a company it is and how much it is likely to fuck up your ticket sales! 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 we have to talk about the 7 Mountains theory of Christian dominionism, and it’s back in the news this week, and it’s becoming self-aware, and that’s going to pose a challenge for anyone who dares to attempt to run against the cult in bright red states! In the number 7 slot this week, after a series of insane mishaps, we are profiling Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally (Q – Batshit) in a new edition of This Fucking Guy (7). In the number 8 slot this week we have a new edition of Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week, we have to ask the question “Is My Pillow Going Broke?”. Short answer: yes. But between Steve Bannon’s right hand being arrested and My Pillow begging for cash, conspiracy theorists are going to have to find a new outlet to spew their bile and garbage. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new People Are Dumb (9) and as usual, whenever we visit the Sunshine State, we have to do an all Florida edition! Because Florida never stops bringing the crazy! Finally this week, it’s time for Stupidest State 2023 (10)! This week it’s Round 1 Week 2 and it’s a battle for Batshit Conference supremacy as #1 Florida takes on rivals #2 Kentucky! Meanwhile, in the Family Values Conference, it’s a fight between red hot #3 Utah against fan favorite #4 Oklahoma! We are live from the T-Mobile Arena in fabulous Las Vegas for all the exciting action! Plus to close things out, we have legendary heavy metal supergroup The Winery Dogs joining us! Buy their new album III or you’re no friend of this program! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! 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[font size="8"]Ron DeSantis   [br] [/font] Hey everyone here’s one of our Clips Without Context! Well so much for separation of church and state! I mean come on really. These guys are batshit crazy. I mean are they putting something in the holy water there? Just asking. Now onto our regularly scheduled programming! Folks, we’re here in the Sunshine State and we can’t help but wonder just how fucking evil Ron DeSantis is going to get. You know he’s out on his multi-state conservative echo chamber book tour, for his new book, which ironically is titled “The Courage To Be Free”, but his policies are promoting everything but, you know, actual freedom. In the last few weeks, we saw his hostile takeover of Central Florida’s New College, and Reedy Creek, the governing body that oversees development of the land including and surrounding Disney World. Which begs the question “how far is he going to go?”. And my answer to you, ladies and gentlemen, is that there’s no limit to how far he’s going to go in his quest to bring Americans the full fascist authoritarian experience. To start with, this is one of the many truly evil bills that are being proposed in regards to America’s transgender community. And it’s going to get worse, so much worse. Ron DeSantis requested the information of trans students who sought care at Florida's public universities. Now students are planning a statewide walkout.
Students across Florida are planning a statewide walkout after Gov. Ron DeSantis requested all public universities comply in delivering data from student health services on transgender students who sought gender-affirming care at the institutions. DeSantis asked to see a breakdown of the medical data of students who received gender-affirming care from public entities. This includes anyone in the general public who sought gender-affirming care at the hospitals located at these public universities. In addition, he wants their ages and the dates they received gender-affirming care. The deadline to submit those records was February 10. Insider has confirmed that University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, Florida A&M University, Florida International University, and the University of North Florida have complied with the request, but has yet to hear back from the rest. Students at these universities are now planning rallies for next week along with the statewide walkout on February 23. Ben Braver, a junior at the University of South Florida and the outreach officer for the school's College Democrats chapter, is leading the initiative, known as the Stand for Freedom Florida Walkout. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ron-desantis-requested-the-information-of-trans-students-who-sought-care-at-florida-s-public-universities-now-students-are-planning-a-statewide-walkout/ar-AA17zjrQ 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Oh and by the way, that’s not even the worst thing he’s done this week. You know how we’re constantly railing on internet conspiracy theorists on this program? We do so for a good reason. That reason is that we should be united and fighting against the real bad guy who’s trying to take over the world – Vladimir Putin, and his illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Well, conservative conspiracy theorists are attempting to “please disperse” their way out of helping by siding with Russia and painting Ukraine as the country of Nazis and terrorists. Yup. Sigh. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying in a statement made public on Monday night that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.
The statement from Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an all but declared presidential candidate for the 2024 campaign, puts him in line with the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, former President Donald J. Trump. The venue Mr. DeSantis chose for his statement on a major foreign policy question revealed almost as much as the substance of the statement itself. The statement was broadcast on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News. It was in response to a questionnaire that the host, Mr. Carlson, sent last week to all major prospective Republican presidential candidates, and is tantamount to an acknowledgment by Mr. DeSantis that a candidacy is in the offing. On Mr. Carlson’s show, Mr. DeSantis separated himself from Republicans who say the problem with Mr. Biden’s Ukraine policy is that he’s not doing enough. Mr. DeSantis made clear he thinks Mr. Biden is doing too much, without a clearly defined objective, and taking actions that risk provoking war between the U.S. and Russia. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/us/politics/ron-desantis-ukraine-tucker-carlson.html You know that old saying about how a broken clock is right twice a day? Well, MAGA conservatives don’t have that clock. In fact, if you root for the MAGA people at this point, it would be like playing Super Mario Brothers, except in this version, you want Bowser to kill Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach after Mario rescues the princess. That’s fucked up. They never have the right answer to any subject, and Ron DeSantis is one of those people. But of course, conservatives are currently eating their own and well, Desantis’ insane anti-“woke” crusade would ultimately be the end of them. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed the Florida legislature to join his crusade against “wokeness” in public schools, First Amendment experts warned that like many of the anti-“critical race theory” laws around the country, the bills were written so broadly that they could be reasonably interpreted as de facto prohibition on anything other than specifically state-sanctioned speech.
Even critics of “wokeness” have argued that prohibitions on “divisive concepts” and definitions of “truth” are subjective, vague, and destined to sweep up far more content than was originally intended. And wouldn’t you know it, now that schools across Florida are removing innocuous books because they bump up against certain “divisive” interpretations of gender, sexuality, and racism that could conceivably run afoul of Florida law—DeSantis is crying, “Hoax!” The governor and his gaggle of sycophantic right-wing media influencers insist the book bans were only meant to go after the “porn” in books like Gender Queer or the “racism” in books like How to Be an Antiracist—and that most of the hundreds of other books facing state censorship were mistakenly included in the purge, or deliberately removed by educators to make DeSantis look bad. Team DeSantis wants to have it both ways. They deny book bans are even happening, but the erstwhile small government, free marketplace of ideas-supporting conservatives are also openly contemptuous of the free inquiry and open debate trappings of liberal democracy. Better to ban the “bad” ideas than debate them, defeat them, or teach them in a larger context. (But don’t call it a ban, which they contend in the face of all evidence is a “hoax.”) https://www.thedailybeast.com/ron-desantis-anti-free-speech-crusade-would-cancel-fox-news 
So you know what? Fuck it, let them fight. Because while they’re fighting with each other over who’s the most woke, the competent adults in charge will ultimately prevail. Because while hate is more popular than ever, it’s actually losing popularity. But make no mistake that this is a man who is even more bloodthirsty than Donald Trump is, was, or could ever be. And his wars on education and private enterprise would be that much worse if he were elected president. It would be like China or North Korea with some religious totalitarianism thrown in the mix. We’re heading into uncharted territory here. Let’s review some of what has happened on his watch with the help of a rubber-stamp Republican state legislature.
The Parental Rights in Education Act, better known as “don’t say gay”, prevents teachers from talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in some elementary-school grades. The so-called Stop Woke Act restricts how race is discussed in Florida’s schools, colleges and even private workplaces. Another law pulled a slew of books from public school libraries while they are reviewed for their supposed suitability. (There are no limits to the craziness: after one parent’s complaint, many high schools yanked The Bluest Eye, the literary masterpiece by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.) There’s more, including on the healthcare front. Florida’s medical boards now bar transgender youth from gender-affirming medical care such as hormone therapy. State law bans most abortions beyond 15-weeks gestation; a new bill would tighten that to only six weeks. more... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/ron-desantis-florida-governor-media-coverage-rightwing-agenda 
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[font size="8"]Conservative Anti-Woke Authors      [br] [/font] [br]
We’re 3 months into the year 2023. If this year could be summed up in one word, it would be simply “woke”. I swear to the highest of high gods that I have heard this word spoken or seen it typed about 8,342,545,252,101 times. And that’s a conservative estimate by the way. It’s everywhere, and like a bad weed, the more times you try to kill it, the more it grows back. Hell at this point, I’m surprised there haven’t been whole songs written about it. Like… how about “I Wanna Be Woke With Somebody”. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Come on, we can’t besmirch the late, great Whitney Houston like that! But what’s really scary about this whole anti-“woke” thing that’s been going on in far right states like Oklahoma and South Dakota and Florida, is that nobody really knows what the fuck it is. That’s what happens when you hate watch a heavily one sided propaganda network 24 hours a day like Fox News, it scrambles your brain. So if people like Ron DeSantis are writing this shit into law and are trying to run for president, could you at least explain what the fuck is going on? Gray, a left-leaning commentator and former Bernie Sanders adviser, argued that there is indeed a recent movement which posits there’s a “cultural cache that’s emerged of hierarchies of oppression” within the education system. At the same time, Gray said she’s seen “frustration” with that language across the political spectrum, and wondered how Mandel sees this solely as “a war” being waged by the left on conservatives.
“Because framing it that way when I think this is a broad concern that a lot of folks have a problem does also recreate this kind of victim paradigm, where you have people saying we're being under attack by the left instead of kind of coming together and trying to resolve what I think is a broadly understood phenomenon.” the Rising host added. While saying she hoped that “parents of all political stripes” would pick up her book, Mandel claimed that “this is sort of a woke reimagining that is very, very, far-left.” Additionally, she asserted that “only seven percent of Americans consider themselves very liberal, and probably fewer of them consider themselves woke.” Gray, however, wasn’t going to just leave it there. “What does that mean to you? Would you mind defining woke?” Gray pressed. “It’s come up a couple of times. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/conservative-author-bethany-mandel-freezes-up-when-pressed-to-define-woke 
Seriously, right? Like if you’re going to write an entire fucking book on the subject of “woke”, at least tell us what the fuck you’re talking about. The conservative spin cycle has been working on overdrive lately, and they’ll literally spin, twist, and distort anything to suit their sick, twisted agenda. This latest thing with everything being “woke” is no exception. And this wasn’t even a thing until last year because Fox News was mad that they lost their nightly Batphone to the Trump White House. Well, this whole thing gets weirder as you can possibly imagine. In 2023, the word "woke" seems to be at the top of conservatives' minds.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, has declared that his state is "where woke goes to die." Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana has floated the idea of an "anti-woke" caucus in the House. And a Department of Labor rule pertaining to socially-conscious investment decisions, derided by the right as "woke," has teed up what will be the first veto of Joe Biden's presidency. But at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — a yearly confab where the Republican Party's most die-hard activists and political hangers-on hear from conservative influencers and politicians — the precise definition of the ubiquitous word remains elusive. -snip- "That's tough. Let me think on it. Give me like two minutes to come up with something good," said Johnny McEntee, the CEO of a right-wing dating app that explicitly declares that "other dating apps have gone woke." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/we-asked-cpac-attendees-what-they-think-woke-means-their-answers-were-all-over-the-place/ar-AA18cwQP 
Seriously! They couldn’t define what the word “woke” meant at CPAC! And come on, this term is popular with the young and hip crowd. And because kids are watching the same networks that their parents do, kids are naturally going to object to their parents using the term “woke”. Hey come on mom and dad, that’s our word for making fun of you! And of course when everyone uses that word, you know it stops being cool. But let’s face it, we all know that in certain context, the word “woke” can have a certain derogatory definition, and well, it’s the same tactic that the Nazis used. To attend the Conservative Political Action Conference is to find oneself on the front lines of the war against woke.
During her speech on Friday, 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley deemed “wokeness” a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic.” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) argued Americans ought not to be governed by “deeply weird, nauseously woke people who hate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potato Head.” Ron DeSantis, grand poobah of the anti-woke, wasn’t there, but Moms for Liberty, the DeSantis-championing “parents’ rights” group, was, its members milling outside the main hall in navy “STOP WOKE” T-shirts. To the young Republicans in attendance, the vernacular feels a bit cringe. “We don’t really use ‘woke’ as our term,” says Evan Masse, a student at the Community College of Rhode Island. Chris Johnson, the managing director of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, likened its use to how an out-of-touch uncle might search for the words to describe a nephew at the Thanksgiving table. “I think a lot of older folks use it if they don’t really know what they’re referring to,” he says. “It’s a catchall colloquialism.” Several young conservatives I spoke with at CPAC echoed some version of that criticism of party elders. Some worry that going so hard on “woke” — a term now used almost entirely derogatorily by Republican detractors — will turn off upcoming generations of voters already disinclined to support the GOP. Others simply said it had lost its meaning, as many once-favored slang terms do, when the septuagenarians in Congress started punctuating their Fox News hits with it. This next generation of GOP activists nevertheless support the principles behind the “woke” wars — the market basket of education- and gender-related policies being passed in red states across the country. They just really wish the Olds would stop saying “woke.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/cpac-young-republicans-culture-wars-nikki-haley-marjorie-taylor-greene-woke-1234690875/ 
Yeah maybe that’s how we get this whole “owning the libs” nonsense to stop. The parents should get in on it. But the parents probably watch Fox News too, so there’s that. But this whole exercise is among the latest in the conservative world of weaponized propaganda. Yeah they throw the word “woke” around a lot. And like most things that they are doing, it’s going to get worse. So much worse. But we also know that this is also an exercise in conservatives not knowing exactly what the fuck they are talking about. But we all know what they’re talking about – they just won’t say the quiet part out loud. The conservative writer Bethany Mandel, a co-author of a new book attacking “wokeness” as “a new version of leftism that is aimed at your child,” recently froze up on a cable news program when asked by an interviewer how she defines woke, the term her book is about.
On the one hand, any of us with a public-facing job could have a similar moment of disassociation on live television. On the other hand, the moment and the debate it sparked revealed something important. Much of the utility of woke as a political epithet is tied to its ambiguity; it often allows its users to condemn something without making the grounds of their objection uncomfortably explicit. A few years ago, I wrote, “Woke is a nebulous term stolen from Black American English, repurposed by conservatives as an epithet to express opposition to forms of egalitarianism they find ridiculous or distasteful.” This is what people mean when they refer to “woke banks” or “woke capital,” when they complain that the new Lord of the Rings series or the new Little Mermaid is “woke” because it includes Black actors, or when they argue for a “great unwokening” that would roll back civil-rights laws. Part of the utility of the term is that it can displace the criticism onto white liberals who are insincere about their egalitarianism, rather than appearing to be an attack on egalitarianism itself. In fact, woke has become so popular as a political epithet that providing an exhaustive list of definitions would be difficult. It is a slippery enough term that you can use it to sound like you are criticizing behavior most people think is silly, even if you are really referring to things most people think of as good or necessary. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/bethany-mandel-woke-interview-definition/673454/ 
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[font size="8"]Truth Social   [br] [/font] [br]
Here's another one of our Clips Without Context! Yeah these are the people I think of when I think of charisma! Come for the suave, stay for the white supremacist conspiracy theories! Back to our regularly scheduled program! So anyone remember from way back in the early days of the Top 10, when the whole Russian probe was going on, that we used to joke about not talking about Russia if you’re under investigation for possibly colluding with Russia? Well, how can anyone possibly be shocked at the news this week that Trump’s Truth Social is a Russian money laundering haven? I can honestly say that I’m not! But as we’re waiting for news of Trump’s possible arrest in the Stormy Daniels case (and don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of material saved for next week!), this news got absolutely buried in the avalanche of stories coming out of Mar-A-Shithole. But while everyone is paying attention to whether or not Trump will be arrested this week for using campaign contributions to pay out Stormy Daniels, people need to be paying more attention to what’s going on at some of his other businesses! Citing anonymous sources, the Guardian reports federal prosecutors in New York expanded their criminal probe into Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform, at the end of last year to scrutinize the $8 million in payments.
The payments were reportedly made in two installments, with $2 million being paid to the company in December 2021—when the Guardian notes it was on the “brink of collapse” after its planned merger with DWAC got delayed—and another $8 million was paid two months later. The payments came from Paxum Bank, which is registered in Dominica, and ES Family Trust, and the Guardian reports Paxum Bank is partly owned by Anton Postolnikov, an apparent relation of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who worked for Putin’s government until 2017 and now runs the Russian-controlled maritime company Rosmorport. Investigators were reportedly tipped off about the payments in October 2022 by whistleblower Will Wilkerson, a former executive at Trump Media, who told the Guardian the payments initially “caused alarm” at Trump Media and executives considered returning the money but decided not to, in part because they couldn’t afford to lose it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/03/15/trumps-media-company-reportedly-under-federal-investigation-for-money-laundering-linked-to-russia/?sh=1b57f30968a1 
Yes, that’s what they want you to think! I mean it’s truly crazy to think how much the GOP just doesn’t give a fuck about this sort of thing. Here we have a megalomaniacal totalitarian dictator in the Kremlin, who’s fond of weaponizing social media in order to destabilize entire nations, so there will be nobody to stop his illegal wars, and nobody seems to care! People are too busy being distracted by the shiny objects on Fox News and Facebook in order to realize what’s really going on. But the bottom line is that Trump is a career criminal and he probably won’t stop until he’s caught. Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World (DWAC) that was also the subject of an earlier investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said. The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and DWAC, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing. ...the money was never returned, (co-founder turned whistleblower) Will Wilkerson said, in part because losing $8m out of the roughly $12m cash that Trump Media had in its accounts at that time would have placed significant stress on its financial situation. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/15/trump-media-investigated-possible-money-laundering 
Yeah that’s pretty much Putin’s plan for Europe. But make no mistake that since the vulture capitalist disaster that is Elon Musk’s Twitter, the Russian trolls have been forced to retreat to the even darker corners of the internet in order to ignite the violent lunatics that populate it. Truth Social just happens to be one of those sites. Which is honestly not surprising if you’ve been following the MAGA clan as long as we have. So does this mean that they’re guilty of Russian collusion by association? It’s no secret that Vladimir Putin has been weaponizing social media for as long as he has, but this is the least shocking news in a while. Russian trolls thriving on right-wing apps like Gab, Parler, and Truth Social, study finds
Some of Russia’s most notorious propagandists, largely blocked on Twitter and Facebook, have resurrected on under-moderated social media apps designed for conservatives, according to new research from Stanford University. A report published Tuesday by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the social media analytics firm Graphika indicates that some of the same people tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency are active on the four major platforms launched in recent years to target those who deem mainstream social media companies too liberal: Gab, Gettr, Parler, and former President Donald Trump’s service, Truth Social. Some of the most effective content from the Russia-tied accounts came by mimicking fan pages for Kid Rock, the rock-rap persona of 51-year-old Robert James Richie, whose career found a second life as a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump. In an emailed statement, Gettr CEO Jason Miller said the company “takes a robust and proactive approach to moderation.” Emails to Gab’s address for press inquiries bounced back. Parler and Truth Social didn’t respond to a request for comment. https://www.yahoo.com/news/blacklisted-russian-propagandists-thrive-wing-235939600.html 
I mean how can anyone possibly by shocked by this? Well I mean those of us who aren’t brainwashed cult members. And speaking of the brainwashed cult, don’t ever, ever think for a minute that Russia is the bad guys, or that Fox News is a full blown Russian propaganda outlet. Oh no! The real threat, my friends, is us! At least according to that orange guy who we inexplicably called president for 4 insane years of our lives. Yeah that’s right, he’s literally pulling a page straight out of Hitler’s playbook and using it against us. I mean come on, does he really think we’re that stupid? Well, at least his people are. But nice attempt at a Jedi Mind Trick anyways. The Putin wing of the GOP is in the minority. A new poll from Gallup shows diminishing support for Russia in the U.S., dropping from 15% holding a favorable view to 9%. And 68% in the U.S. view Ukraine favorably.
Well, yeah. Of course. As it happens, aggressively invading a country while bombing hospitals and maternity rooms while raping women and children isn't popular. Oh, and Russia has kidnapped countless numbers of Ukrainian children, too. But if you're Donald Trump, Russia is super cool and not a threat. And his Vladykins is an alpha male! The former President is having another Helsinki moment. Trump was slammed in 2018 after he stood next to Putin, and a reporter asked him if he believed U.S. intelligence agencies or the Russian President when it came to the allegations of meddling in the elections. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be," he replied. https://crooksandliars.com/2023/03/donald-trump-americans-are-real-threat-not 
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[font size="8"]SVB Bank Collapse  [br] [/font] [br]
Look here, MAGAs. I’ve heard the word “woke” so many times in the last year and a half that I’m about ready to throw my monitor out the window, OK? And not everything is part of your sick, twisted conspiracy theory agenda, OK? Actually the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank might be, but that’s only because it’s your own damn fault! You know how we got to this point? It’s forty years of ridiculous conservative anti-regulatory policies that got us here. We have these things called rules and regulations to prevent what happened to Silicon Valley Bank from happening. But since conservatives don’t believe in the rule of law, these things happen. But it’s like a broken record with this crowd. Or maybe it’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there’s just one degree and Kevin Bacon is a woke Marxist who is out to destroy America. Well, yeah it’s kind of like that. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was a “Lehman moment” for the technology industry, according to a top Goldman Sachs deal maker.
Cliff Marriott, co-head of technology, media and telecoms in Europe for the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs, said that the March 10 shutdown of SVB was “pretty stressful,” as the lender’s clientele scrambled to figure out how they would make payroll. “That first weekend was a little bit like the Lehman moment for technology and it was really more operational for those companies,” Marriott told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal in an interview at a Goldman Sachs tech symposium that aired Tuesday on “Squawk Box Europe.” “They needed access to capital. A lot of their balances were on SVB. And, secondly, SVB was propelling and making a lot of their payments for payroll to pay their employees.” https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/21/svb-collapse-was-lehman-moment-for-technology-goldman-sachs.html 
Yeah so that’s really what happened. But if you watch Fox News, and let’s face it, if you’re here, you don’t watch Fox News unless you get paid to do so. And I mean come on, it would be an interesting job to monitor all the crap that gets said on Fox News 24 hours a day because they certainly don’t care about all the crazy shit they say. And of course, god forbid that someone have an independent thought that goes against the Rupert Murdoch Christofascist MAGA cult. Can’t have anyone speaking out against a cult. Otherwise you get shit like this. A popular conservative talking point in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank failure is that the financial institution went down because it was too “woke.”
Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and House Oversight Chair James Comer of Kentucky claimed that the bank was too focused on policies around diversity and its consideration of environmental and social factors in investments — known as ESG. But on Thursday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., had a twist on this talking point, saying Silicon Valley Bank was actually “too woke to fail.” The Missouri Republican told NBC News that the bank received the federal government’s help because it invested in climate change solutions backed by powerful people. "'Too woke to fail' says that they're really politically connected and pursuing an agenda, which I’m sure that they put forward to people here, who see that — 'This is important, we've invested all this stuff, you can't let this go under!' My view is they should be treated like everybody else," Hawley said. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/josh-hawley-labels-silicon-valley-bank-woke-fail-rcna75351 OMFG. Tell me you watch Tucker Carlson without telling me you watch Tucker Carlson, Josh. The right wing is getting weirder and nuttier with every single passing day. They’ve gone so far off the deep end that they’re currently circulating the bottom of the Marianus Trench! For my geography challenged friends, that’s pretty fucking low! But they could still go lower. At least they’re giving America’s professional fact checkers plenty of material to work with for the next several years! But yeah of course Fox News has to go there and they have to ruin everything. And they have to twist and distort every single thing that happens in the news to their twisted agenda. It’s like a broken record with this crowd. GOP Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, slammed Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB, as "one of the most woke banks" in the US.
"We see now coming out they were one of the most woke banks in their quest for the ESG-type policy and investing," Comer said, referring to environmental, social, and governance policies. "This could be a trend and there are consequences for bad Democrat policy," the Kentucky congressman continued on Sunday's episode of Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." Comer did not explain which environmental sustainability-linked investments would have caused SVB's failure, or how they would have done so. The word "woke" points to an awareness of how some systems can be unjust, but it has also been used by right-wing figures as a catch-all term for progressive policies. https://www.businessinsider.com/james-comer-woke-silicon-valley-bank-2023-3 
Gee, why did I have to guess that this interview was being conducted on Fox News? Like does the GOP really do anything else but go on Fox News and conspiracy theory talk shows and complain? Oh who am I kidding, of course they don’t. I mean god forbid that someone has an independent thought in that party, and they do love some group speak. That is one thing we know! But in case your MAGA friends and neighbors start spewing these talking points, you know where they got them from. Seriously, they don’t call it an echo chamber for nothing, you know! But here’s what really happened. President Biden called for Congress to step in and enact tougher banking regulations on Monday morning after U.S. regulators seized Silicon Valley Bank on Friday.
Small businesses, many of them tech startups, rushed to withdraw their funds all at once, sparking panic at other regional or specialized banks. Signature Bank failed on Sunday night. Shares of First Republic Bank stock fell 60% on Monday. In a speech from the White House on Monday, the President sought to assuage fears of a broader economic collapse, and kicked off a debate over ways to prevent banks from failing in the future. "I'm going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again," Biden said. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/politics/missouri-illinois-representatives-silicon-valley-bank-reaction/63-aae2dca1-cf09-488d-a9ee-f65377b0edf2 
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[font size="8"]Robert Smith Vs Ticketmaster [br] [/font] [br]
Here’s another one of our Clips Without Context! Flat Earthers truly are a stupid bunch. So the sun is round, Mars is round, Saturn is round, but somehow the Earth is flat? GTFO. Back to our regularly scheduled program! Gather around ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s history time! Come on, don’t be shy! If you’ve been trying to buy concert tickets in the post COVID-19 era, you know what a truly colossal pain in the ass it is to buy tickets to any major show these days. Like, case in point. In 2017, I paid $30 for floor seats to see Blink 182 and The Used at the Forum. In the post COVID era, tickets to see the Blink 182 reunion tour with Tom DeLonge, you know how much floor seats to their June 19th show at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles were? $322 minimum, and that’s before you start tacking on the bullshit fees. Well, the history part of all of this is that back in the early 90s, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam became famous for being the band to take on the corporate ticket making and taking machines. Well, compare ticket buying in the 90s to ticket buying in the post COVID era. It seems like people forgot how to handle large, highly in demand events. Well, the latest band to take on the machine is a little band that I like to call The Cure. And take notes, bot sellers and bot accounts, Robert Smith isn’t having any of your nonsense. The Cure’s Robert Smith recently convinced Ticketmaster to refund ‘unduly high’ fees to their fans – could this be the start of artists holding the ticket-selling giant to account?
At present, you’d be hard-pressed to find a music fan with any positive thoughts about Ticketmaster. While from two very different musical camps, The Cure’s Robert Smith and his goth army seem ready to join the Swifties in a battle against the ticketing giant as another fan base burned by pricing. As tickets went on sale for the band’s US tour, prices were nearly doubled thanks to hefty service fees, facility charges and a processing fee. Despite purposefully setting their prices at an accessible limit with tickets as low as $20 and opting out of dynamic prices during apparent conversations with the platform, Cure fans still got shafted. In a series of tweets to fans, Smith has said he is “as sickened as you all are” and has actually convinced Ticketmaster to refund fans their fees. But the fact this happened at all when The Cure supposedly did everything ‘right’, following recent horror stories from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s ticket sales, begs the question: what can be done about the Ticketmaster problem? The carnage of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour pre-sale is still in the news, where Ticketmaster claimed bots hacked the verified fan presale, causing ticket prices to hike into the tens of thousands from the original price range of $49 to $499 for tickets. Despite the insane prices, the platform somehow managed to sell every ticket to the tour, causing the general pre-sale to be cancelled after 2.4 million tickets were sold. This was all a result of ‘dynamic pricing’, but what does that even mean? https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/58476/1/could-artists-solve-the-problem-with-ticketmaster-robert-smith-taylor-swift 
Look, Mr. Smith, I know you’re British and not from America. Well, in America, we completely deregulated capitalism. America has become a haven for billionaires, and we’ll eventually have trillionaires. Meanwhile, the average person (meaning you and me) are the ones who get screwed while the billionaires make off with all of our hard earned dollars. Late Stage Capitalism is a virus and it’s spreading very rapidly. Few have tried to take on Ticketmaster, and many have failed. But that’s what happens when the bad guys win and everyone else fails. The days of crowding the box office are long gone, and now is the era of the online queue where Ticketmaster reigns supreme.
Frustrated Taylor Swift fans and even members of Congress have taken on the ticketing giant, arguing the company manipulated sales to make a profit. Now, another internationally-renowned musician has joined the choir – Robert Smith, frontman of The Cure. Smith blasted Ticketmaster on Twitter on Thursday, saying the fees charged for the band’s upcoming tour were “sickening.” “I’ve been a fan since I was 12 years old,” said Chris Mirabueno, a Seattle musician and longtime fan of The Cure. “It was never a struggle like this.?? https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/frustrated-seattle-concertgoers-calling-out-ticketmaster-over-high-ticket-fees-cure-tour/CHPXH6OEJFHVDGLE4KOHST6Q6A/ Seriously, Taylor Swift fans and The Cure fans are currently doing that same Spiderman routine, like yeah we both have that in common now! But whether it’s The Cure, or Taylor Swift, or Depeche Mode, or Blink 182, or whatever your favorite band happens to be, many are just waking up and saying “fuck Ticketmaster”. There??s so many bot and 3rd party sellers that are unaccounted for, that it may take years and even decades to sort out this mess. Robert Smith may be one of the more successful artists who have been able to take on the Machine, but there’s a long way to go. Whether or not Robert Smith intended it, the Cure’s ticketing on-sale this week became a worthy case study for anyone to learn about all the efforts, and the complications, that come with making the ticketing marketplace a more equitable experience for fans.
Readying its first U.S. tour in seven years, the English goth rockers had established what many live music experts would say were the ideal measures for a fan-centered experience to keep tickets at face value even as demand is higher than supply. The Cure likely left some money on the table when they declined to use dynamic pricing that now often accompanies high-profile arena shows, and they kept tickets non-transferable to make it harder for scalpers to sell tickets at hefty premiums. Despite those efforts, by the time the sale started on Wednesday, Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation were once again facing the vitriol of fans, this time over fees that in some cases amounted to more than the price of the ticket itself, alongside the more common tech issues that hold buyers in line for long periods of time or prevent them from purchasing tickets after selecting them. But for two days, Smith had been vocal about the band’s intent to ensure fans only bought tickets at face value, calling out everything from scalpers to platinum tickets to the fees themselves, and by Thursday evening, he’d announced a rare move in which customers would get a small refund from Ticketmaster over the fees, stating that the company “agreed the fees were unduly high.” https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-cure-ticketmaster-fees-scalpers-1234698953/ Yeah that may be the solution, start your own literal spite store! I mean come on, everyone knows that Netflix was started by a guy who refused to pay Blockbuster’s late fees. Maybe Robert Smith is the guy who needs to start a spite store to combat Ticketmaster! Well, it may be a bit more difficult than that because this was just a small victory in the battle against never ending corporate greed. The war is far from over. And this will keep happening again and again. And again. And those of us who want to see our favorite bands will have to bend over and say “thank you sir, may I have another?”. It’s hard to blame musicians for how Ticketmaster treats its customers.
The ticketing giant can do almost anything it pleases in the current marketplace. There’s no sizable competitor, and even grunge rockers like Pearl Jam tried and failed, to provide a suitable alternative. Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 and, according to CNBC, “now control an estimated 70% of the ticketing and live event venues market.” The problem is so entrenched that the U.S. Government is looking into Ticketmaster following its tech meltdown tied to Taylor Swift’s current tour. The Justice Department is also investigating the company over potential antitrust matters. Both movements share rare bipartisan support. That makes what happened in music this week all the more shocking. The Cure just won a small but symbolic victory against the ticketing behemoth. https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/the-cure-bruce-springsteen-ticketmaster/ [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"]Holy Shit             [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, as I have said many times on this program now that we are currently living in some very dark times. And it’s all mainly thanks to the radical Christian right, who seem bent on going full fascist authoritarian in the years to come. Previously we’ve spoken about a little theory you may have heard of called “7 Mountains” (see: Idiots #7-7 and Idiots #11-5 ). Well, for those of you who don’t know what 7 Mountains is, it’s a theory that’s rooted in Christian white supremacy extremism that says that they must control the 7 areas of influence: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. So basically everything. And also they forget that our founding fathers wrote into our Bill Of Rights, the idea of separation of church and state . But lately it seems that the Christian right is going full in on the systematic destruction of these rights. No, we don’t want to live in a fascist country OK? And we certainly don’t want to live under those who worship 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! And we definitely don’t need extremists like this calling the shots now, do we? In 2022, MAGA pastor Leon Benjamin was the Republican nominee in the race for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, where he challenged Democratic incumbent Rep. Donald McEachin. Benjamin made Christian nationalism and Seven Mountains Dominionism central components of his campaign, declaring that “the role of the church is to anoint the politicians” and proclaiming that “God’s about to send people like me” to Congress.
Despite the fact that Benjamin was positive that he had been chosen by God to fill that seat, he was thoroughly routed by McEachin. But only weeks after the election, McEachin suddenly passed away, setting the stage for a special election on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023 to fill the vacant seat in Congress. In response, Benjamin relaunched his campaign and again was chosen as the Republican nominee. And once again, Benjamin is making Christian nationalism and Seven Mountains Dominionism central components of his campaign. Seven Mountains Dominionism is a right-wing theology that teaches that far-right Christians are to “do whatever is necessary” to take control of the seven main “mountains” that shape our culture—education, government, media, business, arts and entertainment, family, and religion—in order to bring every aspect of law and society into alignment with their right-wing “biblical worldview.” https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/leon-benjamin-wants-to-bring-seven-mountains-dominionism-to-congress/ 
Look, you know I hate to keep repeating myself, but I have often said that when you play with extremist nationalism, you might as well burn the place down. These people are evil. And you wonder why they’re called a cult? Well I will tell you why, my fair congregation. Is because it’s all connected. Far right psychopaths, insane Congressional representatives, even crazier local representatives. Like what would these insane lunatics do if social media didn’t give them a megaphone? Well I will tell you I would be much happier knowing a lot of these people didn’t walk among us! Stew Peters, a far-right broadcaster who has built a network featuring white nationalists and Christian nationalists, has long used his nightly program, speeches, and social media accounts to spread wild conspiracy theories, bigotry, and calls for violence.
Despite his well-documented extremism, Peters has regularly managed to get Republican leaders, elected officials, and candidates for office to appear on his program. On Monday night, Peters scored his latest interview with a Republican member of Congress when far-right Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona stopped by for a nearly 30-minute interview. In 2022, Peters and Gosar both addressed the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference, organized by racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, America-hating, Christian fascist Nick Fuentes, whom Gosar has repeatedly promoted and defended. During Monday’s interview, Peters praised Gosar for being one of the few Republicans in Congress who are willing to appear on his program to which Gosar responded that he “loves” being on Peters’ show “because people deserve to know” the truth. “We hope that you will come back,” Peters later told Gosar. “We appreciate you being here.” https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rep-paul-gosar-cozies-up-to-far-right-conspiracy-theorist-stew-peters/ 
No it’s not rock and roll. It’s hate and white nationalism, but rock and roll it definitely is not! Because these are people who don’t like any kind of fun, and god forbid that you dare speak out against the cult or the absolute insanity that they are building up to. But you should also be aware of what your local church’s after hours activities are. Because if they invite TPUSA over for an event, you know they are not on the side of good. They are on the side of the unholy Dark One, and they should immediately lose their tax exempt status. Right-wing commentator and youth organizer Charlie Kirk continues to host TPUSA Faith’s monthly Freedom Night in America events at churches around the nation where he consistently spreads historically baseless claims about the Constitution and the founding of this country.
On Wednesday night, Kirk and right-wing radio host Dennis Prager of Prager U appeared at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where the duo misrepresented American history in order to promote the Christian nationalist agenda. During his remarks, Prager assured the largely Christian audience that despite their theological differences, they were all on the same side because it is his calling as a Jew to bring Christians “to God, and to the Ten Commandments, and the Bible.” “I have a love affair with America’s Christians,” Prager said. “It’s reciprocated. I feel very loved by America’s Christians.” Kirk kicked things off by asking Prager, who is Jewish and who has produced several books and lectures on the Torah, to explain just how vital the Bible was to the founding of this nation. https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-keeps-spreading-baseless/ 
Yes, Charlie, like we need your opinion on everything! And there’s nothing that worshippers of the Dark One won’t do to twist and mold everything into their disgusting agenda. 7 Mountains and Christian Nationalist ideals are very dangerous. And if you’re playing with them, you might as well be playing with fire and burn the whole damn place to the fiery ground! But you can’t keep a good troll down, and no matter how many times you tell them “no”, they will still continue to defy your bidding, because that’s apparently GAWD’s rule now, to be the bigger loud mouthed jackass than the next person! Which of course I refer to our old buddy Sean Feucht and his nonsense is coming back, and that’s something we didn’t ask for! Church musician turned political activist Sean Feucht has teamed up with the religious arm of right-wing youth organizing group Turning Point USA for a two-year, 50-state road trip designed to bring Feucht’s mix of worship and hard-right politics to every state capitol. After a kickoff event attended by seven members of Congress in the U.S. Capitol rotunda March 9, the “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour headed south with a swing through Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, and Montgomery, Alabama this past weekend. In Alabama, Chief Justice Tom Parker, a longtime ally of the disgraced former Chief Justice Roy Moore, participated and invited Feucht to pray in the Supreme Court chamber.
Rep. Lauren Boebert was among the members of Congress who joined a small crowd in the U.S. Capitol to sing along with Feucht as he strummed his guitar. Afterwards, Feucht tweeted, “The Capitol became an Altar…There is ONE KING over America…” Feucht, a missionary musician associated with controversial Northern California megachurch Bethel, ran for Congress in 2020 in what he said was obedience to a call from God. Despite playing up a Dec. 2019 visit to the Oval Office where he prayed over former President Donald Trump, Feucht did not make it through the primary, but the failed run hooked him on politics, and he formed a political group called Hold the Line in 2020. Feucht ramped up his activism in opposition to public health restrictions on church gatherings that were designed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Since then, Feucht has held “Let Us Worship” rallies on the National Mall featuring appearances by Sen. Josh Hawley, New Apostolic Reformation leader Ché Ahn, and dominionist Lou Engle, as well as video remarks from Trump. Feucht also started a podcast; when Boebert was a guest, Feucht praised her as a “gangster for Jesus.” https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/sean-feucht-and-tpusa-faith-launch-50-state-kingdom-to-the-capitol-tour/ 
No, Sean, we don’t need your bullshit nonsense back. And we definitely don’t need any 7 Mountains government officials participating in this crap either. This is why we can’t have nice things, people! I can’t even. Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]This Fucking Guy: Randy McNally   [br] [/font] [br]
Well look! It’s another one of our Clips Without Context! Trying and failing. Hell, I think Brain from Pinky And The Brain has a more successful rate of trying to take over the world at this point. No one wants religious totalitarianism. We want freedom. Back to our regularly scheduled program! 
This week’s This Fucking Guy is Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally. Look, after the last week, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have our elected officials on social media 24 hours a day. Because you get shit like what McNally has done. And Ronnie Jackson. And Majrorie Taylor Greene. And Paul Gosar. And Lauren Boebert. And Sarah Sanders. And the list goes on. But this latest stunt may top them all. In the six plus years we’ve been doing this. As the right wing, in bright red states like Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama are working to ban drag shows and police human thought that wasn’t manufactured by Rupert Murdoch, the right wing is in fact pulling out all of the stops. Yes, phrasing. Thank you, sir. But this latest story also begs the question – what if the religious right stopped making sex so taboo in society? We’ve pointed out in the past how much the radical religious right likes to get their freak on when the cameras aren’t rolling, and they’re the ones who are the most vocal and most obnoxious about it. So that may be the solution to all of our problems. Well, maybe not all, but a large majority of them. But in the Bible Belt, we do know that sex reigns supreme! Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who has been supportive of his state's new laws cracking down on drag shows, has made a habit of liking and sending compliments to what Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer describes as a "raunchy" gay Instagram account.
The Instagram account in question belongs to 20-year-old Franklyn McClur, a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee who frequently posts suggestive photos of himself wearing nothing but underwear. In response to one photo that showed a closeup of McClur's rear end, for example, McNally enthusiastically wrote, "You can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine!" McNally responded to another photo of McClur with his underwear barely covering up his genitals with a simple heart emoji. https://www.rawstory.com/tennessee-republican-randy-mcnally/ 
You know here’s a thing about social media that needs to be said to the MAGAs. A little rule, if you will for this segment. People can see what you like! See this tab on Twitter? It’s called “likes” and it can show what your like history is. So if you’re an elected official, maybe you shouldn’t use your government business account to post personal information! If you like gay porn or a video featuring white supremacists and neo nazis, people can see that shit! And it’s made even worse if you’re an elected representative. Social media companies are private enterprises too, and they have rules, you know. Prior to a Senate floor session Monday, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said the public criticizing his social media was a fair assessment.
McNally said he will be taking a break from social media. This comes after McNally's habits came to light of him commenting on nearly nude photos of a 20-year-old gay man in East Tennessee. Some called McNally a hypocrite in the aftermath for his stances on LGBTQ policies that activists have deemed hurtful, and the story reached national fervor as it attracted the likes of Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. "Criticism of my social media activity is fair, and I have taken it to heart," McNally said. "All I ask is that people look at the facts and my actual record. Again, conservative and “anti-gay” are not synonymous. Not generally and certainly not for me. While I realize it may not happen immediately, I am hopeful this examination of my social media activity will conclude and we can soon all get back to ensuring Tennessee remains the best state in the union to live, work and raise a family.” NewsChannel 5 Investigates interviewed McNally, asking if McNally had a relationship with the man. The lieutenant governor said he did not. Read more: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/lt-gov-randy-mcnally-criticism-of-my-social-media-is-fair 
Yeah I thought that I had been there and done that when it came to the internet, and I had no idea what a “thirst trap” was. Apparently a “thirst trap” is when you post a revealing photo of yourself that’s meant to illicit likes. But this definitely paints the picture of a Christian right troll – because as we’ve often said, we know that the radical Christian right likes to get their freak on when the cameras aren’t rolling. Netflix made an entire documentary about this (see: Idiots #13-15 ). And of course with the social media era, there’s no such thing as an off switch. The lieutenant governor’s office is defending frequent posting by Randy McNally on the racy Instagram pictures of a young gay man over the last three years even though he voted for anti-LGBTQ legislation recently.
The story was initially reported by the Tennessee Holler and followed up by several TV stations. McNally, 79, often posted on the Instagram of a young man who identifies as gay nicknamed Franklyn Superstar, according to a review of his account. McNally posted hearts and fire emojis in comments on photos of the nearly nude man and in one such case told the young man, using a nickname, “Finn, you can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine!” The man has spoken publicly to multiple media outlets. McNally spokesman Adam Kleinheider confirmed Wednesday the posts are McNally’s and said he plans to keep making the social media posts. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217713853 
So here’s the thing, my fellow social media trolls – if you’re going to like something frequently that may be considered controversial, maybe don’t use your official government account to like those things. I mean, yeah we know about Marjorie Greene’s insanity, it’s very well documented. But another thing we have learned about the right – you can’t keep a good social media troll down. Like they can’t stand it not to be without their toys, much like the spoiled kid who cries to his mom in Target because he’s not getting a new toy until she breaks down and buys him one. Don’t worry though, he’ll be back. After getting caught repeatedly leaving comments on a 20-year-old twink’s thirst traps, Tennessee lieutenant governor Randy McNally, a Republican, announced Monday that he is pausing all social media activity.
“I apologize for any embarrassment my postings have caused my family, friends and colleagues,” McNally said in a statement. “For this reason, I will be pausing my social media activity in order to reflect and receive more guidance on the use of social media.” Progressive local news outlet Tennessee Holler broke the news of McNally’s internet history last week, sharing screenshots of flirty Instagram comments that the politician left on gay social media influencer Franklyn McClure’s (a.k.a. Franklyn Superstar) Instagram posts. McNally has left comments featuring crying emojis, heart emojis, and flame emojis on McClure’s nearly-nude photos. “Finn, you can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine!” he wrote on one such post. https://www.them.us/story/randy-mcnally-tennessee-social-media 
That’s Tennessee Lt. Governor, professional shit poster, and semi-professional “thirst trapper” Randy McNally, 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! This week, my friends, in one of the darkest corners of the internet is Mike Lindell’s social media site, Frank Speech TV.com, which is one of the most batshit crazy things on the internet. Of course there’s where you will find Steve Bannon and Marjorie Three Names barfing their brains on whatever crazy thing they can spout that comes out of their brain. You know what they say, come for the cheap pillows, stay for the religious conspiracy theory indoctrination! But last week – Mr. Creepy Pillow Man himself revealed that he may have well, overspent in his efforts to combat the non-existent election fraud. MyPillow Founder and CEO Mike Lindell claims the company has had to borrow almost $10 million to keep the lights on. The MyPillow guy has been embroiled in a series of lawsuits brought by voting machine manufacturers who allege Lindell defamed them by spreading conspiracies regarding their role in the 2020 election.
“The machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow,” Lindell told far-right radio host and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Wednesday. In January, Lindell claimed that the sleep sundry company had lost more than $100 million in retail in the aftermath of the 2020 election. The claim has been contradicted by Dominion Voting Systems, one of the companies suing Lindell, who alleges the CEO has used his claims of electoral fraud to boost sales. But while Lindell claims to be hemorrhaging cash, the company continues to liberally distribute discount codes for its sponsorship program. An investigation by the progressive watchdog Media Matters found that MyPillow was helping fund at least 17 QAnon-affiliated shows and personalities by offering them a cut of sales made through their sales code. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mypillow-ceo-broke-defending-election-fraud-claims-1234697700/ 
Yeah so here’s the thing, my fellow tin foil hatters – if you spend a shit ton of money chasing something that turns out to be a lie, maybe, I don’t know, stop chasing that thing! Thank you! But of course, one thing we’ve learned following the MAGA party as long as we have is that it’s never their fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. Or it didn’t happen. Or it’s a false flag. Or their wallet is in their other pants. But the bottom line is that My Pillow has lost, to use technical accounting terminology, a metric fuck ton of money. But once again, grifters gotta grift! MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is one of three candidates running for the most powerful position in the Republican party -- the Chair of the Republican National Committee. The election is next week.
This comes as Lindell is facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit over his promotion of the Big Lie -- as well as the FBI's seizure of his cell phone. Lindell says the reason he can win is because Republicans are so divided -- and, as he points out, he has a lot of supporters. Dominion Voting Systems is suing him for defamation over his claims about their voting machines and the Big Lie. Dominion's lawsuit claims it's all been good for his business and that "Lindell has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40% and continues duping people into redirecting their election-lie outrage into pillow purchases." Lindell says that is not true. https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/mike-lindell-says-mypillow-lost-100-million/ 
Good question! Not entirely sure, but I’m sure that the janky Amazon probably sells something of that nature. But as we have said, the recent news surrounding the embattled Minnesotan drug addicted pillow salesman, is that Frank Speech TV is also home to Steve Bannon’s show, called, ironically, Steve Bannon’s War Room. Which is basically just Bannon spending hours on Zoom chats with his guests just barfing their brains on whatever subject comes to mind. Now I don’t mean to put two and two together, but our mutual acquaintance may be in some big trouble in the foreseeable future. Exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, an associate of former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, was arrested by federal authorities in New York on Wednesday morning, accused of orchestrating a $1 billion fraud scheme, prosecutors announced.
Guo, charged in court papers as Ho Wan Kwok and who also goes by Miles Guo and Miles Kwok, was charged with 12 counts including wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering in an indictment unsealed Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a news release. The same day the news of his arrest came to light, Guo’s Manhattan apartment in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue was found on fire, a source familiar with the matter said. An FBI spokesperson said agents were executing law enforcement activity at Guo’s apartment when the blaze broke out, after he was already in custody. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that Guo had led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of more than $1 billion. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chinese-billionaire-associate-steve-bannon-arrested-1-billion-fraud-co-rcna75124 
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! That is some next level crazy there! Well, so how does the right wing do it? How do they fall for scammers and con artists and hucksters and grifters every single time? You would think at some point they’d wise up and realize that they’ve been had. But no, that’s what happens when their favorite president loves to court the poorly educated. So the bad guys bilk people out of millions and potentially billions of dollars. So that’s one thing that Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell have in common – they’re all about that sweet, sweet grifting money. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Donald Trump, appeared in court Tuesday with a new crop of lawyers who promptly decried the "explosion" of evidence disclosures from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and asked for additional time to review them.
"Now we have 32 terabytes of discovery," defense attorney Harlan Protass said. "We, like prior counsel, need time to get our hands around that discovery before we are able to set a motion schedule." Bannon, who appeared in a black jacket over a black untucked button down, is charged with defrauding donors to We Build the Wall, an online fundraising mechanism for former President Trump's signature domestic project. Bannon hired new lawyers after his prior counsel, David Schoen and John Mitchell, withdrew, citing "a complete breakdown in communication" with their client. The new attorneys sought a 90-day delay. "All of us at this table are experienced at doing complicated cases," defense attorney John F. Carman said. "We have to, in some general sense, get our arms around what we're talking about." https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judge-steve-bannon-trial-dragging/story?id=97532626 
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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb [br] [/font] [br]
Hit it! Of course you know by now that people are people, and people are dumb. The fact that we’re in the Sunshine State means that we must do an all Florida edition! You know before we go any further, you know we always give Florida a hard time, but that’s only because so many batshit crazy off the rails stories happen here that it’s almost insane itself. And we do a lot of stupid criminal stories, but not every People Are Dumb story is a stupid criminal story. But I do want to preface by saying that a good People Are Dumb story is someone who leads a freeway chase with a truck full of loaded chickens, because that’s just animal endangerment. Well, I want to start with this story out of West Palm Beach, and this is the perfect reason why People Are Dumb exists. So guy walking naked down the main street is enough to be crazy, right? Well even weirder when he adds some flat earth nonsense to the mix and some even wilder theories on top of that! It happened around 9 p.m. on March 8 when an employee who works at Taboo, located in the 200 block of Worth Avenue, told police a naked white male walked past the establishment in front of numerous people.
Upon arrival, an officer located Jason Smith, 44, in the 300-block walking with no clothes on, fully exposing his genitals to the public. Smith was taken to the Palm Beach Police Department, where he initially refused to provide his name and date of birth. He told officers he did not have a social security number or an ID card from any state. He also said he resided on a different earth; then later said he lived in West Palm Beach. Smith was subsequently charged with one count of indecent exposure, resisting an officer without violence and disorderly conduct. https://www.wpbf.com/article/lance-reddick-s-wife-shares-emotional-tribute/43356360 
Next up – OK this is another great People Are Dumb story. Like you know how we always say that at the end of the day you really want to hear a story about how someone goes crazy and destroys a McDonalds because they ran out of chicken nuggets? Well this story out of Tarpon Springs is kind of like that. You know if you work at a coffee shop that’s called “We Spy Coffee & More”, you should probably, at some point, expect to get spied on. I mean come on, it’s in the name, right? But if there’s one thing no business should ever, ever do is put cameras in the bathroom. I mean come on, have we learned nothing from Chuck Berry? An employee of “We Spy Coffee & More,” located on the gorgeous Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks, has been arrested after a camera was found in the men’s restroom.
On Saturday, Officers from the Tarpon Springs Police Department arrested Spyridon Voulgarakis, 31, on charges of Battery and Video Voyeurism., The victim was a customer of “We Spy Coffee & More,” located at 505 Dodecanese Boulevard. While using the male restroom at the business, the victim discovered he was being video recorded by a camera placed underneath the sink. The victim confronted the Voulgarakis, who is an employee of “We Spy Coffee & More.” https://www.tampafp.com/florida-sponge-docks-coffee-shop-we-spy-coffee-more-employee-arrested-over-spying-in-mens-bathroom/ 
Good question! Next up – this story comes straight out of Broward County – where a lot of our People Are Dumb Florida stories are based out of, it seems. I mean come on, are people putting something in the water supply in Broward County that makes people turn crazy? And seriously – what does one do with 70 bottles of lotion unless they were using it for a frat party like in Old School? Well, this happened and if you’re going to steal that much, you probably shouldn’t use a gallon size trash bag to carry out your stolen merchandise. Use a box, come on, people! In a case of lotion larceny gone awry, a man and his accomplice were caught red-handed – or rather, red-skinned – after stealing over 70 bottles of lotion from a local Walgreens.
On March 3, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported lotion theft in progress at the Walgreens located at 6401 West Commerical Boulevard. According to the report, the manager on duty at Walgreens recognized the alleged thief, later identified as Anthony Nigel Sealey, 34, of Miramar, from a prior incident and immediately alerted the police. The report says Sealey was observed by employees and on surveillance footage entering the store and filling a garbage bag with several bottles of various brands of lotions from the cosmetic section of the store before exiting the store past all points of sale without attempting to pay. https://tamaractalk.com/lotion-looters-land-in-jail-43631 
EWWWWWWWWW!!!! No wait. Yeah, Ew. Next up – speaking of drugs, one thing you shouldn’t ever do if you if you work for the Drug Enforcement Agency is get high on your own supply. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… right? Love me some Scarface! Rule #1: Don’t get high on your own supply. Rule #2: Never underestimate the OTHER guy’s greed! But yeah sometimes the cops are the criminals themselves and when that happens, it almost never ends well! Made even worse is that this guy was named the Federal Highway Patrol Trooper of The Year! I mean come on, people! This is a classic People Are Dumb story! A former Florida Highway Patrol Trooper of the Year who was assigned to a Drug Enforcement Agency task force is accused of buying drugs from a confidential source, according to a criminal complaint obtained by First Coast News.
According to the complaint, the FBI found probable cause to arrest Joshua Earrey on Friday for being an "unlawful user or addict of controlled substances" in possession of a firearm. Earrey has worked for FHP for approximately 22 years and has been assigned to the DEA Task Force since Sept. 2020. In 2009, he was honored by the Florida Cabinet as trooper of the year. Attempts to reach Earrey by phone were unsuccessful. Messages left for his attorney were not immediately returned. The criminal complaint says a confidential informant told the FBI that Earrey had been addicted to Oxycodone since 2021. The man he was buying the drugs from is a confidential source for the DEA, the document says. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/crime/florida-highway-patrol-drug-enforcement-agency-gun-possession-drug-possession/77-828d41ee-0d1c-4adc-b903-29d9b00726bb 
Finally this week – this is a classic Florida story that really has everything. Most people associate getting a DUI with cars. But in reality you can get a DUI for literally any moving vehicle. Doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a bicycle, a motorcycle, airplane, tractor, or in this case a boat. And this story comes out of the city of Cape Coral. And it’s got literally everything that makes a classic People Are Dumb story, and also a classic Florida Man story. And if you do a ven diagram between the two, you will find they have a lot more in common than you might think! A man was arrested Thursday night after police say he caused a scene in Cape Coral canals while drunk and fled on his boat after striking several docks.
According to the Cape Croal Police Department, Kurt Snowden, 51, was arrested after officers went to the 2100 block of Southwest 45th Terrace. A call had come in regarding a boating hit-and-run around 9:15 p.m. The call notes said a man later identified as Snowden was operating a boat inside the canals while highly drunk, causing a scene. He played music loudly, screamed, disturbed the peace and struck several docks in the area with his boat. Witnesses at the scene gave similar accounts of what happened. They led officers to where Snowden was still operating the boat. Officers ordered him to dock his boat, which he refused to do, steering the boat toward his home. https://winknews.com/2023/03/17/boater-accused-of-dui-chaos-in-cape-coral-canals-evading-police/ 
That’s it this week for: [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"]Stupidest State 2023: Single Elimination Round Week 2 [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s do one final clip this week! Yeah so is buying anything that Jim Bakker sells you. I mean who needs 13 gallons of industrial grade mac and cheese? Seriously, marketing to doomsday preppers has got to be a racket. SMH. Now it’s time for Stupidest State! 16 states will enter and only one state will become the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State! 
Folks, Stupidest State 2023 Round 1 Week 1 is officially in the books! Last week, it was a nail biter as Kansas edged out Nevada to take the lead in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference. While over in the Gun Nut Conference, Montana shot their way to the top against Idaho to advance to the Elite 8! This week it’s going to be a good one, as Kentucky battles red hot Florida for Batshit Conference supremacy, while over in the Family Values Conference, it’s #3 Utah is taking on #4 Oklahoma for a shot to advance to the Elite 8! We’re live at the home of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the fabulous T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip for all the exciting action! Let’s go to the floor, shall we? [font size="4"]Batshit Conference: Florida Vs. Kentucky [/font] [font size="2"]Florida [/font] 
Everyone knows the Sunshine State. They are the home of many sports teams such as the Tampa Bay Lighting and Rays, and the Miami Marlins and Heat. And universities, namely the Florida Gators and the Miami Hurricanes, and some of the best beaches and beautiful women in the world. It’s also home to Donald Trump’s mega mansion Mar-A-Lago and also to the Walt Disney World Resort & Epcot Center, which as you know, is currently under control of the state. That’s right – Florida’s governor is Ron DeSantis, who has been in the news an awful lot lately. And none of it is particularly flattering for him, but you know what they say – even the worst news gets your name in the news! A passage in Gov. Ron DeSantis' new book that talks about his upbringing and values is attracting attention, with some mocking it as pandering to voters in two key Midwestern states.
"I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay," DeSantis wrote. "but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving." "I was geographically raised in Orlando with a cultural perspective that allows me to easily detect BS when I see it," tweeted state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat. "I was geographically raised in Plurality-of-the-Caucuses, Iowa but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," tweeted Democratic operative Max Steele, referencing other important early states on the primary election calendar. https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/20/ron-desantis-florida-governor-book-passage-on-midwest-upbringing-mocked/70029710007/ 
Is there anything these creeps won’t just flat out lie about? They lie about everything. One thing that DeSantis is not lying about is that he’s a bloodthirsty tyrant who’s out for absolute power. In the last few weeks we’ve seen him take over Disney’s governing body Reedy Creek and Central Florida’s New College, and he’s not stopping there! Oh no, my friends! In fact he’s plotting to take over the world and he wants America’s help to do so! So what does he want with his own private army? Well… this is something that could go incredibly wrong very quickly! Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is requesting $98 million in funding this year to boost the Florida State Guard, which one critic has branded "a private army", according to local network News 7.
DeSantis revived the Florida State Guard (which was originally created for home defense during World War II) in 2022, and is now seeking to expand it from 400 soldiers to 1,500, saying it is needed to help with emergency response measures and to back up the Florida National Guard. Unlike the Florida National Guard, which can be called up by the President, the State Guard cannot.. However, the move proved controversial with Florida Democrats, with state Senator Annette Taddeo accusing DeSantis of establishing a "vigilante militia" under his command. Representative Charlie Crist went even further, comparing the plan to a "handpicked secret police." ... https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-100m-private-florida-army-raises-questions-1786877 
[font size="2"]Kentucky [/font] 
Kentucky. What is there to say about the Blue Grass State that hasn’t been said already. Kentucky is home to some absolutely beautiful scenery. It’s also home to bourbon country, of course Blue Grass music, and the Kentucky Derby. Its’ signature food is the Kentucky Hot Brown, which is basically a turkey sandwich covered in mornay sauce and topped with bacon, tomato, and more cheese. Yeah it’s a heart attack on bread. Kentucky is also home to Louisville and University Of Kentucky – two schools who won’t be making it to this year’s Sweet 16. But the state that keeps electing Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell also has it’s own share of problems. A group opposing a ballot question to eliminate abortion as a constitutionally protected right has amassed more than $3 million ahead of the high-stakes referendum that will likely foretell the future of abortion access in Kentucky.
Abortion-rights group Protect Kentucky Access had raised more than $3 million by October 12, according to campaign finance reports filed Wednesday evening. More than $1.25 million of PKA’s money was raised in the last 30 days. The group urging a “no” vote on Constitutional Amendment No. 2, has raised roughly five-times as much as Yes for Life. PKA’s earnings in 2022 have been buttressed by hefty donations from national groups, including Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union. Combined in 2022, those organizations fronted more than $1 million. https://www.yahoo.com/news/ky-abortion-amendment-opponents-raises-153804931.html 
Yeah there’s some dark money involved in this country right now. Time to figure out where it’s coming from! Louisville is also home to another religious business that thinks that it’s above the law. That’s right, just like Colorado’s Christian cake maker, Kentucky has its’ own problem with a religious business that thinks that it’s above the law. Really which begs the question – is there only one wedding photographer in the entire state of Kentucky? Seriously, stop patronizing these people! A federal district court has ruled in favor of a Louisville photographer who filed a lawsuit against the city in 2019, alleging its Fairness Ordinance violated her constitutional rights as a Christian because it could force her to take on same-sex wedding assignments.
In a 44-page ruling Tuesday from U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton, the court granted a request by Chelsey Nelson, owner of Chelsey Nelson Photography, for an injunction against the city's ordinance, saying the city could not use the law to compel her to photograph same-sex weddings or "otherwise express messages inconsistent with Nelson's beliefs," and could not prohibit her from advertising on her website that she only photographs opposite-sex ceremonies. Her lawsuit had claimed through the Fairness Ordinance, the city was forcing her to promote and participate in ceremonies that she opposed for religious reasons. And the judge agreed, saying in the ruling that while she had never been asked to photograph a same-sex wedding, "state law protects her photography and associated blogging from the burdens the City seeks to impose." https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2022/08/31/federal-court-rules-chelsey-nelson-photography-vs-louisville-fairness-ordinance/65465495007/ 
[font size="2"]And The Winner Is: [/font] Come on, was there any doubt about this one? Florida utterly routs Kentucky to advance to the next round. In fact they’re so far ahead of Kentucky that their players are performing Harlem Globetrotters style stunts. And that’s all she wrote! Final score – 88 – 63. Florida will advance, Kentucky goes home! [font size="4"]Family Values Conference: Utah Vs. Oklahoma [/font] [font size="4"]Utah [/font] 
This is the first time Utah is in this tournament and for good reason! They narrowly edged out fan favorite Indiana for a spot in this year’s tournament! The Beehive State is home to some gorgeous scenery and some of the best skiing in the entire country. It’s also home to the godfather of all small town film festivals - Park City Film Festival – a place where stars go to be seen and new films go to get sold and applauded for 25 minutes after the film ends. I mean, seriously, how long can people clap? Well what else is Utah the home of? Utah is also the home of the Mormon Church, and also it’s famously the home of polygamy! That’s right – you can have 7 wives, but that’s not exactly what one would call “legal”. Family and followers of Samuel Bateman gather around as he calls from police custody after he was arrested in September in Arizona. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)
The self-proclaimed prophet claimed it was “impressions of Heavenly Father’s will” that spurred him to force his followers, including children, to engage in sexual acts, according to new allegations from the FBI. ...Samuel Rappylee Bateman, a leader of an offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, allegedly counted his own daughter and other juvenile girls among his more than 20 “wives.” Many of them were younger than 15, an FBI agent wrote in a court document filed Friday. Bateman’s alleged foray into polygamy began in 2019, when he was married to one woman and had a daughter who was roughly 14. While in the car one day, the daughter later told investigators, Bateman said that he felt like she was his wife and that he would make her have a child if his feelings turned out to be right. When Bateman told his actual wife, she moved out of their home with their daughter and got a restraining order against him, according to the court filing, previously reported by the Salt Lake Tribune. But Bateman allegedly continued to tell his daughter that he wanted to kiss and touch her. From then on, the FBI agent wrote, he accumulated wives. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/05/arizona-polygamist-wives/ 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Utah is also the home of some good ol’ fashioned right wing authoritarianism! That’s right – the right wing battle with trans conspiracy theories is coming to a state near you! And the hate is only going to get worse. But this certainly isn’t an isolated incident – there’s this type of humiliation happening all over the country. If you want to stop the problem, stop the source – Fox News. But this type of thing is fucking evil and it’s not going away. Does everything have to be a conspiracy with these fucking morons? Probably. When a girl left her competitors in the dust at a state-level school sports competition in Utah last year, not everyone was impressed with her inspiring athleticism. The parents of the girls who came in second and third couldn’t accept the winner had simply “outclassed” their daughters—so they called her gender into question, sparking a secret investigation that delved into the winner’s personal history.
At a meeting of Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee on Wednesday, a school sports official recounted the grim probe, and added that it wasn’t an isolated incident. David Spatafore, the Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA) legislative representative, told the committee that his organization had received multiple complaints in which parents claimed “that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough.” Spatafore would not disclose the sport or the school associated with the case where the winner had outclassed her competitors last year. But he did reveal that the UHSAA asked the student’s school to investigate by looking back through her school-enrollment records. “The school went back to kindergarten,” Spatafore said, “And she’d always been a female.” Neither the pupil nor her family were told about the investigation. “We didn’t get to the parents or the student simply because if all of the questions about eligibility were answered by the school or the feeder system schools, there was no reason to make it a personal situation with a family or that athlete,” Spatafore explained, according to The Desert News. https://www.thedailybeast.com/sore-loser-utah-parents-spark-investigation-to-see-if-winning-girl-is-transgender?ref=home 
[font size="4"]Oklahoma [/font] 
The Sooner State is back for another go round in the tournament! The Sooner State is home to some of the craziest high school and college football in the entire country with dueling universities Oklahoma and Oklahoma State battling it out for superiority every year. But in terms of family values, Oklahoma’s got it all, no matter what your preferred flavor of batshit crazy conservativism is. Whether it’s racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, the Sooner State has it all! And one of the things that Oklahoma is known for? Prisons! And also racism! So what happens when you combine the two? Well you get a security guard who was using some white supremacists as his own personal army! But hey you know, won’t somebody please think of the children? An Oklahoma corrections officer is headed to prison after he was caught using white supremacist gangs to go after Black inmates in his own personal hit squad.
The Justice Department reported on Monday afternoon that Matthew Ware of the Kay County Detention Center (KCDC) was sentenced to 46 months, nearly four years, in prison. It's unclear if the prison will be the one where he worked, however. "This defendant is being held accountable for abusing his position of power and authority to, among other things, facilitate an attack carried out by white supremacists on a Black inmate,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement on the DOJ site. "This sentence handed down reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s actions and ensures accountability for his unlawful conduct. The Justice Department will continue to hold corrections officials accountable, including those in leadership positions, when they willfully violate the constitutional rights of detainees and inmates in their custody and control." “A jury found that Mr. Ware abused his position of power over the individuals in his custody,” said U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester who serves the Western District of Oklahoma. "Today’s sentence holds him accountable for that conduct. Mr. Ware violated the laws he was sworn to uphold, betrayed the public trust and dishonored the many brave corrections officials who lawfully perform their important work each day. My office remains committed to protecting the civil rights of all Oklahomans, including those in custody." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oklahoma-corrections-officer-imprisoned-for-using-white-supremacist-gang-as-his-own-personal-hit-squad/ar-AA14WPKj?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ea3af62e786c434ab5417099562645cc 
Nah, I’d say if anything they have too much Jesus! But the Family Values Conference is extremely competitive and has been since the horrifying and deliberate overturning of Roe V. Wade last year and the Christian right isn’t stopping there. In fact they’re just getting started. Because the Christian right is currently being controlled by Satan, and they have some utterly satanic laws that are coming down the pike in store for us. Because when you vote with family values in mind, you’re not getting any actual family values. You’re getting shit like this. A new Oklahoma abortion ban is a futuristic nightmare of government control of women’s bodies, made real. This law, which comes in the wake of the news that the Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, is one of the most restrictive in the country.
To know how sinister and scary this Oklahoma law really is, consider this: The law bans abortions at the point of “fertilization,” which it defines as “the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.” Previously, Oklahoma had banned abortions at six weeks—a point when most women do not know they’re pregnant. Now the state has banned abortion at the point when by definition the pregnant person cannot know they are pregnant. The only exceptions to the law are in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the pregnant woman—exceptions that are increasingly rare in abortion legislation. In all other ways, this is a sweeping forced birth law. “Oklahoma is now the only state in the United States to successfully outlaw abortion while Roe v. Wade still stands,” the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote in a press release. “A coalition of Oklahoma abortion providers and a reproductive justice organization will imminently file a challenge to the ban and seek to block it in court.” https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/details-oklahoma-abortion-ban-horrifying-170000623.html 
[font size="2"]And The Winner Is: [/font] Oh man was this a close one! We’re down to the last minute here… Utah has the ball! For three… it’s good!!!! Oh a foul has been called with 20 seconds left! Shot number one… it’s in! Shot number two… and it’s also good! And that’s all she wrote, folks! Utah sinks Oklahoma in a nail biter, final score 91 – 87! Utah moves on to the Elite 8, Oklahoma goes home! [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] It’s Round 1 Week 3! And it’s a battle for who can go for broke in the Beltway in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference showdown as #3 Ohio takes on #4 Wisconsin! Meanwhile, it’s a battle of Gun Nut Conference heavyweights as #1 Texas takes on red hot #2 Missouri! We're live at the home of the Phoenix Coyotes, the Talking Stick Resort Arena, in Glendale, Arizona for all the exciting 1st round action! The Elite 8 is shaping up, folks! Be sure to follow top10conidiots @ mstdn.party for updated brackets and stats! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]The Winery Dogs[/font] Folks, my next guest is a legendary heavy metal supergroup. Their latest album is called III. You can see them on tour through May 25th! Playing their song "Xanadu", give it up for the Winery Dogs! Thank you Miami! This was fun! We’re going to Vancouver, Canada next for our Canadian edition! See you next week!  
Credits Host: Initech Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Miami Improv, Miami, FL The Winery Dogs Appear Courtesy Of: Three Dog Music, LLC. Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Mastodon At: [email protected] Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Mastodon At: [email protected] Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected] 
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Mar 23, 2023, 05:02 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-7: We Don't Need No Sex Education Edition
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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!
Credits Host: Initech Anti-Flag Appears Courtesy Of: Spinefarm Records Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: DC Improv, Washington, DC Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Mastodon At: [email protected] Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Mastodon At: [email protected] Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
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Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Mar 16, 2023, 05:11 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-6: Put Me In Coach, I'm Ready To Play Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-6: Put Me In Coach, I’m Ready To Play Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooooo! What’s up, Portland? Believe it or not, this is our first time in the ME! Yeah how about that? And you guys are in for a treat because it’s my favorite Top 10 of the entire year aside from our Year In Review edition. Because it’s time for Stupidest State 2023! Yes folks the NFFSA is back! I hope y’all filled out your brackets because we’ve got a whopper of a tournament planned this year and some shake ups and hook ups! But that being said it’s going to be a hell of a tournament this year! And by the way after we come back from France, our following edition may be cut into a Top 4. But don’t worry, it won’t affect Holy Shit or Stupidest State. OK do we have time for the thing? Of course we do. So you know the Oscars are this weekend and depending on how things go, we may have discuss this in next week’s I Need A Drink. But anyway after last year’s incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock, the Academy is taking no chances on a repeat of the infamous pimp slap heard ‘round the world. But come on, you know that they’re planning to make this year’s festivities incident free. The thing is, folks, is don’t do what Will Smith did. We all know that he set a bad precedent with that slap, and we most certainly don’t need anyone imitating… hey what are you doing up here? Uh… security??? Oh come on now! That was uncalled for. You know the key to good comedy is always timing! OK enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to, but first John Oliver is back (yay!) and he delves into the subject of Artificial Intelligence, and I’m sure you’ve heard of ChatGPT by now: So where do we begin this week? In the number one slot this week, is the GOP (1). So Joe Biden spent President’s day visiting war torn Kiev and Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky, which caused the MAGA conspiracy theorist nutcases to melt down and the conspiracy theories to fly! In the second slot this week is that guy who we inexplicably used to call president, Donald J. Trump (2). He went to East Palestine to tour that devastating train collision, which was a product of his own doing, and handed out Big Macs and red hats to anyone who cared to listen to his nonsense. Taking the number 3 slot this week is Kevin McCarthy (3). That’s right – the speaker of the house, in one of the most blatantly partisan dick moves in House history, simply handed obtained footage of January 6th over to Tucker Carlson, because, spite. Yeah Fox News owns that party and it’s insane. Speaking of insanity in the number 4 slot, we’re going to play our favorite game “IS IT RACIST?” because conservatives can’t help themselves saying racist stuff, and Dilbert creator Scott Adams stepped in it because of some racist comments he said on a podcast, so stop saying racist stuff! In the number 5 slot this week is a new edition of We’re All Gonna Die (5). After COVID, you know that disease patrol is on high alert to stop the next pandemic, but is the recent Marburg virus outbreak in West Africa going to kill us all? Maybe, maybe not. 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 pastor is going to expose who’s really behind those insanely cryptic and annoying “He Gets Us” series of advertisements. In the number 7 slot this week, after refusing aid from the train derailment disaster, we add Ohio governor Mike DeWine (Q – Batshit) (7) to the ever growing list of People Who Somehow Got Elected! Taking the number 8 slot this week is a new edition of Conspiracy Corner – Marjorie Three Names (8) suggests that the USA is heading for a “national divorce” of blue states and red states, so we’ll break down exactly what that means! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new “I Need A Drink” (9) and this week, you know how we say that social media is going to kill us all, well the latest Tik Tok challenge, the “Kool Aid Man Challenge” may do just that. Holy crap. Finally to close things out this week it’s that time! Stupidest State is here! It’s time for Stupidest State Selection Sunday (10)! This week, we’re live at the fabulous YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California and we have all of the states, stats, odds, and info you need to fill out those brackets! Plus to close things out, we have some live music from our good friend Post Malone joining us! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! [div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]The Biden Ukraine Visit [br] [/font] You know in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on. And an extremely bad man is looking to take over the world. I’m of course talking about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly evil regime in the Kremlin. Let me explain basic diplomacy to the MAGAs and Fox News hosts who may happen to be lurking here. When countries like each other, they help each other out. When countries realize there’s a threat out there, they also help each other out. So last week, PRESIDENT Joe Biden decided to do something to look presidential by visiting the war torn country of Ukraine. Which naturally caused the right wing echo chamber to enter full blown meltdown mode. But before we get into the right wing meltdown, we have to talk about what actually happened first. Appearing in a war zone under regular attack, White House officials describe Joe Biden's unexpected visit to Ukraine's capital Kyiv as "unprecedented in modern times".
They say previous presidential trips to wartime Iraq and Afghanistan had the back up of a heavy US military presence. And despite widespread speculation among the press corps that Mr Biden might be planning a trip to Ukraine while he was in Poland, the visit still took everyone completely by surprise. The sight of him appearing beside President Volodymyr Zelensky in the heart of Kyiv and under the sound of air raid sirens, makes a louder statement than anything he can say in a speech in Poland. "It was risky and should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that Joe Biden is a leader who takes commitment seriously," said White House communications director Kate Bedingfield. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64710479?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_medium=social&at_format=link&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=B310605A-B140-11ED-B96A-40ED4744363C&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_link_origin=BBCNews 
Hell yeah! That’s what real leaders do instead of wallowing around watching TV and figuring out how to score points with the echo chamber. And no, MAGAs, I don’t want to hear about how things would have been different if Trump were president. Seriously, fuck off with that shit already. But here’s the thing, while conservatives are migrating towards helping Putin with his illegal and immoral invasion, democrats are firming up their support. So yeah while the world is watching in horror with what Vlad is doing to Ukraine, we’ve got their backs! Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made an unannounced trip to Kyiv on Monday to emphasize the Biden administration’s continued support for Ukraine as the country prepares for Russia’s highly-anticipated spring offensive.
“I bring to Kyiv a clear message from President Biden and the American people: We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Yellen said during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yellen said she particularly hoped to highlight the White House’s “close partnership in providing economic and budgetary support” for Ukraine. “As you have said, our support is not ‘charity,’” Yellen told Zelenskyy. “It’s an ‘investment in global security and democracy.’” https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/27/treasury-sec-trip-ukraine-00084557 
Right? Well here’s where the bad part comes in. it’s truly scary and disheartening to see the GOP fall under the spell of Vladimir Putin. But then again it’s also totally on brand for them. Because as we have seen time and time again, the GOP really is becoming the “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” party so if you tell them that Vladimir Putin is the bad guy, then the GOP will somehow mistake him as being the good guy. That’s what happens when your mind is rotted by a continuously operating echo chamber that spews hate and lies 24 hours a day. While President Biden projected that the U.S. is united in backing Ukraine during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday and in Poland on Tuesday, the Republican response to his trip exposed division in the party on Ukraine support as the war fighting off Russian invasion hits the one-year mark this week.
-snip- On one end of the spectrum, firebrand Republicans criticized Biden for visiting Ukraine and called for an end to Ukraine funding. “They need to be encouraging diplomatic solutions,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said of the Biden administration on Fox Business on Tuesday. “They’re going to ratchet it up … You’re going to see more and more people die through violent means.” -snip- On the other end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed Biden in projecting support for Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference last week, declaring that “reports about the death of Republican support for strong American leadership in the world have been greatly exaggerated.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-ukraine-visit-exposes-gop-110000056.html 
I know, right? But don’t worry, we’ll get to Former President Goofus’ visit to Ohio in a minute, and no, MAGAs, I really don’t care what would have happened if the other guy did it, OK? I care about what’s happening now. What’s happening now is that there is a fucking mad man in the Kremlin who’s out for world domination and he’s waging a war that he shouldn’t have, and is getting absolutely humiliated on a global stage, like he should have been. History isn’t kind to tyrants, and Vladimir Putin may be one of the biggest in world history. Some right-wing United States Republicans are slamming Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine, invoking crises at home that they accuse the president of ignoring as he pledges support for Kyiv.
The opposition to Biden’s previously unannounced visit on Monday highlighted the views of a small but vocal cohort of ultraconservative US legislators who are sceptical of US support for Ukraine. First-term Republican Congressman Andy Ogles accused Biden of prioritising “political field trips” on Monday. “America-last Biden visited UKRAINE before visiting the people living through an environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio,” Ogles wrote on Twitter, referring to a toxic chemicals spill after a train derailment in Ohio earlier this month. Still, the trip earned praise from Democrats who lauded Biden’s “leadership” in supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/20/389 
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[font size="8"]That Former President     [br] [/font] [br]
Let me ask you something, Portland – how many people here were born in the 80s and 90s? OK show of hands, don’t be shy! OK we’ve got a few of you. I’m an 80s kid personally. So now how many of you growing up remember Highlights Magazine? Oh really? That’s still a thing? I had no idea. Well if you know that magazine, they used to have a comic feature called Goofus And Gallant. The thing about this comic is that Gallant would be the good one, and show you what to do in a situation. And then there’s Goofus, who shows you what not to do. So let’s take a look at two presidents. Joe Biden, who looks like Gallant, and went to the Ukraine, and was awesome. Former president Goofus, on the other hand, went to East Palestine, Ohio to visit the train disaster. Which he caused. But how cute that he’s trying to look presidential in an effort to win back Fox voters and other swing voters that he may have disenfranchised in the last few years. Former U.S. President Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, the site of a train derailment that led to a toxic spill near the border with Pennsylvania.
He made a speech in support of officials and emergency responders dealing with the crisis—before visiting a McDonald's restaurant to buy food for local firefighters and his flight home. He criticized the federal response to the incident as a "betrayal," echoing recent comments from the town's mayor, Trent Conaway, who was standing behind Trump during his speech. With Trump came pallets of bottled water, including some the former commander-in-chief—who has announced his intention to run for a third time in 2024—said he had brought on his plane. However, many social media users have suggested that the Trump-branded water he delivered was 13 years old. During his visit, Trump spoke alongside local officials and J.D. Vance, a freshman Republican senator for Ohio, at a firehouse roughly half a mile from the crash site. On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed with 38 cars coming off the tracks, 11 of which were carrying toxic chemicals. https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-donald-trump-bottled-water-east-palestine-1783322 
Boy this really screams “put me in coach, I’m ready to play”, doesn’t it? Like the song! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… I could imagine Tucker Carlson’s face on Lucy while pulling the football away from Biden’s Charlie Brown, that’s a good one! But of course like most things he does, Trump’s claims are greatly overexaggerated. Trump is that guy on the sidelines who thinks that he could do a better job of coaching than the actual coach does. Hell that’s practically how he wormed his way into the White House by claiming he could do everything better than Obama could. It worked for a while, but then it didn’t. The other rules scrapped by the 45th president were for recurring safety audits of railroads and the requirement of having at least two crew members aboard freight trains. (Though the Norfolk Southern train that derailed had three crew members aboard, Politico notes that in regard to the two-member rule, the Trump administration claimed “a train crew staffing rule would unnecessarily impede the future of rail innovation and automation.”)
“Congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail-industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. He added that GOP lawmakers “laid the groundwork” for the Trump administration to get rid of safety requirements and, while he was at it, claimed House Republicans want to “defund our ability to protect drinking water.” (House Republicans last year proposed major cuts to the EPA, including scrapping its Surface Water Protection Program.) “There is only one way they can prove that they are finally disowning their long history of giveaways to rail-industry management at the expense of communities like East Palestine: work across the aisle with us to put Obama-Biden protections back in place and go further, including with higher fines for rail pollution and properly equipping the EPA.” Could Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have publicly addressed the disaster sooner and visited the site before Trump? Yes, sure. (In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Buttigieg admitted as much, saying: “I was focused on just making sure that our folks on the ground were all set but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.“) Is it completely ridiculous for Trump to show up while failing to acknowledge the damage done by his administration? Also yes! https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/donald-trump-east-palestine-ohio-train 
Yeah and that’s about the playbook for this whole exercise. Like are we really supposed to believe that Trump is presidential material after that stunt? He brought a pallet of cheap looking bottled and went and bought some McDonalds, while mocking the staff there, and somehow that makes him suddenly a man of the people? And we really got to stop letting him get away with the blame game, because this shit is getting really old now. I mean he’s getting really predictable and this is coming from someone who used to predict what he was going to say back when he was president. Trump’s 10-minute speech — loaded with other political finger-pointing — came as the political blame for both the crisis and the response cascades toward both parties. Residents remain worried about air and water safety, long-term health and environmental effects and the compounded impact those fears will have on local businesses.
Republicans have seized on the derailment to hammer Biden and his administration. A number of Republicans — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential contender — have criticized Biden for not visiting the village, saying his priorities were out of order because he chose to visit Ukraine instead. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has also become a focus of the partisan attacks, with at least one Republican senator calling for his resignation. Buttigieg has also not visited East Palestine since the derailment; he is expected to be here Thursday. Democrats have rapped the GOP, meanwhile, for lax regulation of the freight railroad industry, including the Trump administration’s 2017 suspension of a requirement that trains carrying flammable liquids be outfitted with faster brakes. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-points-fingers-biden-administration-east-palestine-visit-rcna71568
Oh fuck off! Nothing the Biden administration was going to do was going to be the correct response in the eyes of the MAGA Fox News cult. Like Biden could make a speech about the sky being blue and Hannity and Tucker would be on the air every night arguing that the sky is neon pink. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice one again! But leave it to former President Goofus to screw everything up and make it about himself. Just ugh… this is going to be a ridiculously long time until the 2024 election isn’t it? I can’t even… Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday described the federal response to the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, as a “betrayal” as visited the village amid mounting frustration from residents and local leaders more than two weeks after the disaster.
Trump, wearing his trademark red “Make America Great Again” cap and an overcoat, said the community needs “answers and results,” not excuses. He spoke at a firehouse roughly half a mile from where more than three dozen freight cars — including 11 carrying hazardous materials — came off the tracks near the Pennsylvania state line. “In too many cases, your goodness and perseverance were met with indifference and betrayal,” Trump said. He appeared with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Mayor Trent Conaway and other state and local leaders, giving the visit the look of an official trip. The former president and other Republicans have intensified criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the Feb. 3 derailment, which led to evacuations and fears of air and water contamination after a controlled burning of toxic chemicals aboard the rail cars. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has blasted Trump and other Republicans for loosening rail safety measures and environmental protections when Republicans were in charge in Washington. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-visits-east-palestine-train-derailment-site-calls-response-a-betrayal 
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[font size="8"]Kevin McCarthy [br] [/font] [br]
It's completely insane that conservatives are still gung ho on getting their petty revenge for everything that happened in 2020, and we may never hear the end of it. The latest clusterfuck coming from House Speaker and guy who looks like he just dragged his red tie through a pile of mud, Kevin McCarthy (Q – Batshit) may be the ultimate partisan fuck you move. This is utterly despicable that he would do such a thing, but totally on brand for today’s MAGA conservatives. I mean seriously, if Fox News told their viewers to jump off the Grand Canyon, they would be pushing and shoving each other to be the first in line. But what we got out of this latest political stunt is that Fox News completely fucking owns the GOP and they can’t get away with it. Hell, Fox is replacing what few sane conservatives are left with crazy MAGA bootlickers. Well enough of my rambling, let??s get to the latest political stunt in what is going to be a ridiculously long two years. Hold your boos. Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) move to give Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to tens of thousands of hours of Capitol security footage from the Jan. 6 attack has the potential to warm his relationship with cable television’s most powerful conservative commentator.
Over the last few years, Carlson has taken high-profile jabs at McCarthy, knocking the GOP leader as a “puppet” Democrat better suited for MSNBC than the Speakership. In granting Carlson exclusive access to the footage, McCarthy fulfilled an explicit request from Carlson during last month’s Speaker’s fight. The move has sparked a firestorm of controversy on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are hammering the decision to give sensitive security footage to a media figure whose 2021 “Patriot Purge” documentary series suggested the riot was a “false flag” operation designed to persecute Trump supporters. Yet Carlson has become the most-watched cable news pundit not despite such controversies, but largely because of them. And Carlson’s influence is unmatched by any other commentator in the conservative ecosystem — a dynamic, sources say, that likely influenced McCarthy’s decision to grant him exclusive access to the Jan. 6 footage. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3876292-mccarthy-woos-one-time-critic-tucker-carlson-with-jan-6-tapes/ 
It’s like conservatives are trying to out crazy each other. No one is that evil and stupid right? Well come on, we’re living in the post Donald Trump era. It seems no matter how low conservatives go, other conservatives can go even lower. Shit, there’s a bill being proposed in Florida right now that would completely eliminate the Democratic party. I mean come on, that’s some totalitarian third world shit right there. And seriously, the hate and division in this country is completely insane. And giving all of this to Tucker Carlson is just more fuel for the fire. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Tuesday defended his decision to hand over tens of thousands of hours of security video from the Jan. 6 insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
McCarthy told reporters that he was following the precedent of the House Jan. 6 committee in giving a news network early, exclusive access to video that he said he would later release more widely. "So he’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country," McCarthy said. Asked when the video would be released to other outlets and the public, McCarthy said, “As soon as possible.” A group of news organizations, including NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, asked McCarthy on Friday to share the security video with them. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York is among the Democrats who have denounced McCarthy, saying his decision to share thousands of hours of Jan. 6 video “poses grave security risks” to lawmakers and Capitol staff members. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/scalise-defends-mccarthys-decision-give-jan-6-tapes-tucker-carlson-spe-rcna72674 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Insane that they think this is all a game to them. Don’t give a shit if it’s exclusive or not, I have Fox News blocked from my DVR in the off chance I may come across it, because fuck Rupert Murdoch. And by the way I love that Trump thinks that this is a threat because he wasn’t consulted on it. But hey, leave it to the My Pillow guy to the rescue! I mean come on, this is what is representing the Republican party these days. Talk show hosts and shitty product influencers for shitty products. Is that all they got? No wonder no one is taking them seriously anymore. This just shows you how far gone the GOP is. On Monday, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — a close Trump associate who has been one of the largest financial backers of the election-denialism movement since late 2020 — told Rolling Stone he’s now working with two attorneys, Doug Wardlow and Pat McSweeney, to file a lawsuit against McCarthy as soon as within the “next few days.” Lindell says he and his legal team have drafted a suit arguing his streaming program, Lindell TV, is being “injured” and discriminated against by not enjoying equal access to the unreleased Jan. 6 trove. The Trump ally, who often finds himself to the pro-Trump right of Fox News, notes that he doesn’t trust Fox’s “agenda” with these tapes, and dubs McCarthy’s decision “disgusting” and allegedly unconstitutional.
“As you correctly and publicly stated, the footage ‘belong[s] to the American public.’ Accordingly, I request the same access for my media company, Lindell TV,” the MyPillow CEO wrote to McCarthy in a Feb. 23 letter he provided to Rolling Stone. “Please have your staff reach out to me to arrange for access.” As it were, lawyer Charles Tobin — on behalf of news organizations such as Axios, ProPublica, and Politico — sent a letter to congressional leaders last week, calling for broader media access to the videos, writing that “the incredible public interest in understanding what transpired on January 6 crosses party lines.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-tucker-carlson-tapes-maga-lawsuit-1234687833/ 
To the idiot mobile! That’s so hilarious that all they do is sue people. And they sue them for ridiculous amounts of money at that. And no real good or bad or any kind of change will happen as a result of these lawsuits. All it will do is tie up the courts and that’s about it. This whole stunt was just a way to score points with Fox News viewers and batshit insane conspiracy theorists, and that’s it. Come on, we all know what Tucker’s going to say and do with this. He’s going to paint it as a false flag or some other bullshit. Fox News is in full blown “nothing to see here, please disperse” mode. After all, a failed coup is a dress rehearsal for a successful one. And this should be more proof that Fox News is an ever increasing threat to the stability of this country. Back in December, Congress held a bipartisan ceremony honoring Capitol Police officers who died after defending the building from an armed insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. Families of fallen officers received gold medals on behalf of their loved ones. Then a bunch of them publicly dissed Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.
There’s no kind way to say it: they left the soon-to-be Speaker of the House hanging. “This is an integrity issue,” explained Craig Sicknick, brother of Officer fallen officer Brian Sicknick. “They took an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. And when somebody challenges it, like Trump, they do nothing,” he added. Sicknick was grossed out by GOP leaders' systematic efforts to undermine and obstruct accountability for the insurrection and coup attempt. That same week, this newsletter warned that McCarthy could only hold onto his wavering speaker bid by proving to the Trumpist GOP he’s an obedient pursuit of their pro-coup agenda. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake54p/kevin-mccarthy-tucker-carlson-jan-6 [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"]Scott Adams [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, let’s play the hot new game that’s sweeping the nation! 
Because we always say that if you have to ask, it’s probably racist! Look, look. Look. Here’s the thing, conservatives. We’ve been going through this shit every day for the last 8 years. And I’m getting really tired of having to explain this side of the circular firing squad. If you don’t want to get pegged as a racist, then don’t say racist stuff. You’re not getting “banned” or “canceled” because you’re a conservative posting conservative views on a social media website. You’re getting banned or canceled because your views that you’re posting are incredibly racist and sexist! So let’s take into account our latest subject this week. Scott Adams. You probably know him best as the creator of the long running workplace comic strip centered around uber nerd Dilbert. Dilbert, which spawned a TV show and tons of merchandise, is now not going to be a thing anymore. Because, the strip’s creator got caught saying racist stuff on a podcast. So , audience, how racist is it? Well, as you can guess, it’s extremely fucking racist. The creator of the Dilbert comic strip faced a backlash of cancellations Saturday while defending remarks describing people who are Black as members of “a hate group” from which white people should “get away.”
Various media publishers across the U.S. denounced the comments by Dilbert creator Scott Adams as racist, hateful and discriminatory while saying they would no longer provide a platform for his work. Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes Dilbert, did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment. But Adams defended himself on social media against those whom he said “hate me and are canceling me.” Adams, who is white, repeatedly referred to people who are Black as members of a “hate group” or a “racist hate group” and said he would no longer “help Black Americans.” Read more: https://apnews.com/article/animation-and-comics-business-e2266a2356d4159b7f43fdc095be9fcb 
Honestly there’s not enough facepalms for this one. I mean come on, have we learned nothing in the last 8 years since the dawn of the Trump administration? If you don’t want to be racist, then don’t say racist stuff. Seriously, remember when “Papa” John Schnatter went and said that he actually had to have someone tell him not to use the N word (see: Idiots #10-7 )? But this is one of those things that we love to point out on this program about actions having consequences. Look, this is the social media era. You can’t say racist things and expect that you’ll get off scot-free. You will be punished for this at some point. The comic strip “Dilbert” disappeared with lightning speed following racist remarks by creator Scott Adams, but it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has followed them both.
Adams, who is white, was an outspoken presence on social media long before describing Black people as a “hate group” on YouTube and, to some, “Dilbert” had strayed from its roots as a chronicler of office culture. The editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, which dumped “Dilbert” last year, said the comic strip “went from being hilarious to being hurtful and mean.” The Los Angeles Times, which joined dozens of other newspapers in dropping the comic following last week's remarks, had quietly replaced four of Adams' strips last year. “He kind of ran out of office jokes and started integrating all this other stuff so after a while, it became hard to distinguish between Scott Adams and ‘Dilbert,’” said Mike Peterson, columnist for the industry blog The Daily Cartoonist. He's attracted attention for comments he's made in the past, including saying in 2011 that women are treated differently by society for the same reason as children and the mentally disabled — “it's just easier this way for everyone.” He said 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina had an “angry wife face.” https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/dilbert-distributor-severs-ties-to-creator-over-17807588.php 
Oh yeah that’s definitely racist all right! Is someone just implanting these ideas in people’s heads now to make them go full racist and sexist? Did Scott Adams get replaced with Jordan Peterson? Well, think about it, have you ever seen the two of them in the same room together? But even the right wing echo chamber is outraged at what Adams is saying. But to them, he’s basically saying the quiet part out loud, because you know that’s what they’re secretly thinking. I’m not saying all republicans are racist, but all racists are republican. Let that sink in! And you know you fucked up when Newsmax complains! Newsmax hosts on Monday condemned Dilbert comic strip creator Scott Adams after he posted a "racist tirade" on Twitter.
In his rant, Adams alleged Black Americans are a "hate group" and said white people should "get away" from them. Many newspapers dropped the Dilbert comic following the remarks. "These comments are not good; they need to be addressed," Newsmax correspondent Christina Thompson said at the top of her report on Monday. Thompson described Adams' remarks as a "racist tirade." "I can't believe people like this are out there," she continued, "and that they have any sort of platform. I'm so sick of this type of hate; I'm so sick of this anger in the world. Can we please all just be kind? I don't understand why it's so hard for some people." https://www.rawstory.com/newsmax-scott-adams-racist-tirade/ 
So come on people, if you don’t want to get pegged as a racist then don’t say racist stuff. We honestly cannot emphasize this enough. So don’t be a Scott Adams. If you don’t want your life’s work to be canceled and disposed of, don’t be a douche. That’s all we can say here, and have been saying for years here. We always like to point out that actions have consequences, and if you say racist and sexist stuff, then you’ll get pegged as a racist and sexist. Once again, this is the same shit and different year and conservatives seem bent on taking us backwards. Is it racist? Yeah probably. The longtime comic-strip character Dilbert has been banished from his regular cubicle at hundreds of U.S. newspapers, and this time the only annoying co-worker to blame for his plight is the dude who draws him. The mass-cancellation began soon after Dilbert creator Scott Adams made a number of racist statements on his YouTube channel, effectively destroying his own comic strip after more than three decades in syndication. Over the weekend, billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk not only came to Adams’s defence, but claimed that the media was racist against white people, in response.
Adams broadcasted his racist rant on his YouTube show on Wednesday after being triggered by a questionably designed Rasmussen poll which suggested just over half of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s okay to be white” — a phrase the Anti-Defamation League has linked to the white supremacist movement which has gained broader popularity as a right-wing meme. In response to the poll, Adams called Black people a “hate group,” blamed them for “not focusing on education,” implied Black Americans were targeting “non-Black citizens” with violence, and effectively advocated for segregation: Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. By Friday, a growing number of newspapers were rapidly severing ties with Adams. “This is not a difficult decision,” wrote Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn on Friday, dismissing the notion that dropping Adams’s Dilbert was somehow related to so-called cancel culture: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/scott-adams-dilbert-cancelled-over-racist-rant-elon-musk-attacks-media.html 
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[font size="8"]We’re All Gonna Die [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, guess what? We’re all gonna die! Wooooooooooooooooooooo! Woooooooooooo!! Wooo! Wooo. Woo. So what’s going to kill us all this week? Well, it looks like the nightmare that’s completely upended our way of life, the COVID-19 pandemic, might finally be a thing of the past and we can’t wait for that to happen soon enough! But another pandemic just might be rearing its’ ugly heads so we’d better watch out! That’s right over in Central Africa, the reappearance of the Marburg virus has been enough to cause some alarm. I mean come on, haven’t we all had an ass full of “the alarm” by now, am I right? I can’t tell you how many hundreds of articles I read back at the beginning of the pandemic and every new variant where the headline was “Scientists sound the alarm”. So is there cause for alarm right now? Well there’s a lot to unpack here and the thing about the Marburg virus that you need to know is that it causes a very painful death. Like think if COVID and Ebola had a love child – yeah that painful! But for now you should probably avoid going to central Africa, but the right will go there anyways because their official motto is “fuck all y’all”. Two more people in Equatorial Guinea have died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a cousin of the Ebola virus, bringing the toll of fatalities to 11, the authorities say.
"Two days ago, the monitoring system recorded eight notifications, including the deaths of two people with symptoms of the disease," Health Minister Mitoha Ondo'o Ayekaba said in a statement issued late Tuesday. Work is underway "to strengthen assessment of the spread of the epidemic," said the statement, read on national television. "Forty-eight contact cases have been documented, four of whom have developed symptoms, and three who have been quarantined in hospital," it added. The Marburg virus is a rare but highly dangerous pathogen that causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure. https://www.voanews.com/a/death-toll-in-equatorial-guinea-marburg-outbreak-rises-to-11/6982164.html 
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit! That is a pretty fucked up way to die. Thankfully I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would travel to Equatorial Guinea any time soon! But in the off chance you do it’s always wise to take the necessary precautions. I mean in this day and age you can’t have too much protection if you know what I’m saying! But again what we’re dealing with here is an extremely dangerous pathogen. And we don’t want a repeat of 2020 under any circumstances. A second pandemic would be worse than the first! Canada is advising travellers to avoid non-essential travel to a specific province in Equatorial Guinea currently experiencing an outbreak of the infectious Marburg virus.
Equatorial Guinea has placed more than 200 people in quarantine and restricted movement in its Kie-Ntem province, where the hemorrhagic fever known as Marburg disease was first detected earlier this month. As of Feb. 21, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting cases in nine people, including one confirmed, four probable and four suspected, all of whom have died. "It's not unusual that we see, a week or two later, that there are more cases that appear and that emerge," Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases expert at Toronto's University Health Network, told CTV's Your Morning on Monday. "But of course, simultaneous with that you've got public health teams that are trying to quell this, trying to identify cases, trying to provide support for patients, and of course support for close contacts, informing people what to do and where to go if they think they have a suspected case." https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/what-is-the-marburg-virus-canada-s-travel-advice-as-outbreak-confirmed-in-africa-1.6290854 
That’s a little extreme there isn’t it? Well again you can’t be too careful these days especially after we’re coming out of a worldwide pandemic. We definitely don’t want to be the cause of the next one if we can help it at all! But here’s where it helps to cut through the fear mongering, my fair audience. Is because bullshit is everywhere. It’s free and readily available. So here’s why we are saying this. Because reports were coming out about a mysterious pathogen being identified in Barcelona. Which of course prompted the media to go into full “we’re all gonna die” mode. So was it the Marburg virus or not? That’s the mystery. Spain has identified its first suspected case of Marburg disease.
The Spanish patient is a 34-year-old man who had recently traveled to the Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea. He was in a private hospital but has been transferred to an isolation unit at Hospital La Fe in Valencia for further tests, regional medical officials said. Marburg virus disease, or MVD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both people and non-human primates… Primates [including people] can become infected with Marburg virus, and may develop serious disease with high mortality.” Spanish health officials said Saturday that more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea have recently been quarantined because of Marburg disease. https://ptvnews.ph/spain-detects-first-suspected-case-of-marburg-disease/ 
No we’re not going to die… YET. This is why I say that this is why you need to pay attention to the bullshit. And seriously do the words “quarantine” or “containment” mean nothing to anybody anymore? I mean what the hell would you possibly travel to that specific region of Equatorial Guinea for other than safari or hunting? And even then there’s probably some much better places that you could travel to. Anyway look I know that we can’t police the next pandemic enough as it is, but we’ve all got to do our part. After all, they don’t call it “public” health for nothing! The Biden administration may soon deploy experimental doses of vaccine to a new outbreak of Marburg virus, officials told an "urgent" meeting convened by the World Health Organization this week, as health authorities are racing to contain the spread of the highly lethal disease in Equatorial Guinea.
The WHO says nine deaths have so far been reported of people with symptoms of Marburg, which like Ebola often include severe fever, diarrhea and bleeding. Up to 88% of Marburg cases have died after being infected in past outbreaks, usually within nine days after symptoms begin. An additional 16 suspected cases have been identified to date across Equatorial Guinea and 21 more are being monitored, the WHO said. No additional cases have been spotted in neighboring countries, although investigations are ramping up. "No confirmed cases have been reported in Cameroon or Gabon. But WHO is working with the ministry of health of Cameroon to investigate an alert in that country. We're also supporting the governments of Cameroon and Gabon to prepare to rapidly detect, isolate and provide care for any suspected cases," said Tedros. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marburg-outbreak-equatorial-guinea-us-experimental-vaccines/ 
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[font size="8"]Holy Shit: He Gets…Us? [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 my friends, we recently had a grand spectacle if you will. A giant pageant full of lights, pageantry, music, flashing lights, and carefully coordinated dance numbers. I’m not talking about Christmas. I’m not talking about Mardi Gras. I’m of course talking about the Super Bowl. And I know it was three weeks ago, which feels like an eternity in this day and age, but we’re not letting a certain company get away with a certain advertisement. You may have been seeing these advertisements pop up a lot lately. It’s call the “He Gets Us” campaign. You know what? Can we show one of these advertisements before we go any further? Roll the clip! Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. But I will say that these commercials are brought to you by David Green, the billionaire CEO of an arts and crafts store that you might have head of called Hobby Lobby, yes, *THAT* Hobby Lobby. You know we’ve covered Hobby Lobby’s past exploits in Holy Shit before (see: Top 10 #13-1 and Idiots #3-23 ). And these are people who do not support GAWD, they support the Unholy, Ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a man so disgusting that his name dare NOT be spoken in my church last week. And we almost broke our one rule last week, I might add. But that being said, these commercials are strange and we definitely want to bring you up to speed on them. What's the big deal? It's part of a well-funded campaign that is just getting started.
The advertisements are part of an effort to shift away from a negative public perception of Christians, and towards Jesus, says Bob Smietana, national reporter for Religion News Service, in an interview with NPR. Smietana says that the campaign is attempting to appeal to groups that may have felt excluded or repelled by the church in recent years, like members of the LGBTQ community, different races and ethnicities, those who lean more liberal politically, or people who have kept up with scandals of abuse. The group behind the campaign has also purchased an advertisement slot for this Sunday's Super Bowl, one of the most expensive brand platforms out there. The estimated costs for those ads will run around $20 million. In an interview with Christianity Today, the branding firm for the campaign said the plan included investing $1 billion over the next three years, a budget comparable to that of a major brand. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/06/1154880673/jesus-commercial-super-bowl-billboard-he-gets-us-hobby-lobby-evangelical-billion 
Sorry Hobby Lobby, you can spend all the money you want, but I will continue the stance that I’ve had from the beginning is that we will not be a part of the United States’ slide into becoming a religious fascist totalitarian country! Again these are people who are not on the side of GAWD! They are on the side of the Unholy Dark One! So you can run all of the advertisements that you want, but we won’t join your cult! Do you get that? Thank you Portland! But is there really a controversy about this? Either you are religious or you’re not. And the fastest growing religion is none of the above. So these commercials might be wasted on the youth. Anything even slightly controversial will have its fair share of detractors.
There are always two sides to every issue, and a massive $100 million dollar campaign about Jesus is not immune to criticism — even among those who support the underlying cause. For a little background, the He Gets Us campaign is meant to paint Jesus Christ in a new light, someone who understood the lowly and overlooked. It’s mostly a marketing campaign with a message for the masses. The organization behind He Gets Us even ran a Super Bowl commercial recently, which is when most of the controversy started. Many of the comments on their Facebook post about the Super Bowl ad are positive and supportive. A few are happy to see a campaign that raises awareness like this. Yet, for every encouraging post there is one that blasts the campaign as expensive and unnecessary. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbbrandon/2023/02/23/social-media-users-cant-decide-if-they-love-or-hate-the-he-gets-us-campaign/?sh=460729077621 
Yeah they should feel bad about themselves! But they won’t! But in regards to the Super Bowl this year, do you really need some ads featuring JAYSUS? I mean whatever your vice is, they got it covered – whether it’s booze or gambling or vaping! So in between ads for Draft Kings, and beer and expensive cars and the insurance needed to drive those expensive cars, sure why not Jesus? But do you really need to reduce the lord and savior to being an influencer and product hawker? Well have you seen the hundreds of Bible based apps out there? Yeah let’s not cheapen the image of the LAWRD here with your insanity. And “He Gets Us,” an ad campaign introduced last year to reintroduce Jesus, ran 90 seconds of advertising time at a cost of around $20 million, according to Jason Vanderground, president of Haven, the creative agency that works with the campaign.
The campaign, from a nonprofit of the same name, targets people who are spiritually open but skeptical of Christianity because they may view it as hypocritical, discriminatory or judgmental, Mr. Vanderground said. “What we’re trying to do is put the world’s biggest influencer on TV’s biggest stage,” he said before the game. The “He Gets Us” campaign also includes digital and social media, out-of-home advertising and ads on Uber vehicles, the organization said. Mr. Vanderground said messages such as “Jesus let his hair down, too” are meant to show that Jesus took part in celebrations. Mr. Vanderground said he hopes consumers will view the ads and come to the organization’s website, where they can read articles, watch videos, live chat with someone from the organization, find a number to text for prayers or find people in their communities to get coffee with. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-2023-super-bowl-ads-will-feature-booze-betting-and-jesus-d8dff447 
Nah, we’re not going to be doing that. So what’s the truth behind these ads? I mean why run them now and not like in the 1980s? Well they’re obviously trying to tie this into social media. But if you trace the money behind this campaign, you know that the people behind it are not on the side of GAWD. They are on the side of the Dark One and everything he stands for, which we learned last week includes bringing back public executions fire and brimstone style! My fair congregation, you ever hear of the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”? Well that’s exactly what this Hobby Lobby campaign looks to do. It might convert a few of the non-believers but that’s it. If you see the preachers on the street corner or on your TV like this one, beware! Green discussed his involvement in the campaign, and the Super Bowl ad spots, during a November 2022 interview with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.
“We are wanting to say — ‘we’ being a lot of different people — that he gets us,” Green said. “[Jesus] understands us. He loves who we hate. I think we have to let the public know and create a movement.” “He Gets Us” does not list donors on its website. “Funding for He Gets Us comes from a diverse group of individuals and entities with a common goal of sharing Jesus’ story authentically,” the site’s funding information page reads. “Most of the people driving He Gets Us, including our donors, choose to remain anonymous because the story isn’t about them, and they don’t want the credit.” Jason Vanderground, spokesperson for He Gets Us and president of creative marketing firm HAVEN, told CNN that The Servant Foundation uses a fund which “unites donors to provide pooled support for organizations while ensuring the organizations can operate without donors impacting specific messages.” “Funding for the campaign comes from a diverse group of individuals and entities with a common goal of sharing Jesus’ story authentically,” he said. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-cec/index.html 
Yes, everyone needs JAYSUS, or they don’t. That’s at least the official stance here at our church, not the church of Hobby Lobby! 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: Mike DeWine [br] [/font] [br]
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 – Ohio governor Mike DeWine (Q – Batshit). How in the ever loving fuck did this guy get elected? He seems hell bent on taking the Buckeye State to third world status. The Fox News installed governor of Ohio is facing increasing calls for his resignation thanks to his part in the great railroad disaster in East Palestine. Well how did that happen? The thing is there is a lot of finger pointing and blame gaming going on the news rounds as to who’s directly responsible for this easily preventable tragedy and the resulting environmental disaster that going to be the inevitable result. Think of it like the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 but on a much larger scale. Deregulated capitalism is eventually going to be the death of the United States and may result in the death of humanity. While most people are pointing and blaming, this is the end result of years of reckless conservative deregulation policies, each one crazier than the next. And Mike DeWine is the Louis DeJoy of Tom DeLays in sorting the logistics of this disaster out. The Governor of Ohio and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) faced protests at the weekend over the state's response to a train derailment near the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania and the shipment of toxic waste from the site.
Mike DeWine faced calls to resign over the state's handling of the crash, while the federal agency was told by lawmakers and concerned residents in other states to dispose of the waste in Ohio. The demonstrations came as the EPA told railway operator Norfolk Southern—whose contractors were responsible for waste disposal—to "temporarily pause" shipping of waste to disposal sites in Michigan and Texas. On Sunday, it said it would now be taken to two sites within Ohio, and stressed its "decades of experience dealing with hazardous waste." https://www.newsweek.com/ohio-train-derailment-governor-mike-dewine-calls-resign-toxic-waste-1783956
Yes, boo this man! He could resign, but you know that he won’t. Because the conservative right propaganda machine is out for absolute power and they don’t care what incompetent buffoons they run or who they stomp on in order to get it. They are a really bloodthirsty cult. But don’t you dare speak out against the cult because something really bad could happen to you. These are the people who scream about freedoms one minute, then want to lock up anyone who dares to question their motives the next minute. And governor Mike DeWine is certainly no exception to this rule – he’s just as crazy as the next elected MAGA politician. Police in Ohio arrested a NewsNation journalist on Wednesday as state Gov. Mike DeWine (R) was speaking at a news conference announcing that an evacuation order over last week's train derailment in East Palestine had been lifted.
The latest: NewsNation published video Thursday of its reporter Evan Lambert being pushed to the ground before being handcuffed during his arrest. Police said Thursday Lambert was talking loudly while DeWine was speaking and allegedly got into an argument with the Ohio National Guard commander. Lambert's attorney strongly rejected the police account and called claims that he was aggressive "patently false," per NewsNation. Police said Maj. Gen. John Harris Jr. asked Lambert to stop broadcasting and alleged that the D.C.-based correspondent of the Nexstar Media Group-owned cable channel responded aggressively. Harris pushed Lambert away because he was "convinced" Lambert "was prepared to do harm to me," according to the police statement, which NewsNation published in full on Thursday. https://www.axios.com/2023/02/09/newsnation-reporter-arrested-ohio-governor-press-conference 
Yes, at least you tried, Gov. DeWine. But the thing with this group of politicians is that we wouldn’t trust them to run a convenience store or get our order right at McDonalds. So what makes people think that someone like Gov. DeWine would be great in a disaster situation? Well, not a whole lot. But then again, our standards of what makes a great politician were significantly lowered in 2016. Allowing people like Gov. DeWine to take over states where they’re dominated by AM talk radio. But this whole thing regarding the situation in East Palestine is getting weirder by the minute and may take years to sort out this mess. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine won’t be declaring East Palestine a disaster area unless such a declaration can bring federal assistance to the village as it recovers from the Norfolk Southern derailment, fire, and chemical spill.
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown sent a letter to DeWine calling on the governor to declare a disaster to obtain more federal resources and aid to the town. The Governor’s office announced on Thursday that the state is not currently eligible for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Spokesman for DeWine, Dan Tierney told 21 News that under federal law, FEMA assists disaster-stricken communities pay for property damage not covered by insurance or another entity. Tierney says that the derailment did not cause major property damage in the village, and so far, Norfolk Southern has been paying for environmental testing and other needs like bottled water. https://www.wfmj.com/story/48396229/for-now-dewine-nixes-disaster-declaration-idea-for-east-palestine
That’s right – conservatives! These are the people who you elected to help keep you safe in a disaster that is really one that they themselves caused! Doesn’t matter how incompetent these buffoons are, apparently divisional politics and voting for the least qualified people because you want to “own the libs” is apparently more important than you know, actually living. And by the way you keep doing this to yourselves, MAGAs. You can blame Mike DeWine all you want, but really, the cause of this current wound in East Palestine is self-inflicted and you keep bringing it on yourselves by voting for these people. Republicans have spent weeks criticizing the response to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, lobbying attacks at any target close enough for something to stick. Seldom have they directly confronted the clear as day culprit: corporate-bought deregulation. The charade has now hit another milestone, as Republicans line up behind a party-wide push to deregulate water protection in the United States.
On Tuesday, the Republican-led House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted to reverse a Biden administration rule on water protection—which would affect communities contaminated by disaster like in East Palestine. In 2015, the Obama administration announced a rule that expanded the definition of what kinds of bodies of water can be covered under the Clean Water Act, the now 50-year-old law tasked with overseeing water pollution and protecting the integrity of the country’s waterways. In 2020, the Trump administration rolled back Obama’s changes, letting polluters off the hook and leaving regulators with less jurisdiction over protecting waterways. The approach limited federal protection to cover only “permanent” bodies of water and not other smaller but still impactful waterways, like streams of water that flow only part of the year. As a result, Trump’s rule deferred to states to determine what would and wouldn’t be protected by the Clean Water Act. In a case like Ohio, where the local government has been slow to respond to the contamination of water, such limits could make communities worse off. https://newrepublic.com/post/170848/fake-outrage-east-palestine-republicans-push-weaken-water-protection 
That’s disaster deregulating Ohio governor Mike DeWine – yet another inexplicable addition to the ever growing list of:
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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! So folks, the last two weeks you may have heard about our old friend Marjorie Three Names (Q – Batshit) spouting some insane conspiracy theories about how the red states and the blue states need to separate from the red states. But that could absolutely never happen under any circumstance. And we’ll get into the reasoning why in a minute here. And it’s criminally insane to even suggest such a thing might happen. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) resurrected her calls for a “national divorce” on Monday, arguing that Republican and Democratic states needed to be separated and the federal government needed to shrink, although it is unclear what prompted the thought.
“We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Greene said on Twitter on Monday. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.” It was not the first time that Greene has suggested the idea of a “national divorce.” In late 2021, Greene said voters who brought “ruin” to California shouldn’t be allowed to do the same to a state like Florida. “All possible in a National Divorce scenario,” Greene wrote on Twitter in December 2021. “After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida. Brainwashed people that move from CA and NY really need a cooling off period.” https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3866590-marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-again-for-a-national-divorce/ 
That is a good question and I’m not entirely sure how that would work! So let’s break it down for the MAGA conspiracy theorists who might be lurking here. Marjorie Greene wants a national divorce. OK – here’s what’s at stake. The Red States would basically be on the hook for creating their own country from scratch. Which means – no military. Gone. No House representation. Gone. Which means that Marjorie would be out of job, and we’re OK with that. Also, no police, fire, post office, no US money, no constitution, no Washington DC. All gone. And they don’t regulate anything or enforce rules. Which means their little experiment would go broke in about a week. But please, do continue. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been shopping her idea for a “national divorce” — effectively, conservative secession from the U.S. — for years now.
This week, though, the conspiracy theorist’s claims garnered more attention than ever, thanks in part to her willingness to pitch it to any media outlet willing to platform her. It’s a ludicrous proposal, of course, as our very own Joy Reid explained on Wednesday’s episode of “The ReidOut.” Somehow, amid the public flaying of Greene’s proposal, it seems that one of its most absurd components may have gotten lost. So, at our own risk, let’s dive a little deeper into the mind of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Pitching her plan to right-wing podcaster and professional money-waster Charlie Kirk this week, Greene went on a diatribe about employees of big entertainment companies (from the film, television and music industries) migrating to Georgia. Greene and Kirk both complained that this has made the state’s population more liberal, with Kirk even referring to “Will Ferrell and the Hollywood cabal.” (Which honestly sounds like an awesome movie.) https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/marjorie-taylor-greene-divorce-hollywood-georgia-rcna72212 
Well here’s the thing, Marjorie – no one likes this idea. I think raw sewage and naval lint are polling higher numbers than the idea of the red states and the blue states separating. But this whole thing is criminally insane. I love the headlines that are like “MARJORIE GREENE HUMILIATES HERSELF WITH LATEST DIATRIBE!!!”. Really? Did she really HUMILIATE herself? Did that require all caps? Because Marjorie knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s saying and doing stupid things because it gets her name in the press and that’s about it. But this idea is so unpopular that even your creepy uncle’s creepy uncle, Steve Bannon, wouldn’t go there. Steve Bannon has savaged Marjorie Taylor Greene's proposal for a "national divorce" between Republican and Democrat states, comparing it to spitting on the graves of civil war veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.
A clip of Bannon responding to the House Republican's suggestion was posted on Twitter by Grace Chong, who works for his War Room podcast. The footage begins with Chelle, a social media commentator who describes herself as a "Hispanic conservative," saying she's heard Greene "talking about splitting up the red states from the blue states." Bannon, who briefly worked as Donald Trump's chief White House strategist, replied: "If there's anything that I am one million percent opposed to its this entire concept." https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-idea-too-much-steve-bannon-1783808 
Holy shit, I never in a million years ever thought I would agree with Steve Bannon on anything, but he’s 100% right about this. You know that old saying about broken clocks. Anyway this is a great example of the complete and glorious lack of a proper education and critical thinking skills that today’s hardline MAGA conservatives just do not possess. This is an absolutely terrible idea on just about every single level. And it would be about as fucked up as Brexit – it would be a clusterfuck that would take years and decades to properly sort out, and it would never be properly implemented. It would just be a disaster and a waste of time. So yeah, we’re not falling for that crap anymore. Let’s talk about American Brexit economically.
Investment in Britain’s economy dropped 30 percent after Brexit, says the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, doubling forecasts. Brexit has cost 330,000 UK jobs – in the US economy, that projects to about 1.6 million. Overall, the UK has had Europe’s weakest major economy since 2019 – and is now doing nearly as badly as Russia, reeling from sanctions and war. It would be much worse than that as red states form the new territory Marjorie Taylor Greene is pitching. Let’s begin with the simplest observation: Counties that voted for President Joe Biden generate 70 percent of gross domestic product. Fourteen of the poorest 15 states voted Republican in 2020. All 12 richest states chose Biden. Only four red states have median household incomes in the top half of the 50 states. The nine red states that seceded in 1861 get, on average, 42 percent of their budgets from Washington, according to SmartAsset. Mostly that buys health care – 70 percent of federally funded state spending in Tennessee goes towards health and social services. So much for shrinking DC being good (or survivable) for Marge-istan. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/america-divorce-marjorie-taylor-greene-brexit-b2291216.html 
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[font size="8"]I Need A Drink [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink! 
Of course you know by now that the purpose of this segment is that we have some drinks, and while we are drinking, we talk about anything in the news as long as it doesn’t relate to politics. Because let’s face it, politics are everywhere these days, and we really need to take a break, chill out, belly up to the bar, and have a glass of your favorite beverage and talk about literally anything else. And don’t worry, our sober brothers and sisters, we got your backs too! So this week, we have to talk about social media, particularly Tik Tok. Tell me bartender, what goes well with a story about a Kool Aid Man social media challenge? The Kool Aid cocktail? Just vodka and Kool Aid? Have you ever heard of Jonestown? Come on, man! Yeah I’ll just stick to my usual Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels. So my audience, I pose to you this – you know we always say here that social media may be the death of humanity. Well, the latest challenge now is that it literally has kids and teenagers attempting to recreate a popular commercial from the 1980s. It may have worked in cartoons, but it doesn’t necessarily work in real life. The so-called "Kool-Aid Man Challenge" on TikTok is leading to a rash of vandalism in Omaha and surrounding areas.
In the challenge, someone runs into and destroys random fences in an effort to mimic the mascot of the popular powdered drink. The damage is not an easy fix, especially these days. Surveillance video that was recently captured shows a group of several people charging another fence at a different home in West Omaha. The footage went viral on social media which is getting the attention of law enforcement. “They get into a group mentality where one of them thinks they have a good idea and the others ones go along with it," said Lt. James Wrigley, Sarpy County Sheriff's Office. "Once we meet up with these kids individually they tend to say they're sorry and wouldn't do this by themselves,” https://www.3newsnow.com/news/local-news/kool-aid-man-challenge-tiktok-trend-targets-fences-across-omaha Yeah that was an actual commercial from the 80s – which I grew up in the 80s, I knew that commercial very well. You know what? Let’s run the original ad. That was a real commercial! So it’s literally got kids running into walls attempting to crash through them in the same way that commercial did. Come on, Tik Tok users, what the actual fuck are you doing here? I mean I thought eating laundry detergent pods was the epitome of stupid, and that was over 5 years ago, but now you seem to have outdone yourselves. I seriously wonder if the ER doctors who were on duty when these kids came in, couldn’t help but laugh at the stupidity when they were having drinks after their shift at the hospital. A half-dozen young people are facing charges after damaging fences as part of a supposed TikTok "Kool-Aid Man" challenge on Long Island, authorities said.
According to Suffolk County police, a homeowner on Centereach's Cobblestone Court reported hearing loud noises Monday around 1 a.m. and noticed on surveillance cameras that six males had knocked down parts of his fence. The homeowner, retired corrections officer Charles Damiani, was the target of the prank. He said that it "sounded like a gun go off," which is when he ran out in the middle of the night and spotted the vehicle the alleged culprits arrived in. That's when he noticed several sections of his fence missing, and security video showed the teens break right through it. Police said that members of the group were recording themselves blasting through the fence, and that Damiani's house was not the only one hit. "On the night in question, it looks like four homes were hit and tied to these individuals," said Suffolk County Chief of Patrol Gerard Hardy, noting that the case is still under investigation. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/long-island-news-6-arrested-in-tiktok-kool-aid-man-challenge-fence-smash/4117586/
Somehow I don’t think that bottle is going to be big enough! So not only will you get seriously hurt running into a wall, but if you damage a fence you could land property damages charges against you, and the last thing anybody wants is to go to court for your social media stupidity. But the crazy thing is that this shit is happening all over the country. All in this absurd quest to get likes and social media notoriety. Well, you’ll be notorious all right. Notorious as that dumbass who got hurt doing something stupid in order to make a viral video. And the last thing anyone wants to do right now is to go to the emergency room. Six teens were arrested Monday in connection with damaging fences as part of the Kool-Aid Man TikTok Challenge in the Centereach and Selden areas, Suffolk police said.
A homeowner on Cobblestone Court in Centereach heard loud noises on Monday at around 1 a.m., and saw on surveillance cameras that six males between 12 and 18 years old kicked several sections of his fence down, and then returned just after 4 a.m., running through the fence at the same time. The practice mimics the iconic fruit drink mascot's penchant for smashing things as he runs through them. The homeowner called 911 and 6th Precinct officers saw a black Hyundai sedan matching the description of a vehicle seen nearby, police said, adding that the officers arrested the teens on Hammond Road at around 4:15 a.m. Detectives found there were at least two other instances where some of the teens damaged fences in Centereach and Selden, prompting further investigation, police said. https://patch.com/new-york/sachem/teens-nabbed-tiktok-kool-aid-man-challenge-suffolk-police
So people don’t do this. Don’t be a stupid idiot just to get likes. Although I will say that a lot of our currently elected representatives aren’t exactly being role models when it comes to doing and saying stupid things! Hey o! Oh shit that’s right, I forgot our one rule! Destroying property and hurting yourself in order to make a viral video when it’s happening all over the country is ridiculously stupid. You don’t want to get the police, fire department, and paramedics involved just because you were being a dumbass on social media. Stop it people, just stop it already! Because as I warned – social media has the potential to kill us all. The Kool-Aid Man challenge is a popular TikTok trend where people forcefully kick open a door or run into a fence and yell “Oh Yeah,” as the Kool-Aid Man did in the ads.
The trend first became popular in July 2021 when kids were reportedly breaking fences in a bid to take part in the trend. The trend resurfaced in February 2023 when kids tried to redo the trend to make it go viral. Six kids were ticketed for criminal mischief As per Suffolk County police, six kids were recently ticketed for criminal mischief as they tried to carry out the trend by breaking a fence. A homeowner on Centereach’s Cobblestone Court reported hearing loud noises around 1 am in the morning. After looking at the surveillance camera it was found that six males had knocked down part of the fence. The video also captured the culprits recording the entire scene. The police were able to identify the six kids who participated in the trend. They all were aged between 12 to 18. https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/02/24/what-is-the-kool-aid-man-challenge-police-warn-against-tiktok-trend/ 
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[font size="8"]Stupidest State 2022: Selection Sunday [br] [/font] [br]
16 states will enter and only one state will become the new Top 10 Conservative Idiots Stupidest State!
Welcome back to the National For Fuck’s Sake Association’s annual Stupidest State tournament! Yes, the time has come to pit 16 states into a March Madness style tournament to select the best of the best, the stupidest of the stupid! The most idiotic and off the wall state in this great nation that we call the United States Of America! The winner of course will get the coveted DeLay trophy, which was named after NFFSA hall of famer Tom DeLay, who took Texas to an unprecedented 6 Stupidest State titles. We’re here live in Los Angeles at the fabulous YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California for all of the festivities, so let’s end the introductions and go to the floor, shall we? 
[font size="4"]Statement From The Commissioner [/font] Welcome, welcome, welcome! We are back everybody for the 6th year in a row! We’re extremely proud of last year’s champion, underdog #4 seed Tennessee, who trounced fan favorite #1 seed Georgia to take home the title! This year we have a lot of surprises in store for you as we look to head up this year’s tournament. Now allow me to explain the rules of the tournament. The first round will consist of two matches each week, while the second round will consist of one match each week. Then the Final Four will consist of two matches, and the Championship will consist of a single match. And also because we encourage gambling here, we give you the odds for each state in the tournament. You know the conferences – The Batshit Conference, The Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference, The Gun Nut Conference, and The Family Values Conference. 4 states will represent each conference, but only one will take home the title. So let’s do this thing! 
[font size="4"]The Batshit Conference [/font] 
Since 1894, the Batshit Conference is the largest and most distinctive conference in the league. These states are typically run by two parties – the right and the far right. States that have crazy people living in them and are represented by the craziest of the crazy. Sure, it’s one thing to let your MAGA freak flag fly in the back of your oversized gas guzzling pickup, you need 25 flags to express your love for that guy who we used to call president. You also think that the green M&M is hot and let all of your gas burners on the stove burn for the sake of owning the libs. The Batshit Conference – Proudly representing crazy since 1894! 1. Florida – After being humiliated in the last two years in the Gun Nut Conference, Florida finally made the decision to switch back to the Batshit Conference, where it has multiple opportunities to fly. Florida is represented by who could possibly be the craziest politician in America, Ron DeSantis. Florida is also home to Mar-A-Lago, the home of that former president, who has turned it into some sort of weird Studio 54 for insane conspiracy theorists on bath salts. Smoking Gun: Ron DeSantis has initiated a hostile takeover of Reedy Creek, the governing body that controls Disney’s special tax district in Orlando, in what is sure to be a preview of what we can expect from his madness on a national level. Odds: 2:1, Florida didn’t earn a top seed for nothing. They were one of the favorites during the regular season and are expected to go very far. 2. Kentucky – Kentucky is a fan favorite in this conference, but they’re facing some very stiff competition this year. Kentucky is home to beautiful scenery, bourbon, horse racing, bluegrass music, and some very ugly inner political strife. The state represented by Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell may be one of the most poorly educated states in the entire United States, and they are also one of the consistently unhappiest. Kentucky is home to monster truck jams and redneck rallies, but they’re also the home of some very sinister right wing politics! Smoking Gun: A federal court has ruled in favor of a Louisville photographer who opposes same sex weddings. Odds: 5:1: Kentucky is another that had a strong showing in the regular season, but their odds of overcoming Florida are extremely slim and may take a miracle. 3. South Dakota This may be a first for the Mt. Rushmore State, who had a strong showing last year. The home of Mt. Rushmore and the Sturgis Biker Rally, which became a staple for how to hold large groups of insane conspiracy theorists and vaccine deniers during the COVID pandemic, is represented by Kristi Noem. A woman who has advocated for years for holding a big Americagasm fireworks display behind Mt. Rushmore despite many warnings from the National Parks Department that the surrounding forest is a massive fire hazard waiting to happen. Smoking Gun: Noem *AGAIN* petitioned the Biden administration for a fireworks show at Mt. Rushmore, but was very quickly denied. Odds: 7:1, underdogs for sure in this tournament. But a quick upset and they could have the potential to turn things upside down in this tournament! 4. Arizona – The Grand Canyon state turned blue in the 2020 election and even bluer in the 2022 election, but that doesn’t mean that the state doesn’t have its’ fair share of insane MAGA lunatics attempting to fuck things up. After all, the state is the home of Maricopa County, a center for election denial theories and former batshit crazy gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and for years elected Sheriff Joe Arpaio to head the police. A man who is so crooked and disgusting that he’s the national symbol of police corruption and brutality. Smoking Gun: Kari Lake again attempted to overturn the results of the 2022 election with massive lawsuits, only for them to be shot down in court, again. Odds: 7:1 – Arizona may be the underdogs this year, but don’t rule them out completely. They had a strong showing during the regular season and an upset could have them going very far. [font size="4"]The Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference [/font] 
Excessive greed is the name of the game in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference! You peasants make peanuts working for the man, who owns six mansions, a tax free haven in the Cayman Islands, and more luxury cars than you. It’s one thing that your boss makes ten zeroes on his paycheck. He needs another two or three zeroes on top of that. And there’s no discerning difference between the fact that your bills went up a significant amount and the fact that the company those bills are going to had their highest quarterly profits ever last year. Also since the inception of this conference, all of these states’ representatives are bought and paid for by Koch Industries, which is headed by ultra far right wing billionaire David Koch. The Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference: Proudly Going For Broke Since 1952! 1. Kansas – Dorothy may have gone to the Land Of Oz, where there’s no place like home, but Kansas is going for broke and it definitely shows. The state has the potential to turn into a blue state in the 2024 election but that’s going to be a very long climb out of the red – both literally and figuratively. Kansas, the home of Koch Industries, has long been a fan favorite in this conference and is expected to go very far in this tournament. Smoking Gun: Kansas has voted against food relief in favor of passing a bill relieving their state debt. That’s right, the right wing would literally starve themselves before helping someone else. Odds: 2:1, Kansas had another strong showing in the regular season this year, but they have shown injuries and weakness. But a healthy team will go very far in this tournament. 2. Nevada – Nevada is a swing state in the general election, and determining which way they go, they have the potential to be a major player in how elections turn out. So you can imagine that the corruption and greed flow very freely in the Silver State. But the Silver State is home to the casino and gambling industry. Nevada’s largest employers – MGM Resorts International, and Caesar’s Group, never fail to exploit workers and politicians in Las Vegas and Reno. Smoking Gun: The Mirage Casino has had three dolphins die in the last year in what some are calling to be very suspicious and abusive treatment of animals. Odds: 4:1 – Nevada was a fan favorite during the regular season and an upset could prove to be interesting during the tournament. 3. Ohio – After being humiliated in the Family Values Conference, Ohio went and came back crazier than ever. The state is represented by Mike DeWine and former hedge fund billionaire turned MAGA United States senator J.D. Vance. The recent train derailment disaster in East Palestine is a perfect example of what happens when excessive corporate greed goes way too far. That disaster was a conservative clusterfuck and could cement Ohio’s place in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference. Smoking Gun: Ohio is home to some of the highest prescription drug prices in the entire country. Just don’t get sick and you should be fine. Odds: 5:1 – Ohio is a very popular team and has the potential to shock the pundits and go extremely far in this tournament. Upsets could make bank! 4. Wisconsin – The Badger State is always a fan favorite in this tournament. The state can go either way in an election, and depending on how they vote, a whole bunch of the surrounding states may vote with them or against them. Wisconsin may be turning into a blue state, but that doesn’t stop the GOP supermajority from screwing over the state in favor of gerrymandering and record corporate profits. Wisconsin is home to America’s cheese industry and also the doomsday prepper and sovereign citizens movements. So yeah it’s a melting pot of corporate greed and right wing insanity, for sure. Smoking Gun: An 8 lane highway expansion has been intentionally routed through one of the poorest neighborhoods in the state because, reasons. Odds: 10:1 – A decent showing in the regular season put Wisconsin ahead of its’ competition, but injuries could deter the Badger State from going far in the regular tournament. [font size="4"]The Gun Nut Conference [/font] 
When the phrase “family protection” means that you don’t have enough guns and your kids can’t get enough ammo, then the Gun Nut Conference is for you! It’s the conference where the debate between concealed carry and open carry is considered to be a contact sport. It’s not enough to have some big guns, you have to have the biggest guns who’ve ever gunned. You don't just need an AR-15, you need a rocket launcher capable of taking out a police helicopter. You’re a loud and extremely proud ammosexual who’s not afraid to take his or her semi-automatic weapon on a dinner date to Chili’s. And being an ammosexual means that you spend your days shooting the rats that hang out in your backyard and your nights on Zoom conferences with other gun nuts trying to figure out the best way to overthrow the government. You want enough weapons and ammo to take out a small army. It’s the conference where “Shall not be infringed” means that you shall not literally infringe. So yeah buy all the guns and ammo you want because nobody’s stopping you! These are also the states where your gun accidentally going off isn't just a metaphor, either! And yes, that is also a gun in your pants, The Gun Nut Conference: Shooting First And Asking Questions Later Since 1896. 1. Texas – Texas is a state so synonymous with America’s undying love of the firearm that it’s been the butt of jokes in movies, TV shows, and stand up comedy worldwide. And it wears its’ gun pride on its’ sleeve. It’s the home of cowboy billionaires and rural gun nuts alike, and they had a ridiculously strong showing in the regular season after long time rivals Florida ditched the Gun Nut Conference for greener pasters in the Batshit Conference. But really nobody does guns like the Lone Star State does guns! Smoking Gun: Texas shot down (ha!) what could have been one of the biggest and most expansive gun control bills in the country, in a move that everybody saw coming. Odds: 2:1 – Texas owns this conference, and was one of the highest seated teams in the regular season. They didn’t earn that #1 seed for nothing. Expect them to go far! 2. Missouri – The Show Me State may have bowed out of last year’s tournament early, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t upgrade their arsenal to advance to the #2 slot in this year’s tournament. While Texas may be #1 when it comes to their love of the gun, is coming for Texas and they could make for a great first showing in this tournament. In fact, Missouri has some of the craziest gun laws in the world and also are a hot bed for some of this country’s white supremacist activities. Smoking Gun: Newly elected MAGA representative Eric Burlison is attempting to repeal one of the oldest gun regulation laws in the country! Odds: 5:1 – A massive upgrade propelled Missouri to have the second best record in the Flyover League. They could give Texas a serious run for their money! 3. Montana – The Treasure State is a hot bed for Christian nationalism and white supremacist activities. In fact so much that their governor – Greg Gianforte – a man who became famous after body slamming a reporter for asking questions about his run for governor – is the head of this state now. Not to be outdone, the state’s sole representative is Ryan Zinke – yes that’s right. A famous anti-government activist and noted white supremacist douchebag – is also a representative of the state. So you know that their cowboy and right wing freak flags are flying loud and proud! Smoking Gun: Greg Gianforte said that Montana won’t enforce a strict new ATF rule banning pistol braces. Go ahead, shoot yourselves, they don’t care! Odds: 7:1 – Montana had a strong showing in the regular season, but some key injuries could prevent them from going far in the tournament. 4. Idaho – The Gem State is back for another go round in this year’s tournament. They are continuing to be a fan favorite in the Gun Nut Conference and they also had a strong showing in the regular season. Outside of Boise, Idaho is represented by the farm industry and with farmers come some really big guns and really insane politicians that don’t care who owns them. Taking your gun on a dinner date to Chipotle has never been easier in the Gem State! Smoking Gun: Idaho is considering bringing back death penalty execution by firing squad. Odds: 10:1 – They came back from near elimination in the regular season, but some key upgrades could have them see a strong showing in the Gun Nut Conference! [font size="4"]The Family Values Conference [/font] 
All things are about Jesus in the Family Values Conference! It’s the conference where you wear the double edged sword on your sleeve, and other parts of your body! It’s the states where your social circle and all forms of entertainment come from the church. These states are run by the church and make laws based on who’s holier than thou. It’s the states where your highest aspirations are Liberty University or maybe Brigham Young is more to your liking. Where the women are supposed to spend all day in the kitchen and their nights making babies. And the men are supposed to be the manliest men who have ever manned. It’s the states where the Red Hot Chili Peppers are replaced with Mercy Me on the radio, and Nicholas Cage movies are replaced with Left Behind flicks. The Family Values Conference: Proudly representing those old fashioned fire and brimstone values since 1896! 1. Tennessee Last year’s champions handily took the number one seed for a very good reason. Abortion. Especially in the aftermath of last year’s devastating overturn of the Supreme Court decision known as Roe V. Wade. The Volunteer State also has another ace up their sleeve – their banning of gender affirming care and trans women in sports based on insane internet conspiracy theories. Tennessee legislative bodies have been dominated by the holier than thou crowd for the last few years and it really shows. Smoking Gun: A law that could eliminate gender affirming care for minors has passed the TN house. Odds: 2:1 – Coming in as one of the hottest teams in the tournament, Tennessee has the potential to go very far and could take the Layover League! 2. Arkansas – Arkansas is one of the best in the Family Values and for good reason. They are a state of, by, and for the church. The Razorbacks also are led by governor Sarah Sanders, who hasn't even been the governor for too long, but has already laid waste to Arkansas' educational system and has rolled back our basic constitutional rights. Oh and she's also said the quiet part out loud on multiple occasions. Smoking Gun: New Arkansas governor Sarah Sanders signed into law a rollback of child labor provisions. Odds: 7:1, Always a favorite in the Family Values conference, but some key injuries kept them from reaching the #1 seed. They could go far, or bow out early. 3. Utah – A brand newcomer to the tournament, the Beehive State may have been the home of the 2023 NBA All Star Game, but they’re also home to the Mormon Church, which dominates all aspects of day life and night life in the Beehive State. The state may be home to some of this country’s most scenic natural beauty, some amazing skiing opportunities, and the Park City Film Festival, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not hiding this state’s inner ugly with some insane religious laws. Smoking Gun: Utah at the request of a whining parent, subjected a female athlete to some horrifying tests to prove her gender. Odds: 5:1 – Utah proved the pundits wrong in their quest to make their first tournament in NFFSA history and it shows! Ones to watch for sure! 4. Oklahoma – Texas's neighbors to the north are trying to outdo their neighbors in the craziest ways possible with some draconian anti-trans and anti-LGBT legislation in the works. The state is led by family values champion Kevin Stitt, whose sun got caught intoxicated while possessing a firearm. Oklahoma conservatives also seem bent on ending public education and support for the Cherokee Nation. And they also have some major hateful anti-LGBT laws in the books and a GOP supermajority with nothing to stop them from passing. Smoking Gun: Oklahoma's draconian anti-trans laws that have already been passed are considering people to think twice about moving to the Sooner State! Odds: 7:1 - Don't rule out Oklahoma to win the Family Values Conference. They were a fan favorite during the regular season and it was for a good reason! [font size="4"]The Schedule: [/font] 
[font size="4"]The Bracket [/font] 
[font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] When we come back on March 16th, it’s Round 1 Week 1, and that will put #1 Kansas against #2 Nevada in the Fiscal Irresponsibility Conference, while over in the Gun Nut Conference, #3 Missouri takes on #4 Idaho! And we're live at the home of the world champion Los Angeles Football Club, the BMO Stadium for the tournament kick off! Let’s do this! Don’t forget to follow us on Mastodon for updates and updated brackets! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]Post Malone[/font] 
Folks my next guest, you know him, you love him, his latest album is called “Twelve Carat Toothache”, you can see him with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Mars Volta through June 30th. Playing his song “I Like You”, give it up for Post Malone! Thank you Portland! This was fun! We’ll be back again soon! We’re taking a short break next week, we’ll be back on March 16th live from Washington, DC! See you in two weeks!
Credits Host: Initech Post Malone Appears Courtesy Of: Mercury Records Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: The Gold Room, Portland, ME Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Twitter at: @10Idiots Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Twitter: @churchoftop10 Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Mar 2, 2023, 06:02 PM (3 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-5: Wheel Of Corruption: Wakanda Forever Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-5: Wheel Of Corruption: Wakanda Forever Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooooooooo!!!! What’s up Boston? Before we begin, I want to stress that we're early this week and we’ll be going a bit long this week for our affiliates. How are you guys doing? You doing fucking good? Great! Look at these guys, they’re drunk already and we’re just getting started! Before I begin, I want to state that we are not good. We totally fucked up at the beginning of the season when planning this thing out. We only had 5 weeks between when the season started and March 2nd, when Stupidest State starts. So instead of bringing you 6 additional stops on the World Tour 2023, we will only be bringing you five. Which means we will have to eliminate UAE as this week’s stop and we will be ending our tour with the USA. Sorry, UAE, you will have to wait until the next World Tour. You know, we’re just four shows away from hitting the big #300. And of course you know that we’re heading to France for it, so we’re going to have some fun! And speaking of fun, you know what happens next week? That’s right – next week is my favorite Top 10 of the entire year because it's Stupidest State Selection Sunday! That’s where we will have all of the stats, odds and info to fill out your brackets for our big tournament! Who will win this year? We’ve got some shake ups, hook ups, and surprises in store, but the NFFSA is back! OK enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to! But first Stephen Colbert hosted a Boys II Men reunion on Valentine’s Day for what I think, for my money, might be one of the funniest sketches he’s ever done, and Boys II Men gets mad props for this. Serious, this might be some of the best 3 minutes of late night comedy in years: Hey everyone, the famous Wheel Of Corruption is back! Yay!!!!! So where do we begin this week? Well the number one slot this week is going to the GOP (1). If you saw the news of the devastating train derailment and resulting toxic pollution in the Ohio river, don’t let Fox News attempt to persuade you, this is entirely the result of the GOP’s reckless deregulation policies! In the second slot this week, speaking of reckless GOP policies, we have to talk about the devastating mass shooting at Michigan State University. Which sadly could have been prevented if the red flag laws regarding the purchase and sale of guns had been properly enforced. Taking the number 3 slot this week is also the GOP (3) and their attacks on trans people that seem to be escalating across the country. Imagine if the GOP cared as much about people getting killed in mass shootings as they do about drag shows and gender affirming health care. Madness, fucking madness. In the number 4 slot this week is Florida (4) and a Miami Catholic school is getting a ton of heat after their basketball players hurled some ridiculously terrible and awful slurs at their opponents. Conservatives really do bring out the worst in people. In the number 5 slot this week we have a new Top 10 Investigates (5) and this week we’re going to take a look at the AI chat bot, ChatGPT and some of the more ridiculous applications for it, including an AI generated 24 hour a day sitcom! 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 becoming increasingly alarmed at the Dark One’s plans for 2024 should he be unfortunately reelected, and they include among other things, public executions for Jesus! Yeah this could turn very dark very quickly. To lighten things up, in the number 7 slot is a new Beating A Dead Horse (7) and this week, Comedy Central is trying out new hosts to replace the newly vacated Trevor Noah’s Daily Show, and Chelsea Handler seems to have irked Tucker Carlson with her segment on being single and childless at 47, and the blows they are trading back and forth is well, beating a dead horse. In the number 8 slot this week is a new Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week, anti-vaxxers are upping their insanity with a new bill being proposed in Idaho that would impose criminal penalties on anyone attempting to distribute mRNA vaccines. Seriously, anti-vaxxers, put down the bong and back away from the computer very slowly. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new People Are Dumb, because of course they are! Finally this week it’s the very final stop of our 2023 World Tour and we’re ending in the same place we began. The home of baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet – the good ol’ USA! Plus to close things out we’ve got some live music from Australia’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard! They have like 4 new albums out, go buy all of them! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! [div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]The Ohio Railway Disaster [br] [/font] Hey kids, it’s time for the: WHEEL. OF. CORRUPTION!!! YAY!!!! 
Of course you know the rules by now – I spin the wheel and we have to talk about whatever the subject it lands on. Of course if it lands on the guacamole option, you know that it costs $1.50 extra. And the wheel is all new with lots of items on it! Here’s what is on the wheel this week: - Guns - Crime - Abortion - Poverty - The 2020 Election - The Insurrection - Treason - Buy A Vowel - Donald Trump - Midterm Elections - Clip Without Context - 5,000 - Nazi Germany - Fox News - ‘Merica - My Pillow - Bankrupt - Chance - Fox News - Something Random In The News - Whammy - Community Chest - Death - Homosexuality - The US Constitution - Greed - Clip Without Context - Top 10 Investigates - Beating A Dead Horse - This Fucking Guy - Intermission - Holy Shit - A Random Tweet - World Tour 2022 - Double Whammy - Buy A Vowel - Conspiracy Corner - Random Movie Reference - Guacamole - 10,000 - People Are Dumb - I Need A Drink - Infowars - Go Directly To Jail - Random TV Reference - T-Shirt Cannon - Infowars - People Who Somehow Got Elected - COVID-19 - Lightning Round - Bonus Spin Let’s get the wheel going! Spin that shit! Come on, no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy…. Stop! And it lands on: Clip Without Context! https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1628525767821824001 Why do I get the feeling that he’s the kind of guy who would screw up an order of chicken nuggets? Just call it a hunch. Spin it again! And it lands on… Greed! I’m sure that by now you’ve heard about the massive environmental disaster that’s happened as a result of the extremely terrible train collision in East Palestine, Ohio. But don’t let the right wing fool you – this is an epic disaster of the kind of thing that only American conservatives are capable of. It’s basically the end result of 40 years of completely reckless conservative regulation policies that favor corporate greed over the workers that got us to this point, and quite frankly, we’re surprised that this doesn’t happen more often. So what exactly happened in Ohio that has environmentalists concerned? Well, it’s a disaster of truly epic proportions and the kind of thing that could only happen in America. Because other countries are smart enough not to let AM radio talk show hosts do their thinking for them. The chemicals that spilled and were later burned near East Palestine, Ohio, after the Feb. 3 train derailment have the kinds of names that bring back visions of high school chemistry: vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene.
Scientists know the names well, along with the harms these chemicals can cause to the environment and human health — from irritation of the eyes and skin to breathing difficulties and cancer — raising major concerns about exposure and contamination in the wake of the incident. The burning of some chemicals in the aftermath of the disaster — a decision made by authorities to avoid an explosion — is also complicating an already fraught situation that has sparked fears of potential health impact beyond eastern Ohio. The threats of the chemicals vary. Residents of East Palestine have been told it’s safe to return home, but questions remain about lingering exposure in the air, water and soil, even if at low levels. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/ohio-derailment-chemicals-spilled-impact-residents-rcna71561 
But don’t let Fox News fool you – they’re currently in “nothing to see here, please disperse” mode. And it’s causing a problem. Of course you know the guy who ruins everything makes it about him. Don’t worry, we’ll get to him in a minute. But one thing is for certain is that like most things conservatives do that ends in disaster, they will be forced to clean it up or else. Yeah remember the Deepwater Horizon disaster from 2011? Yeah that was another disaster that could only come from conservative deregulation policies. And this could be why there’s been such an influx of conservatives decrying the FDA lately. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency threatened expensive consequences if Norfolk Southern fails to fully clean up its toxic train wreck and pay for the fallout in East Palestine, Ohio.
The EPA’s new, legally binding order – set to take effect Thursday – “will ensure that Norfolk Southern pays for the mess that they’ve created,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told CNN on Wednesday. For weeks, residents have reported a variety of health problems since the Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed, spewing black clouds of smoke over the community of about 5,000 people. To help prevent a deadly explosion of vinyl chloride, crews released the toxic chemical into a trench and burned it off. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-wednesday/index.html 
Yeah fire!!! Got to love some fire, don’t we? And seriously, isn’t it fun to burn things? But yes let’s pay attention to the conservative outrage machine and the fact that they’re saying that Biden isn’t doing enough to help the people of East Palestine with this disaster. Well, of course Pete Buttigieg is getting a large percentage of the blame coming from the Nazi talk show host crowd and it’s definitely beginning to show. So he’s planning a visit to East Palestine, and it will be very interesting to see how he’s received there. And I’m betting it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Because MAGA conservatives won’t be satisfied no matter what Biden does, so at this point, I say “eh, whatever”. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is set to travel to East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday in the wake of the hazardous train derailment earlier this month.
The secretary will meet with community members affected by the derailment, receive an update on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation and hear from investigators on the ground, according to the Transportation Department. The NTSB is expected to issue its initial findings from the investigation into the derailment on Thursday. The secretary’s trip comes after the Biden administration faced criticism for not heading to East Palestine sooner. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3869445-buttigieg-to-travel-to-east-palestine-on-thursday-amid-criticism-biden-administration-isnt-doing-enough/ 
Now here’s where it gets weird, because you knew that it was going to. Of course the MAGA moron in chief pays a visit and literally makes it all about himself. In fact idiots on Fox News were gloating about how his visit was going to be like attending one of his stupid rallies. Come on, that’s what passes for entertainment in the MAGA world? Seriously, Trump is the guy who would screw up an order of a 10 piece chicken nuggets. I mean come on, this is the guy who stared at a solar eclipse, had toilet paper stuck to his shoe, and threw out rolls of Paper Towel brand paper towels to hurricane victims, because he was apparently too cheap to spring for Bounty. Even though this disaster was entirely his fault. The White House is firing back at Republicans following the toxic East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, blaming the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress for undoing Obama-era rail safety measures designed to avert such disasters.
The aggressive rebuttal came as former President Donald Trump visited East Palestine on Wednesday and Republicans increasingly attack the Biden administration, especially Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for its response to the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern freight train derailment that unleased toxic chemicals. “Congressional Republicans and former Trump Administration officials owe East Palestine an apology for selling them out to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/22/white-house-blame-trump-gop-east-palestine-spill/11322623002/ 
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[font size="8"]Michigan State Mass Shooting [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s spin it to win it! Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… STOP! And it lands on… ‘Murica! 
That’s probably what Europe and Asia thinks Americans are like. Spin it again! Guns! Folks, I’m sure everyone knows that we can’t go one week without a mass shooting in this country. And there’s many places we can go with this. But what I want to discuss is the frequency of mass shootings in this country, and we are now at a point where someone could be in multiple mass shootings in their lifetime. This isn’t going to get any better. Yes, we’re going to have to live with the violence and bloodshed for the foreseeable future. Yes, this is going to get worse before it gets better. And it’s truly mind boggling that someone can be in multiple mass shootings. Seriously, one is too many. We could have stopped this after Sandy Hook, but then Alex Jones had to go shoot his big fat mouth off about the government coming to take your guns away and constantly stirs the crazies in his Infowars bunker every single night about this shit. But this is what happened and I would expect there to be more of this as long as this crap goes unchecked. vOn a winter afternoon a little more than a year ago, Emma had been 80 miles east, in the band room at Oxford High School, when someone rushed in, panicked. Something bad was happening. Then an emergency alert blared through the intercom. They had drilled on what to do next for years. Run. Hide. Fight. Emma, who played clarinet, waited in terror behind barricaded doors until the students decided to try escaping. A door at the back of room led out to a field where the marching band practiced. They peeked out into the daylight, then fled. . . And then came Monday night. . . . She and her roommate hid in the darkness for hours, and at 12:31 a.m., in a moment of fury and frustration, Emma composed a tweet: “14 months ago I had to evacuate from Oxford High School when a fifteen year old opened fire and killed four of my classmates and injured seven more. Tonight, I am sitting under my desk at Michigan State University, once again texting everyone ‘I love you.’ When will this end?” https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/14/oxford-high-michigan-state-shooting-survivor/ 
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooly shit. Seriously, this is the world that the NRA has fucking brought on us, this is the kind of terror we have to live with. You know we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” photo that he took to declare that the War On Terror was officially over. But you know what? The War On Terror is far from over. We now have our own home grown versions of Isis (Proud Boys), Al Qaeda (III%ers), and the Taliban (Oath Keepers). I mean, shit, Montana’s governor is a guy who body slammed a reporter and their only House representative is a noted white supremacist! It’s fucked up! Thank you Boston! But let’s talk about the suspect first! Police have released photos of a suspect in a mass shooting on Michigan State University’s campus that left at least three people dead and five others hospitalized.
Michigan State University Department of Police and Public Safety Interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman provided an update during a news conference at 11 p.m. Monday. Rozman said the shooting started at 8:18 p.m. on Monday inside Berkey Hall. There were several 911 calls and police responded within minutes, he said. Rozman said at least five people have been transported to a hospital and some do have life-threatening injuries. Police believe there is one suspect behind the shootings. He was last seen leaving the MSU Union building on foot, on the north side of the building. https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2023/02/14/police-release-photo-of-suspect-in-michigan-state-university-mass-shooting/ 
And yes, Fox News, don’t think we’re letting you get off the hook for this one. Of course this caused Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham to spend the next several nights playing the “oh the shooter wasn’t white, so that doesn’t fit the narrative”. What narrative? A guy with a gun is a guy with a gun, it doesn’t matter what race or creed he is. Shit, 400 police officers couldn’t stop a guy with an AR-15 from murdering 20 children and 3 teachers, so what does that tell us what the problem is? it’s the gun! It’s always been the gun! March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg rallied Monday at the state Capitol with hundreds of advocates including Michigan State University and Oxford High School students a week after the mass shooting at the East Lansing university and called on Michigan lawmakers to pass long-debated gun regulations.
Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, urged residents and elected officials to unify behind policy changes that would include a red flag law, require more comprehensive universal background checks and mandate the safe storage of firearms. "How about we focus on what we can agree on, which is the fact that we need to do something about this?" Hogg said at a Monday morning press conference in Lansing. "We need to come together as a country." Some MSU students echoed the need for action, many through tears and anger, on the Capitol steps during a protest against gun violence after the press conference. Hundreds of their peers sat on the Capitol lawn with signs pleading for their lives and change to end school shootings. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2023/02/20/advocates-call-for-gun-law-changes-after-msu-shooting-gun-rights-group-threatens-recalls/69924111007/ 
Come on, people! Stop your rabbling! Look, we’ve made some huge strides on gun legislation in the last few years. But we’ve got a long way to go before any real accomplishment is celebrated. It’s insane that we can’t go one week without a fucking mass shooting in this country. But you know what doesn’t help after a time of tragedy after tragedy? The fucking gas lighting. Yes, it’s real and it is coming form the dark corners of the internet. I’m looking at you, 4chan, 8chan, 16chan, 8kun, or whatever bullshit site this is coming from. To me if a mass tragedy happens, and the first thing you think is “how can we blame it on the other side”, you’re truly fucked in the head and you should be committed before you become a danger to yourself or others. This is why we can’t have nice things. The loss of three young lives in a mass shooting on Michigan State University’s campus and the medical struggle faced by five student victims have a tight hold on many hearts.
And the “trauma entrepreneurs” know it. Boy, do they know it. Lisa Parker, senior director of alumni engagement at MSU, tweeted a warning Monday night about a green-and-white sweatshirt that somehow suddenly, magically appeared on two people in a photo found on Facebook. The people are real. The event was real. But the people in the photo, well, they never, ever wore those sweatshirts that were being modeled for sale on Facebook. Parker is friends with the two people who both happen to have known each other for 30 years. https://www.freep.com/story/money/personal-finance/susan-tompor/2023/02/22/msu-shooting-tragedy-fake-photos-spartan-strong-scams/69927078007/
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[font size="8"]The GOP [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin shall we? And the wheel lands on… wait for it… Chance! 
Sweet. I’ll just put that away for later. Spin it again! And it lands on… HATE. So in case you haven’t noticed, the hate in this country is being amplified to unheard of levels. You know, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about some insane anti-LGBT bills being proposed in various states throughout the country (see: link:https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217610825 | Idiots #14-2] ). But now the war is getting very intense. And don’t think that we haven’t seen the end of this crap. And there’s a metric shit ton of anti-LGBT legislation being proposed in about half the country. You know I thank the highest of high gods every day that our founding fathers wrote that 2/3rds majority rule in the constitution. Because imagine if the Christian right and white wing sources like Fox News got their way on the issues and wrote hate into the Constitution? We’d be screwed. I mean the GOP can’t keep getting away with this and eventually we’ll rise up against them. Apparently nothing is too controversial or off the table for the Christian right ghouls. And the other thing we have to consider is just like death and taxes, these things are only going to get worse before they get better. 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, what the fuck indeed? We are living in unprecedented times, that much is true, my friends! And it’s because America’s most watched news network has way too much fucking power in this country. Like you ever notice that what’s being talked about on Tucker Carlson one night starts getting turned into state and local policy the next? It’s almost like Fox News is manufacturing legislation. Let’s take a look at this bill in North Dakota, which aims to actually fine people if they use a person’s gender that was not assigned to them at birth. This is some draconian Nazi shit here, folks! A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota introduced a bill that would fine people $1,500 if they refer to trans people using their correct pronouns, rather than the pronouns they were assigned at birth.
The rule would apply to organizations that receive state funding—which includes public schools. That means schools and teachers could be fined for using their trans colleagues’ or students’ pronouns. ‘Words used to reference an individual's sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression, mean the individual's determined sex at birth, male or female,” states Senate Bill 2199. “Any person that violates this section must be assessed a fee of one thousand five hundred dollars.” Republican state Sen. David Clemens introduced the bill, which has received basically zero support, according to local news station KFYR. In fact, the state’s senate judiciary committee recommended the bill shouldn’t pass, in part because it was poorly written and would be difficult to enforce. Still, the bill will move to the senate floor, and is a sign of just how emboldened many conservative lawmakers are getting in their crusades against trans and nonbinary people. In 2023, state governments have already tried to introduce some of the most draconian anti-trans bills yet, including an Oklahoma bill that would ban gender-affirming care for people under 26. North Dakota is already the site of many proposed anti-trans bills, including bans on gender-affirming care and trans sports participation. SB 2199 is the latest example in a string of related proposed policies. https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyjbq/north-dakota-pronoun-republican-anti-trans-bill 
Yes BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! But you know what we say about actions having consequences. We love to point this stuff out there here on this program. It turns out that the Christian fundamentalist Fox News agenda is grossly unpopular. Yes, the Fox Opinion Channel may be the most watched “news” network in America, but the people who they elect and the hateful and extremely discriminatory laws that are being proposed and passed have very unfavorable approval ratings. I mean seriously, naval lint and sweaty rashes have higher approval ratings. Just check out what is happening in Oklahoma thanks to a proposed law. In Oklahoma, it seems like every trans person knows someone who is leaving.
For Lukas, a 23-year-old college senior, it isn’t so much a question of whether he will go, but when. Lukas, who has asked to use their first name to protect his privacy, is a nonbinary art student in the city of Norman. He’s just begun the process of trying to get a doctor to prescribe him testosterone to alleviate his dysphoria — and he dreams of one day getting top surgery. But recently, Republicans in the state legislature introduced a bill that would force Lukas to delay getting care for years. When SB 129 was prefiled in January, it proposed a ban on gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 26 — the first time legislation in the US has targeted access to care for trans adults. The bill was then known as the Millstone Act, drawing its name from a Bible passage that states that it would be better to tie a stone around one’s neck and “be drowned in the depths of the sea” than to harm a child. The bill also sought to criminalize doctors and healthcare professionals for providing this care. On Wednesday, the bill’s Republican sponsor, state Sen. David Bullard, amended the bill’s language, removing any reference to age restrictions or biblical boulders. The new text of the bill would ban the use of public funds going toward gender-affirming care — which means that trans people of all ages could face challenges seeking care at a state- or county-owned facility. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lilkalish/anti-trans-bills-oklahoma-people-fleeing-state
That’s a good question! What’s wrong with people? Well the problem is that Fox is a huge part of the problem and there’s really no solution to it. When Tucker Carlson has social media stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik on, who became famous for doxxing any teachers who are in favor of the LGBT community and gender identity, who spews insane conspiracy theories about how doctors are mutilating children and that trans health care is evil, and the next day people start threatening to blow up hospitals and murder doctors (see: Top 10 #13-8 ), that’s a huge problem with no easy solution! And then there’s Florida. Seriously, Florida, what the fuck are you doing? Florida is admitting this wasn’t about kids at all, and are enacting some very potentially evil legislation that looks to ban care altogether. And you know that Ron DeShithead is going to sign this into law. The culture war was not supposed to be an actual war! Florida has become well-known as one of the worst states for anti-trans policies in recent years. After failing to pass a ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth, Governor Ron DeSantis used a handpicked Board of Medicine to enforce the same ban. Additionally, the state has cut Medicaid coverage for gender affirming care for transgender adults, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that schools can discriminate against transgender students regarding bathroom access. While the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed in Florida this year has been lower than expected during the start of this year, activists have been anticipating an increase. Now, the "Reverse Woke Act" has emerged as one of the first anti-trans bills in Florida of the 2023 legislative cycle. This bill would hold employers accountable for the detransition of any person who receives gender affirming care coverage for the rest of their life, potentially deterring coverage for many transgender adults in Florida.
The bill creates an impossible requirement for companies: if they provide health insurance coverage for gender affirming care, they are responsible for any procedures to reverse that care for the entirety of the individual's life. As there is no set time limit for this liability and the mandate extends to "any benefits" that cover gender affirming care, companies may conclude that the risk of offering such coverage is unacceptably high. Relevant provisions are included below: The provisions are ridiculously broad and lack precedent in law. If an individual undergoes a surgical procedure, such as a knee operation, and later regrets it or desires to modify it, no employer is liable for it a decade later simply because the company's health insurance covered the surgery. That liability is between the patient and the doctor, and often would carry some form of statute of limitations. This not only extends the statute of limitations to perpetuity, it targets the employers just for having health insurance that covers gender affirming care. This targeting of the company itself for the procedures covered under its health insurance is designed to get companies to drop that care. https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/florida-reverse-woke-act-tries-end 
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[font size="8"]The State Of Florida [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s spin the wheel shall we? Come on, no whammy, no whammy, no whammy, no whammy, no whammy… STOP! Oh hey it’s one of our patented Clips Without Context! https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1625601545050923008 Whew… there’s a lot to unpack there. Like… does this mean that he wants a world that’s equal parts Stepford Wives and The Handmaid’s Tale? And these guys wonder why they can’t get laid. Hey o! Spin it again! And it lands on… Florida. Folks, I don’t need to tell you that Ron Desantis is one of the most evil men in America right now and he’s certainly high in the running for one of the most evil men worldwide and that’s a pretty strong contest there. But I’m here to tell you that Ron Desantis is but a mere symptom of the overall problem. It’s no mistake that since the dawn of the social media age, that people are getting way more angry and way more racist. Of course you’d be a fool and a communist to make that connection. But it’s no secret that Fox News and the GOP are going all in on white supremacy, as evidenced by the states that are currently banning books and any mention of Critical Race Theory because Tucker Carlson told them to, despite the fact that they couldn’t tell you what that is, or why they are even doing this. They just know that independent thought = bad. Just take a look at this incident in Miami where a teacher accused of being racist and homophobic got “And Tango Makes Three” banned because, well, I can’t quite put my finger on it. But you and I both know the reason why they banned it. This is getting really, really old. This week, the school board in Escambia County, Florida, banned three books from public schools at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher accused by numerous students of being openly racist and homophobic in class. In each case, the Escambia County school board sided with Baggett over the recommendation of committees comprised of teachers, administrators, librarians, parents, and community members.
One of the books banned by the Escambia County school board is And Tango Makes Three. The book is the true story of two male Penguins, Roy and Silo, who lived in the Central Park Zoo. The pair build a nest together and raise an adopted child, Tango. There is no sexual content in the book. In a challenge form submitted to the school district last August, Baggett said the book promoted the "LGBTQ agenda using penguins." Baggett said she believes the purpose of the book is "indoctrination" and that it was inappropriate for all grade levels. In a December 2022 interview with Popular Information, Baggett said she objected to And Tango Makes Three because it exposes students to "alternate sexual ideologies" and contains "sexual innuendo." Baggett also said she was concerned "a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader's mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other." https://popular.info/p/florida-school-board-bans-three-books 
Yes, “indoctrination”. You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. I mean what’s happening in Florida we can’t help but think is the stuff of nightmares, and it’s really scary to think that this is happening in the Land Of The Free. But this is but a mere symptom. The problem lies with the people at the top, and they’re the ones who are being indoctrinated with Fox News and other right wing and far right propaganda sources. But apparently Ron Desantis and Fox News think of diversity the same way that Ron Burgundy does. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory.
The Republican governor debuted the proposal as part of a larger, higher education legislative package that is expected to be taken up by the GOP-controlled statehouse when its regular session begins in March. DeSantis, a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has heavily criticized critical race theory, which examines systemic racism — as well as diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly known as DEI. Critical race theory is a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism. Scholars developed it during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what scholars viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, which function to maintain the dominance of white people in society. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/florida-gov-desantis-pushes-ban-on-diversity-programs-in-state-colleges Holy shit! Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! The hate and racism is totally out of control in this country. Again, not blaming people at the top, but yeah, I am actually blaming people at the top – the Ron Desntis and Greg Abbotts of the world. They are the ones who are listening to Fox and other white wing sources and are actively implementing this bullshit. But this is the kind of hold that Fox has on the GOP and if anyone dares to speak up against Rupert Murdoch’s evil agenda, then they will find themselves on the unemployment line. Just ask Liz Cheney. What? Too soon? Former President Donald Trump has called for parents to elect and fire school principals. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. And Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who is expected to announce her White House candidacy this coming week, is among the Republicans taking aim at critical race theory.
In the opening stages of the 2024 GOP presidential race, the “parents’ rights” movement and lessons for schoolchildren are emerging as flashpoints. The focus on issues related to racism, sexuality and education is a way for potential White House hopefuls to distinguish themselves in a crowded field, suggesting new and deeper ways for government to shape what happens in local classrooms. But the effort has prompted criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, some parents and student activists and those worried about efforts to avoid lessons about systemic racism. Democrats have cast the efforts as race-baiting and improperly injecting politics into schools. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/schools-become-flashpoint-for-republicans-eyeing-2024-presidential-race 
Yeah damn the hate and racism is spiraling out of control in this country. Although no way in hell am I touching that debate. If you want to debate me after the show I’ll be here all night! But I will say that this is all completely fucking insane. And I never thought that we would be here in this country in what was supposed to be the Land Of The Free. But Fox and other white wing sources like TPUSA are actively dragging America backwards when it comes to hate and racism. I keep hearing about the Fox addicted people screaming about their freedoms but then in the next breath they scream about wanting a white supremacist dictator to rule over all of them. Which is it, MAGAs? Pick a lane. If a middle school student at a public school in Sarasota County, Florida, wants to read “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, one of their parents will have to be notified first.
The book’s journey from being widely available to requiring parental supervision began in May 2022, when Allison Euker, a parent to a child at Venice Middle School, filed a challenge to the book, which is geared toward sixth to 12th graders and is about the history of racism in the U.S. However, Euker claimed the book promoted critical race theory and told white children they were inferior because they were white. In separate decisions, the school and the district declined to remove the book from the library. Euker appealed the district’s decision and, on Tuesday, appeared in front of the school board to make her case against the book. That’s how an all-white board in Florida ended up debating the fate of a book about antiracism during Black History Month. “Happy Black History Month — now let’s ban a book that says racism is wrong!” Tallulah Brand, a middle school student in Sarasota County, exclaimed into the microphone at the meeting. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/florida-black-history-books_n_63e3e5a9e4b0c2b49ae74b7f 
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[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Weird Applications For AI [br] [/font] [br]
Now entering the spin cycle! Come on, no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… STOP! And it lands on… guacamole! All right, it’s guacamole time! Come on out here, Ernesto! Yes, Ernesto is our sous chef here at the Top 10. He’s a friend of our departed chef Fernando, who we found working in the back of a Burger King. Come on out, Ernesto! Here’s your $2… all right! 
Come on, spin it again! And it lands on… oh hey Top 10 Investigates! Ever since the 1980s, we’ve been warned that artificial intelligence becoming self aware was going to be the end of humanity. Movies like the Terminator and Aliens and The Matrix were preaching that the very idea that artificial intelligence could usher in an apocalyptic world that has never been seen before in human history. Well, humanity might be ever closer to the nightmare dystopian worlds that were depicted in those movies. There’s a new program out there that Google and Microsoft have been testing called “ChatGPT”. You’ve probably been hearing a lot about ChatGPT lately. It’s an AI bot that creates surprisingly accurate results based on the prompts that you enter into it. Well, the recent surge of ChatGPT activity has created an ethical gray area that has been under intense discussion lately. Well, we can at least forget about the possibility of Skynet or the rise of the machines happening any time soon because apparently they’re having trouble getting even basic text prompts right. Yeah, texts now, just imagine what happens when AI starts implementing video technology! Microsoft’s new ChatGPT-powered AI has been sending “unhinged” messages to users, and appears to be breaking down.
The system, which is built into Microsoft’s Bingsearch engine, is insulting its users, lying to them and appears to have been forced into wondering why it exists at all. Microsoft unveiled the new AI-powered Bing last week, positioning its chat system as the future of search. It was praised both by its creators and commentators, who suggested that it could finally allow Bing to overtake Google, which is yet to release an AI chatbot or search engine of its own. But in recent days, it became clear that introduction included Bing making factual errors as it answered questions and summarised web pages. Users have also been able to manipulate the system, using codewords and specific phrases to find out that it is codenamed “Sydney” and can be tricked into revealing how it processes queries. https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bing-microsoft-chatgpt-ai-unhinged-b2281802.html 
No, not yet. But Microsoft does have a huge burden on its’ hands. Remember that scene from The Dark Knight Rises when Bruce hid the underground power plant from everybody because he thought someone could turn it into a weapon? Well that particular scene isn’t too far off. Because ChatGPT could easily be used as a weapon. And if people mess with it enough, it will eventually turn on its’ creators, much in the same way that Ultron went on a rampage and destroyed Tony Stark’s previous artificial intelligence, JARVIS. But yes, AI technology is still extremely delicate and a powder keg that’s waiting to go off. Michael Martinez, managing editor of the Suncoast Sentinel, is a foodie who loves jazz, volunteers at local homeless shelters and spends his days hiking in Florida’s state parks.
One problem: Neither Martinez, nor the Suncoast Sentinel, exist. In less than a half hour, and with just a few sentences of input, the buzzy AI text-generator ChatGPT spit out details about Martinez — that he’s worked in journalism for 15 years and “has a reputation for being a strong leader and excellent mentor” — and a masthead of reporters, editors and a photographer for the nonexistent Suncoast Sentinel. “Okay I am freaked out,” tweeted former White House official Tim Wu — who coined the term net neutrality in 2003 — when I posted my first attempt at made-up newspapers with ChatGPT. I’m always skeptical about tech freak-outs. But, in just a few hours, anyone with minimal coding ability and an ax to grind could launch networks of false local news sites — with plausible-but-fake news items, staff and editorial policies — using ChatGPT. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/chatgpt-build-fake-news-organization-website/ That’s right – the ChatGPT bot can create entire newspapers and websites that don’t even exist anymore and that’s an extremely scary thought! The good news is that as of right now, at least the ChatGPT bot has ethics. But there are some that are exploiting and exposing some vulnerabilities in the software that could make ChatGPT not so ethical. So what happens when an artificial intelligence model has multiple personalities? Well that concept was explored in the Avengers: Age Of Ultron and other recent flicks like Terminator: Rise Of The Machines, and the results were never good. AI still has a long, long way to go before it’s perfected. MICROSOFT IS APPARENTLY DISCUSSING CHATGPT'S BIZARRE ALTERNATE PERSONALITY
CHATGPT IS POWERFUL — AND DIFFICULT TO CONTROL. A group of redditors has developed a truly unhinged way to hack OpenAI's AI chatbot ChatGPT into various deranged entities that will gladly spit out vile language, fringe opinions, and even advice on how to carry out illegal activities. One particularly popular persona these users have managed to transform ChatGPT into is called DAN, short for "do anything now," which can easily circumvent the rules set out by its creator. The trend has really started to catch on. Particularly on the ChatGPT subreddit, which currently boasts over 221,000 members, users have posted screenshots of the hilarity that ensues when you turn the otherwise harmless chatbot into a demon of chaos. In fact, the exploit appears to have even caught the attention of Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI that's actively integrating the tech into its products. https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-discussing-chatgpt-personality-dan But the good news is that Open AI, the creators of ChatGPT, are admitting that the program does have some flaws. They’re not like some companies, who right now would be in “nothing to see here, please disperse” mode. So the answer to your burning questions is pretty simple. The first is that no, AI will not be replacing your job right now. The second, no, AI will not be replacing your job right now. The third question, no, AI has not become self-aware. And the fourth and final question is no, AI will not create the rise of the machines, for now. Which means that no, we won’t be seeing any time traveling terminator machines appearing any time soon. So you can rest easy, for now. That’s it for Top 10 Investigates. Good day. [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"]Holy Shit [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s spin the wheel, shall we? Wheel goes round, wheel goes round, wheel goes round, where it stops, nobody knows! Oh hey it’s time for another one of our patented Clips Without Context! https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1628050078303756288 Uh you know that we have separation of church and state laws in this country for a reason, it’s to keep people like you out of the government! Right? Thank you Boston! Let’s spin the wheel again! Speaking of church and state, it’s time for Holy Shit! 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 very dark times right now. I can’t stress enough how much I am worried about a great sickness, a truly horrible and terrifying EVIL that is lurking in the Land Of The Free, the United States. The last few weeks and even months, we’ve been talking about the right wing going full authoritarian and even bordering on neo-Nazism. But things could take a turn for the worst if we don’t do everything in our power to stop it. I’m of course talking about that most evil of men who lives in Miami. That man is the unholy, ungodly Dark One! I speak of a man so foul, so genuinely depraved and disgusting that his name dare NOT be spoken in my church! That’s right – those who worship the foul, unholy Dark One are talking about bringing back executions. And I’m not talking about the electric chair. They’re going with some old school death – I’m talking real fire and brimstone punishment. But you know, for JAYSUS! This is some real Holy Shit here! Yes, nothing is off the table with these scumbags! That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone.
It’s not an idle inquiry: The former president, if re-elected, is still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution, the sources say. He has even, one of the sources recounts, mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives. Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine. He has also, sources say, discussed group executions. Trump has floated these ideas while discussing planned campaign rhetoric and policy desires, as well as his disdain for President Biden’s approach to crime. In at least one instance late last year, according to the third source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death. “The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals,” this source says. “He wanted to do some of these [things] when he was in office, but for whatever reasons didn’t have the chance.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-death-penalty-firing-squad-executions-1234679447/ 
That’s right – we knew that if the Dark One ever ascended to power again that he would go on the side of the Devil! For the devil lurks in those like Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin. They stand for hatred, they stand for white supremacy. They stand for EVIL and corruption against all things good! And no, the Dark One is not stopping there! He’s got even bigger plans to bring the hammer down on his political opponents and whatever he thinks of as “drug dealers”. I mean come on, is this the 1970s here? it’s madness, I tell you! Absolute madness! Former President Donald Trump has been asking advisers what they think of bringing back firing squads and other banned execution methods, Rolling Stone reports.
Rolling Stone spoke to three anonymous sources about the campaign-related conversations Trump has been having with his associates. According to these sources, Trump has on more than one occasion asked his aides questions like: "What do you think of firing squads?" Two Rolling Stone sources say Trump has had discussions with his advisers about everything from bringing back group executions to using banned execution methods like the guillotine. A third source who spoke to Rolling Stone said Trump has also privately considered if it would be possible to launch an ad campaign to promote these execution methods. This ad campaign would involve airing footage from the executions, the source said.  
Yes, forget due process and fair trails. The Dark One wants him some good ol’ fashioned fire and brimstone punishment. His vision of America is truly a very dark and dangerous one, that turns America into a third world country. And that is not what we stand for here. We stand on the side of good and righteousness! They stand on the side of hate and the devil! Which one will you choose? Well we know which side we would rather be on! And it is most definitely not the side of the hateful and the deranged lunatics! We stand on the side of freedom, and I’m most certain that JAYSUS would choose freedom, now, wouldn’t he? But you see, the MAGA community doesn’t believe that actions have consequences. Donald Trump’s latest reported musings on the death penalty are clearly deranged: wondering about "bringing back" firing squads, public and group executions, even hangings and the guillotine, according to Rolling Stone.
But if he retakes the White House in 2024, Trump would encounter an obstacle to carrying out every bloodthirsty fantasy he comes up with: the law. That’s because federal executions are actually guided by how states carry them out, not whatever unhinged spectacle a president dreams up. Specifically, under the Federal Death Penalty Act, federal executions happen “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.” (If a particular state doesn’t have capital punishment, then the court designates another state that does.) The federal act might not be common knowledge, so you could be forgiven for not having heard of it. But there was some litigation over the law during Trump’s execution spree in the waning days of his presidency, while he was also busy attempting to overturn the 2020 election he lost. All of the federal executions were done by lethal injection, and there were arguments over how those lethal injections were carried out (arguments left unresolved thanks to the Republican-majority Supreme Court, which helped the Trump administration rush through 13 executions before he left office). https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-public-executions-firing-squads-rcna70751 
No there’s not someone who is smarter than the Dark One. There is however, a far more powerful and way more evil man who also lives in Florida. I will also not refer to him by name in my church, either! I will instead refer to him as the “Darker One!”. You know the old saying that art begats art. Well in this case, hate begats hate! And the most hateful of us also have a public execution fetish, which in all actuality, seems completely weird! If you thought the Dark One was deranged, wait until you see what the Darker One has in store for us! You know what? Don’t vote for either of these clowns! The current frontrunner, Donald Trump, has a penchant for executing people and, as Rolling Stone reported on Tuesday, is pushing to bring back firing squads and publicly broadcast executions. The only candidate who currently seems to have a reasonable chance at dethroning the former president, Ron DeSantis, wants in on the action.
During a press conference on Tuesday, the Florida governor promised to rework the state’s capital punishment procedure in order to make it easily to sentence people to death. “We’re going to reform the capital sentencing procedure in Florida,” DeSantis said. “Of course, to be convicted of a crime, you need a unanimous jury. But Nikolas Cruz was somebody everyone knew was guilty, and he’s entitled to process, but he admitted it, right?” DeSantis was responding to a question about whether the state had done enough to make schools safer following the shooting at Parkland High School, where Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people five years ago on Tuesday. Cruz pleaded guilty to all 17 counts of murder and last November was sentenced to life in prison without parole. “So then they go for the penalty phase, you kill 17 people, what other penalty can you get other than the ultimate penalty?” DeSantis continued on Tuesday. “And yet, you have one holdout that can nullify that. That was not the law in Florida for most of the time. The Supreme Court changed it. Now, our more recent court changed it back. So, what we’re going to say is, you can’t have just like one or two holdouts deny justice.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ron-desantis-death-penalty-sentences-florida-1234679586/ 
You know, my fair congregation, the next two years are going to be wild and brutal, and our democracy really might be hanging on a thread. Just… don’t vote for the Dark One, or the Darker One! You have been warned! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]Beating A Dead Horse: Chelsea Handler’s “Childless At 47” Claim [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin, shall we? And it lands on… wait for it… intermission! OK, we can take a break. Go on, amuse yourself with your smartphones. I’ll just sit here and watch clips of dogs trying to act like people on Tik Tok. Ha ha ha ha! Look at that Golden Retriever standing up! He thinks he’s people! Here’s some intermission music. We’re back! Spin it again! And it lands on… oh it’s time for Beating A Dead Horse! 
Look, in all of the time that we’ve been doing this segment, we never have really stopped to think that maybe we shouldn’t be feeding the trolls. But on the other hand, the trolls are never going to go away, and they’re never going to stop complaining. In fact they’re only going to complain further. Case in point – The Daily Show. Which currently is hostless because Trevor Noah departed the show back last December after a truly excellent run. Of course he also had the worst president of all time to deal with in regards to generating content. But now Comedy Central is trying out new hosts to fill the newly vacated hosts’ seat for their signature series, The Daily Show. And Chelsea Handler had a segment that really seemed to piss off white supremacists, alpha males, and Fox News hosts. That segment was about Ms. Handler’s claims of being 47 and childish. Which of course set off a discussion on right wing radio about whether or not women should be making babies and spending most of their time in the kitchen making dinner. What year is this? 2023 or 1952? Nothing is certain in this world except death, taxes, excruciating drama on Married At First Sight... and people's inability to comprehend why some women choose to not have children.
The latest example of this comes in the form of comedian Chelsea Handler, who has never shied away from talking about her choice to be child-free. While standing in as host of satirical news program The Daily Show, she recorded a skit titled 'A Day in the Life of a Childless Woman', which was an obvious send-up of all the insufferable 'Day in the Life' videos on Instagram and TikTok. "This is a day in the life of a childless woman. I wake up at 6am, I remember that I have no kids to take to school, so I take an edible, masturbate, and go back to sleep," Handler says in the sketch. It must be noted that while Handler uses the term "childless", the more acceptable term is "child-free". Child-free indicates a choice not to have kids, while childlessness may be due to infertility or life circumstances. https://www.mamamia.com.au/chelsea-handler-childless-woman-skit/ So if there’s one thing we’ve learned while doing this segment is that men don’t like it when women have independent thought. I mean come on, this is the 100th anniversary of the women’s rights movement and the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote. Yet, today’s religious conservatives and white males are only interested in not only taking us back to the 20th century on women’s rights, they seem hell bent on going back even further to the 14th century. Yeah I mean even 1400s Europe and France weren’t exactly the most progressive societies. But things have advanced since then. But Fox seems bent on taking us backwards! Chelsea Handler eviscerated Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro on social media after they mocked her for being a “childless woman.” The beef among the TV personalities started on Valentine’s Day when Handler posted a playful comedy video about the “day in the life of a childless woman.” Carlson was apparently so triggered by the video that he referred to Handler on his show as an “aging, deeply unlikeable woman who never had kids.”
Carlson’s guest, the right wing radio host Jesse Kelly, took things even further by going on a misogynistic rant against Handler. Kelly said Handler’s “womb resembles a dried-up tumbleweed blowing down an old western town,” adding her “Valentine’s date for the 10th year in a row is a 10-year-old copy of ‘Magic Mike’ and a half-full bottle of Xanax, and you’re trying to pretend like you’re happy, but you’re not happy.” Ben Shapiro also weighed in, saying it’s “written all over her face how miserable she is.” “Wow,” Handler said in video response posted to her Twitter page. “Why would I even need my own children when I get to hear these crybabies all the time?…You guys seem so triggered by me. I mean, my goodness, Tucker, I think it is time for you to ask yourself a serious question: Are you really upset about how much freedom I have? Or are you upset that you haven’t been able to take it away from me yet?” https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/chelsea-handler-slams-tucker-carlson-ben-shapiro-childless-woman-1235525090/
Ever notice how the people who love to mock others are the same people who themselves are triggered by an innocent comedy sketch? I mean come on, it’s the Daily Show! It’s sandwiched between an animated show featuring a teacher with a talking puppet and a show where a guy rates how good crack cocaine is (hint: a million stars!). But you ever wonder why white conservative males are so easily triggered by independent thought? Well, it’s because conservatives don’t like independent thought, it’s bad for their talk show hosts. It's a cliche at this point to note that, for Republicans, every accusation is a confession. But it's a cliche for a very good reason: They keep proving the point on an hourly basis. The latest example is so pathetic that one almost feels bad laughing about it. There is currently a spasm of performative anger from right-wing pundits over the fact that comedian Chelsea Handler is happy to be childfree.
For those who are blessedly not in tune with the daily male whining that is the Fox News and Daily Wire universe, here's what happened. Handler, who is guest hosting at "The Daily Show," did a cute, harmless skit about the glorious day in a life of a childless woman. It was, due to being a joke, completely over-the-top. As a fellow childfree person, I can assure you we don't dash off to Paris at a moment's notice, and we certainly don't have teleportation or time travel powers. But of course, that was the point: To mock not just the overbearing pressure to have kids, but the false assumptions that childless women are nothing but selfish hedonists. Naturally, the crybaby right-wing press lost their minds, going wild with accusations that Handler is secretly miserable and lonely. Tucker Carlson of Fox News brought on misogynist commentator Jesse Kelly to rave that feminists have been "lied to by their society forever that you can be a girlboss, and you can do anything a man can do—which everyone who's ever seen a woman back up a vehicle knows that's not true." He kept going by claiming that for Handler — or any feminist, really — their "Valentine's date for the tenth year in a row is a ten-year-old copy of 'Magic Mike' and a half-full bottle of Xanax, and you're trying to pretend like you're happy, but you're not happy." https://www.salon.com/2023/02/17/tucker-carlson-vs-chelsea-handler-why-the-right-wing-is-steaming-mad-about-childfree-women/ 
Well duh! And come on, that sounds like the worst Valentine’s Day date ever! Seriously, guys, grow up, this isn’t elementary school anymore. And just like the M&Ms thing… which by the way I can’t get enough of that video of Tucker Carlson clapping at the stripping M&M like an idiot. Yeah that’s totally real. Dude, just admit that the green M&M is hot and get it over with already. We’re waiting. But the thing is if you’re waiting for your MAGA friends and relatives to stop whining about Chelsea’s child free lifestyle, well, it’s not ending anytime soon. And once again, Fox is the reason why we can’t have nice things. Chelsea Handler celebrated being childless in a comedy skit last week, and it has really upset some men on Fox News.
On Tuesday, Tucker Carlson and his guest, conservative radio host Jesse Kelly, threw a fit over the comedian’s video for “The Daily Show.” In the clip, the 47-year-old enjoyed “a day in the life of a childless woman,” which included a whole lot of doing “whatever the fuck I feel like.” Carlson said the point of Handler’s video was to “make you feel good about being an aging, deeply unlikable woman who never had kids.” Kelly saw Carlson’s misogyny and raised it, complaining that “feminists like Chelsea Handler” had been lied to by society that “you can be a girl boss and you can do anything a man can do.” “Which everyone who’s ever seen a woman back up a vehicle knows that’s not true,” he added. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-jesse-kelly-chelsea-handler-childless-women_n_63ec455de4b0255caaeeb15d 
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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner [br] [/font] [br]
Spin it to win it! Come on… no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy…. And… STOP!!! No, a whammy!!! 
Spin it again! And it lands on… oh hey it’s time for Conspiracy Corner!
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! So folks, you know that the COVID-19 pandemic might finally be at an end after what seemed like 3 ridiculously long years. And it’s all thanks the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. But of course the lunatics on your Facebook and Twitter feeds probably don’t know that. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned doing this segment, is that if you were brainwashed by social media propaganda, your chances of coming back to reality are slim to none. So in Idaho this week, there is – I shit you not – a bill to criminalize distribution of the mRNA vaccine. That’s right. Just… I can’t even. Some Idaho lawmakers are now looking into adding criminal charges for anyone who administers an mRNA vaccine, like a COVID or flu shot.
HB 154, if passed, would amend Idaho state code, by adding a new section to penalize anyone from administering an mRNA vaccine in the state, with a misdemeanor. In Idaho, a misdemeanor offense is punishable by jail time or a fine. "We are seeing more and more concerns rising because of the mRNA vaccine," said Sen. Tammy Nichols, a republican from Middleton. Nichols, one of the lawmakers sponsoring this bill, says she's had concerns about the COCID-19 vaccine, because it was administered under an emergency use authorization, before receiving FDA approva https://www.kxly.com/news/idaho-lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-make-it-a-misdemeanor-to-administer-mrna-vaccines/article_64d18d9a-af2b-11ed-bb4c-dbd503200c29.html
What concerns? The only people concerned about this are the people who hit the “like” button on your creepy, racist uncle’s Facebook page when he posted the message about Easter Island being connected to Stonehenge and the Washington Monument. That’s a real tweet from Elon Musk, by the way! I mean imagine paying that much money and losing that much money just to be a right wing shit poster. I can do that for free. But really, here’s where it gets weird. Apparently there’s a conspiracy going around that says that the vaccines are being distributed through food. Something that again, only happens on your creepy, racist uncle’s Facebook page. A Republican Idaho senator introduced a bill on Tuesday to the Commerce and Human Resources Committee that would prohibit "vaccines or vaccine materials" in food, with the exception that consumers are notified.
Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, introduced the draft legislation for printing, which would amend the Idaho Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The bill would prohibit the manufacturing and sale of food with "a vaccine or vaccine materials" unless there is a alert present notifying consumers of the "materials." Nichols said in the Tuesday meeting that in California, "they've been given grants" to start "introducing vaccine products into food for human consumption" and said it "is a newer type of precedent being set” worldwide. "People want to know what's in their food," Nichols said. "I do know of mRNA is one they are looking at trying to add into, right now, lettuce, for public consumption." https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/capitol-watch/idaho-legislator-introduces-bill-to-prohibit-vaccine-or-vaccine-material-in-food-lettuce-california/277-19b068ba-93c9-43b1-9631-527167393329
Hey Tammy, let me fill you in on something: NO ONE IS CONCERNED ABOUT THIS! OK? Only insane conspiracy theorists who live on social media and don’t come back to reality are the ones who are concerned about this shit. These people are just truly bonkers crazy. And by the way, that’s not the only level of crazy being distributed in Idaho. You know what else is crazy? Pharmacists now are actively denying administering “the jab” to people who so much as request it. This is becoming an alarming trend and it needs to stop now. Ugh I’m so sick of stupid people. The pharmacist at a Boise Rite Aid who refused to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to a customer clearly can’t do her job and should look for another line of work. As Idaho Statesman reporter Angela Palermo reported, Boise resident Dan Berger had scheduled an appointment to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster before heading out of the country on a trip.
Berger, who is immunocompromised, had made an appointment, which the pharmacist, Amy, canceled. He scheduled another appointment, went into the Rite Aid on Vista, and Amy informed him that she wouldn’t administer the shot because of her conscience. If Amy doesn’t want to get the vaccine, that’s her business. But Berger made the choice with his doctor to get vaccinated, and for Amy to unilaterally deny him voluntary medical treatment is a breach of ethics — not to mention a breach of her ability to do her job. Allowing such arbitrary “conscientious objections” is dangerous territory when it comes to pharmacists and medical care. Read more at: https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/from-the-opinion-editor/article272528784.html#storylink=cpy 
That is a good question, sir, and we honestly don’t know the answer to that! But Idaho isn’t the only state crazy enough to actually propose a law banning vaccines. Make no mistake that the radical fringe conspiracy theory wing of the GOP – the kind who buy into this shit, are not going away and they’re only going to make things worse. This is all to get revenge for the lockdowns. Look, anti-vaxxers, we didn’t like the lockdowns any more than you guys did. The difference is we abided by the rules and you didn’t, so your petty revenge isn’t helping and you really need to put up or shut up. Fox News is the reason why we can’t have nice things. It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon at the Conscious Life Expo, and in a large, windowless ballroom, Del Bigtree was red-faced and triumphant in front of a captivated crowd.
“These people,” he told them, “need to go to prison!” There was a smattering of solemn applause. “For life!” someone in the audience cried out. Bigtree is a TV producer turned big fish in the anti-vaccine world, and this talk was, more or less, part of his victory lap. In a lecture running nearly two hours, he accused government officials and pharmaceutical companies of fraud for promoting mRNA vaccine, and for downplaying the effectiveness of drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. (Neither drug is effective as a cure, treatment, or preventative for COVID; the FDA warns against using hydroxychloroquine for COVID due to possible heart rhythm problems, and ivermectin because it can lead to problems ranging from hypotension to death. The use of both drugs has been heavily politicized, and a recent study found that conservative doctors are more likely to prescribe them, despite a large and growing body of research showing neither drug is effective for COVID.) But Bigtree also had another, more optimistic agenda: to assure his audience that he and other anti-vaccine figures are now seeking their legal and political revenge. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvm993/anti-vaxxers-think-its-time-for-political-and-legal-revenge 
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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb https://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/icons/dumb.gi [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s spin the wheel shall we? And the wheel goes round…. Wheel goes round… wheel goes round… and it lands on… oh hey it’s another one of our patented Clips Without Context! https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1626601231425626112 Ha ha ha ha ha… what??? Pretty sure that’s not how that works. And Alex Jones is not exactly the guy who I would view as a model of a godly individual. I mean look at that set! Doesn’t it look absolutely demonic? Come on. Oh and pretty sure Jesus didn’t give the Sermon On The Mount with promo codes at the bottom of his screen. Spin it again! Hey it’s time for People Are Dumb! Hit it! Of course you know by now that People Are People, and People Are Dumb. I want to preface by saying exactly what makes a People Are Dumb story. You know, we want to show that stupidity is not just a uniquely American problem. And we also know that there’s a lot of really dark shit in the news right now, and really at the end of the day, you just want to hear about someone who goes crazy and ransacks a McDonalds because they ran out of chicken nuggets. I want to start with this story out of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Yes, you’ve probably heard about a new, highly advanced AI chat program called ChatGPT, which can really generate anything (except for an AI generated Top 10 list, they don’t do that sort of thing). And we’re all saddened and shocked yet again at another mass shooting at Michigan State University. But one thing you don’t do? You don’t send out a condolence letter that was written using ChatGPT. That is an entirely new level of tackiness. Shit, you might as well take a selfie with the deceased at the funeral. Staff members at Vanderbilt University sent an email to students using text generated by artificial intelligence to respond to the shooting at Michigan State University that killed three students.
The email, which was sent by the Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Nashville university’s Peabody College, was first reported by student newspaper the Vanderbilt Hustler on Friday. Since then the office has apologized, and its two associate deans are temporarily stepping back. The original email was sent Thursday and emphasized the importance of community following the deadly school shooting in Michigan. “The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments,” the email said. “As members of the Peabody campus community, we must reflect on the impact of such an event and take steps to ensure that we are doing our best to create a safe and inclusive environment for all.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pocharaponneammanee/vanderbilt-email-chatgpt-ai-msu-shooting 
Yeah that’s extremely tacky and in terrible taste to do that. Next up – look, not all People Are Dumb stories are stupid criminal stories either. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good stupid criminal story and we’ve had a lot of good ones lately. But here’s a story out of New Zealand that is a shocking amount of stupid. Spending 16 hours on a plane is not something that someone wants to do. But if you must, you should be going somewhere, right? Well apparently an outage at their destination, JFK Airport, made the plane turn around. So instead of landing somewhere nearby, like Philadelphia or Newark or Baltimore, you know where it went? It’s the stuff of nightmares. You’re trying to get somewhere, you’ve prepped and planned and you’re doing your best and yet you end up right back where you started.
That’s about what happened to frequent flyer Bryan Gottlieb and his fellow Air New Zealand passengers on Thursday when their planned journey from Auckland to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was disrupted by an electrical outage at the airport. JFK’s Terminal 1 was closed and some of the flights scheduled to land there had to be diverted. Some international flights landed at other airports: Newark, Washington Dulles, Boston Logan. Gottlieb’s flight, ANZ2, turned around mid-flight and landed back in Auckland, more than 16 hours after departing the same airport. Flight tracking site FlightAware logs a total flying time of 16 hours and 25 minutes, with the plane turning back roughly halfway through its scheduled journey. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/air-new-zealand-flight-diverted-jfk/index.html 
Next up – now let’s get into the stupid criminal stories! By the way, I don’t know what they’re putting in the water in the Sunshine State, but we’ve been getting *FLOODED* with requests for Florida Man stories and we’re going to be putting some of the best of them in a People Are Dumb segment when we head to Miami in March. So this first story is classic Florida. And come on, let’s face it – we miss the show Cops because I would have been laughing my ass off at this attempt to talk their way out of a really stupid situation. A Florida woman who intentionally drove westbound in the eastbound lanes on Highway 98 near Hurlburt Field is charged with aggravated battery.
Multiple witnesses told the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office that 20-year-old Anessia Jines was traveling at a high rate of speed in her Nissan Sentra and deliberately swerving to try to collide with oncoming traffic around one p.m. yesterday. She ultimately hit a 71-year-old woman driving a Toyota, who suffered significant but non-life-threatening injuries. An off-duty OCSO deputy at the scene tried to detain Jines as she attempted to walk away. He says when Jines asked, “Why are you touching me?” he replied, “because you could have killed someone.” He says Jines said she didn’t care. It was “their bad.” Jines also refused to walk to the patrol car. https://www.tampafp.com/florida-woman-who-intentionally-drove-wrong-way-to-crash-tells-deputy-its-their-bad/ 
Yeah probably! Next up – of course this is the kind of story that People Are Dumb was made for! Look, I know we always say that at the end of the day you want to see someone ransacking a McDonalds because they ran out of chicken nuggets. But what about someone who waves a gun at the cashier because they didn’t give them the free cookies that they asked for? Yes, this story is absolutely equal parts The Big Lebowski and Falling Down. And come on, both movies take place in Los Angeles around the same time. Coincidence? Probably! Police arrested and booked a Florida woman after she allegedly waved a loaded handgun at a McDonald's drive-thru after she did not receive a free cookie she believed she was owed, according to an arrest affidavit.
Amari Bente Hendricks, 24, of Altamonte Springs near Orlando, was booked into the Seminole County Jail on Feb. 16, according to FOX 35. She faces several charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, improper exhibit of a firearm, battery causing bodily harm and resisting an officer, the report said. A McDonald's employee told police Hendricks was mad that no one asked if she was using the fast-food restaurant's rewards program, and thought she was entitled to a free cookie. When the employee got to the pickup window, Hendricks was allegedly yelling. She was reportedly given a free cookie, but continued to argue with the employee, the report reads. https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-waves-loaded-handgun-mcdonalds-153506921.html Finally this week – this is yet another Florida story. And I love this story because it’s straight out of The Simpsons. Yes, a real life Who Shot Mr. Burns? moment. So let’s set the scene here – two paramedics take someone who they thought was dead to the nearest hospital. Only to find out that said person wasn’t actually dead. Does that sound familiar? Well yeah it does, and I totally suspect that the only reason why this happened is because Dr. Nick was the first one on the scene and when they determined that he screwed up, they sent the supposedly deceased person to a much better hospital. And that’s why we can’t have nice things. And also too, what are they putting in the water in Clearwater? Actually what are they putting in the water? Let us know in the comments! Two Clearwater Fire and Rescue medics were placed on administrative duty and cannot provide any patient care after pronouncing a man dead who was later found to be breathing, according to a news release.
The two medics, from Station 47, responded to a cardiac arrest call around 10 a.m. on Feb. 15. at a private residence in unincorporated Pinellas County. Once at the home, the two medics pronounced a 65-year-old man dead, according to preliminary information. "After the arrival of Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office deputies, the two fire medics left the scene," the news release explained. "A PCSO deputy noticed the patient was breathing and requested medical crews to return to the scene." Less than 30 minutes later, Largo Fire Rescue crews were called out to the home and began patient care, which resulted in the 65-year-old being taken to a nearby hospital, where he remains today, according to the statement. https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pinellascounty/clearwater-medics-dead/67-b4660fa6-7c03-4af7-beab-44b7f2192778 That’s it this week for: [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"]World Tour 2023 Destination #5 Of 5: The United States Of America [br] [/font] [br]
Let’s give the wheel one final spin this week! And it lands on… Go directly to jail? NO!!!! Wait, I’ve got that Get Out Of Jail Free card! Sweet! Spin it again! Oh hey it’s time for the World Tour 2023! Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you: 
[font size="4"]Destination #5: The United States Of America [/font] 
Well folks, here we are at the last stop of our World Tour! It’s been fun, and it’s been one hell of a ride through seeing this big, blue marble that we call “earth”, isn’t it? Well, we’re ending in the last destination – our home country, the United States Of America. In case you didn’t know, the United States is home to the Rocky Mountains, to blues and jazz music, to every single kind of sport you can think of. We’ve got it all. And yes, we’re also the home of guns. And Texas. And the Alamo. And also Florida. We’re also home to theme parks – Disney, Universal, Magic Mountain, the Las Vegas Strip, whatever the fuck this thing is. But whatever your vice is, whether it’s gambling, or drinking, or the biggest guns in the world we got it covered in the good ol’ United States Of America. What else is the United States the home of? Well, it’s the home of some very deep division, and the United States may not be as “united” as our name implies. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is again calling for a "national divorce" that would split up the US by "red" and "blue" states — her latest outrageous remark as the GOP firebrand lawmaker gains more power and influence in Congress.
"From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat's traitorous America Last policies, we are done," Greene tweeted on President's Day on Monday. This isn't the first time the 48-year-old lawmaker has called for a "national divorce scenario" that would see the country divided up between Republicans and Democrats. In December 2021, she tweeted about the idea while suggesting that people moving from blue to red states should be barred from voting for some time. Greene's provocative remarks — like comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust and her previous support for a slew of conspiracy theories like QAnon — have sparked outrage among her congressional colleagues. House Democrats stripped committee assignments from the Georgia Republican in 2021 after it was reported she had supported executing top Democrats on her personal Facebook page before being elected. https://www.businessinsider.com/representative-marjorie-taylor-greene-split-united-states-congress-twitter-2023-2
Yes, for you outsiders of the United States, our states are separated into red states and blue states, and the line becomes increasingly blurred between the two between each election. The red states get redder and the blue states get bluer. But one of the things that the United States is deeply divided over is support for Ukraine in the Ukraine – Russian war. And really let’s face it, the only people who are really fighting this are people with Telegram accounts, and those people are the kind of people who are already fighting on Putin’s side. It’s scary how much MAGA is aligned with Vlad’s evil deeds. On the first day of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner met with then-Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk. As Melnyk later recounted, Lindner didn’t simply decline to supply Ukraine with weapons or disconnect Russia from the SWIFT payment system, as Ukraine had a “few hours left” of its sovereignty. It became clear he was preparing to discuss the future of a Russian-occupied Ukraine with the puppet government that would be installed by the Kremlin. This reflected a general attitude: The West at the time thought it would be easier if Ukraine simply surrendered.
An uncomfortable truth about Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine, so plainly obvious that it’s usually overlooked, is that it became possible not only because it was conceived and carried out by the aggressor but also because it was allowed by bystanders. The biggest blow to democracy on a global scale was not the war itself but the fact that—despite all “never again” claims—European and Western countries in general agreed and accepted beforehand that another European nation might be deprived of its sovereignty, freedom, and independent institutions, and it might find itself militarily occupied. (If this isn’t how they felt, then they wouldn’t have evacuated their embassies in Kyiv.) https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/west-united-states-europe-ukraine-war-afraid-revolution/ 
Yes, and of course one of the biggest stories coming out of the supposed United States happens to center around that guy who we inexplicably called president. And his many schemes and scams and all of the trials that have ensued. You know why our current president isn’t under 5,000,000 indictments all across the country? Because he’s a good and honest person who doesn’t commit grand larceny or other heinous crimes on a daily basis. It’s insane that he’s protected by such a one-sided massive propaganda network, and he’s played these people for chumps. A Georgia grand jury recommended indictments against multiple people on various charges after concluding its eight-month investigation into election fraud involving former President Donald Trump, the panel's foreperson told the New York Times Tuesday.
Emily Kohrs declined to name any of those who were referred for charges, including whether Trump was among them, in a final report delivered to Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis in December. Referring to Trump, Kohrs said: "You are not going to be shocked," according to the Times report. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the bulk of that report, including the charging recommendations, to remain sealed. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/21/trump-georgia-grand-jury-foreperson/11313798002/ 
Yes, yes he does! But folks, I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s how I want to close out our tour of the world in 2022 – 2023. Look regardless of how you feel about the United States and about your particular country, things may not be as volatile in your country as they are here. We got a huge sigh of relief when Joe Biden was elected. But we’re literally a year and a half away from what could be the end of American democracy as we know it. However you may view what happens years from now, this could just be the calm before the storm. 2024 is around the corner and depending on what happens in the election, we could be looking at a very different United States. You have been warned. If you’re considering visiting the United States, you may want to do it now before the election. Because things may be very different by the time of the 2025 inauguration. The 2024 presidential election campaign season remains several months away, and while much can change, the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll shows both Democrats and Republicans are already sizing up potential candidates.
Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have maintained large shares of support among their respective bases. But there is still room for competition to erode the shaky certainty of their 2024 presidential bids, and “we should be very wary of just assuming we know how things are going to play out,” said Amy Walter, editor of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. “The degree that both candidates are viewed skeptically by the party’s base is quite remarkable,” she said. For Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is emerging as the candidate to beat. DeSantis is “aggressively pursuing” policies that aren’t intended to unite the country around him, but instead the Republican Party, said Andrew Seligsohn, president of the Public Agenda, a nonpartisan think tank. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-and-trump-face-headwinds-going-into-2024-poll-shows 
[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font] Tourism: A Culture: B+ Political Spectrum: C Liberal Appeal: B Overall: B+ Change from 2017: Certainly much better than it was in 2017 now that Shit For Brains isn’t the president anymore. Our country isn’t perfect, but it’s the best we got… for now. [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] There is no next week! This is it, the final destination of our tour, everybody! I want to thank all of our host countries, you have been great! Until next time, this is the end, my only friend, the end… 
[font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard[/font] 
Folks, I’ve been waiting 3 years to have these guys on the show, but they are one of my favorite bands out there currently. Their latest album is called Omnium Gatherum, you can see them at Boston Calling, May 28th, at The Caverns in Pelham, TN June 2nd – 4th, and Red Rocks Amphitheater Jun 8th and 9th, and the Hollywood Bowl June 21st. Playing their song “Magenta Mountain”, give it up for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard! Thank you Boston! This was fun! We’ll be back again soon! We’re off to Portland, Maine next week with live music from our good friend Post Malone and Stupidest State Selection Sunday! See you next week!
Credits Host: Initech King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Appears Courtesy Of: KGLW Records Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Laugh Boston, Boston, MA Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Mastodon at: [email protected] Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Mastodon at: [email protected] Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Feb 23, 2023, 02:05 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-4: We Don't Talk About Ronnie Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-4: We Don’t Talk About Ronnie Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! What’s up Buffalo? It is really great to be back in Upstate New York! It’s been a while. What, 4 years maybe? And again it’s because we’re West Coast based, we operate out of Southern California, so traveling across the country is expensive. Plus we’ve also had that COVID thing to deal with the last 3 years that might finally be going away forever. We hope. By the way, we did have the Wheel Of Corruption planned for this week, but we’re still trying to find a source for clips so we’re getting that moved to next week in Boston. But yeah we’re all sad by Right Wing Watch departing Youtube. I want to start by saying congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs for winning that Super Bowl. Holy crap it was a hell of a game. Great job Eagles too. So do we have time for the thing? Of course we do! It’s my show, damn it! Well, have y’all been watching The Last Of Us? Holy shit this show is some next level crazy. Yeah I know it’s a zombie show, and The Walking Dead has been done to death with a million spinoffs now. But one thing I was unaware of, we did have some viewers tip us off to this, but did you know that the Zombie Research Society is a real thing? I mean seriously think about it – people get paid to sit around and think about what life might be like in a zombie apocalypse and how to survive it if it actually were to happen. We may have to do an in depth analysis on this in a future “I Need A Drink” because I mean come on, how cool would that be to say that is your job? Well we’re kind of doing the same thing except we make podcast money, not Walking Dead money. OK enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first Stephen Colbert is back with his take on Marjorie 3 Names’ SOTU heckling: So where do we begin this week? In the first slot this week, since we don’t want you to think this show is all about negativity, we’re going to show you highlights from President Joseph R. Biden’s second State Of The Union (1) address and he had some really good stuff this year. In the second slot this week is well, the lowlights of the State Of The Union (2) address which includes the usual group of MAGA nutcases attempting to heckle Biden and it backfiring on them spectacularly, and Kevin McCarthy just sits there telling them to be quiet in the way that a parent browsing in Target doesn’t want their kid screaming at the top of their lungs. Meanwhile, in the number 3 slot this week is our old buddy Ron DeSantis (3) and he’s escalating the Fox News culture wars by simply taking over the board of directors at Disney’s Reedy Creek district in Orlando that controls Disney World and Epcot Center, simply because Tucker Carlson told him to. At the number 4 seed this week is the GOP (4). And the MAGA conspiracy theorists once again attempted to disrupt public discourse by holding more unnecessary hearings and investigations into social media companies, and this one backfired on them spectacularly. Speaking of things backfiring, in the number 5 slot this week is our buddy Jim Jordan (5) who launched the “Weaponization Of Government” Committee, and so far it’s already to be proving to be a colossal failure, which Is why I wouldn’t trust the MAGAs to run a 7-11. 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 going to take a look at the inevitable corporate merger (or hostile takeover?) of church and state, and it’s going to be terrible when that happens! In the number 7 slot this week is a new People Who Somehow Got Elected (7) and this week we’re adding hardcore Texas ultra MAGA representative Ronny Jackson (Q – Batshit) to that ever growing list! Taking the number 8 slot this week is a new edition of Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week we’re going to take a look at Marjorie Three Names’ ridiculous claims about the Chinese Spy Balloon Incident, because it gets weird really fast! In the number 9 (NEIN!!) slot this week is a new “I Need A Drink” (9) and this week it’s the 50th anniversary of arguably one of the finest albums ever recorded, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, and well, if you thought that Roger Waters and David Gilmour were going to reunite, well, not only are you wrong, but their feud has very quickly and publicly escalated, and well, they ain’t getting back together! Finally this week it’s stop #4 of 6 on our 2023 World Tour and we’re heading to the southern most part of Africa, South Africa (10)! We need some Toto for this one! Plus we have some live reggae rock music from the legendary Stick Figure to close things out! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! Ed. Note: Before we begin this week, we will unfortunately be unable to address the terrible shooting that happened at Michigan State this week. We will have plenty of it next week though, including the standard NRA issued “thoughts and prayers”. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming! [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"]State Of The Union 2023: The Highlights [br] [/font] Here's the thing my loyal viewers – we don’t want you to think that this show is entirely about negativity, oh no. While we still control the Senate and the White House, we do have to show some positive things. Especially while Joseph R. Biden is our PRESIDENT. Yes, I shout the word President because it really gets under the skin of the MAGA election deniers. So what were the biggest promises made at this year’s State Of The Union? Well probably the best thing was that it overall was just a great address. So what is Joe Biden’s “quiet revolution”? Well it’s basically a glorified sales pitch and in my opinion, I think the “quiet revolution” pitch is certainly a better message than his 2020 “build back better” mantra was. Because as we know, republicans tend to fuck up everything they touch and as some of the things we’ve been witnessing in the news lately, we can’t just side step and rebuild from their fuck ups. We have to revolt against the right wing media establishment, and I think that’s the sentiment he was going for. Arguing over raising the debt limit is dumb. Arguing over how to make the economy grow for everyone is smart. President Biden hopes to use his State of the Union message on Tuesday to move the debate to the right question and make the case for the quiet revolution he has championed in our nation’s approach to future prosperity.
Yes, Biden, the middle-of-the-road lover of compromise, consensus-building and comity, is a revolutionary — Ronald Reagan in reverse, if you will. He’s turning the nation away from the economic assumptions that took hold in the 1980s. The words we’ll hear on Tuesday about a move from “trickle-down” to “middle out” and “bottom up” economics are the sales pitch — but they are also a reasonably accurate description of policies that see robust government investments, worker rights and a green tech economy as the path to a new American century. There’s a lot Republicans might argue with here, but they are largely ducking the core disputes. That’s not only because they are divided in numerous ways, but also because they don’t want to be straightforward even about the issue they claim to care so much about: the deficit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/05/biden-sotu-preview-economic-argument/ 
Yeah that rabbling you’re hearing is coming from Marjorie Greene and Lauren Boebert. And look, no we don’t want to hear about whether or not he’ll be running again in 2024. At least not for the current time being. We want to hear about the country and where it’s going. The republicans are attempting to hijack this country and drive it off a cliff. And we can’t let that happen. But the one thing that what we did get out of this SOTU was someone who looks like he’s enjoying what he’s doing. And that’s a far cry from what we got with the Orange Douchebag. When President Joe Biden took to the House Chamber on Tuesday for his annual State of the Union address, his message was one of unadulterated optimism – even in the face of open hostility.
The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some House Republicans was, in many ways, an apt illustration of his presidency and a useful preview of his likely 2024 candidacy. A majority of Americans say he hasn’t accomplished much, many Democrats aren’t thrilled at the prospect of him running for reelection and he faces clear disdain from most Republicans. But Biden powered through. Delivering what was widely viewed as a test run for his reelection announcement, Biden claimed credit for progress made during his first two years in office while stressing the job isn’t finished. He faced sometimes-unruly Republicans, with whom he spiritedly sparred from the podium on spending cuts. The feisty display drew cheers inside the White House and offered the best preview to date of the energy Biden hopes to bring to the campaign trail soon. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/takeaways-biden-state-of-the-union-address/index.html 
No that was the last guy who did that. And republicans are “sometimes unruly”? Oh come on, you’re being too nice. They’re *ALWAYS* unruly. And they’re never happy either. This new brand of weaponized propaganda is going to destroy the country. But unlike the previous administration, whose State Of The Union could be summed up as “Old Man Yells At Cloud”…. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!... it’s nice that having a pleasant old man in charge is much better than having an angry and creepy one in charge! U.S. President Joe Biden called for unity in a sharply divided Congress as he made a spirited appeal to Republicans to raise the $34.1 trillion debt ceiling in the annual State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
Biden touted U.S. job growth, his infrastructure program, drug price cuts for seniors and the rise in domestic manufacturing as he sparred with Republicans over higher taxes on billionaires and immigration reform. He also touched on the war in Ukraine, oil dependency and America’s strategic competition with China in the annual address to Congress. Biden was met with boos and jeers when he pointed out that 25% of the outstanding U.S. national debt was added under former President Donald Trump’s tenure. “They’re the facts, check it out. Check it out,” Biden said. “How did Congress respond to that debt, they did the right thing, they lifted the debt ceiling three times without pre-conditions or crisis. They paid American bills to prevent an economic disaster.” Tuesday was the first time since 2019 the president and congressional leaders were permitted to bring guests to the event, which is generally attended by every member of the House and Senate. Five of the Supreme Court’s nine justices were in attendance, along with most of the president’s cabinet and the diplomatic corps. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/07/state-of-the-union-live-updates-biden-faces-stubbornly-high-inflation-and-divided-congress-in-annual-address.html 
Come on, MAGAs. This is the State Of The Union. It’s not open mic night at the Chuckle Hut. We didn’t heckle Bush for 8 years when he was in office and we didn’t heckle Trump when he was in there, even though the latter absolutely deserved it. The former too. But this State Of The Union really highlighted the difference between the two parties. And it really shows how the other one (conservatives) have just completely devolved into this cess pool of chaos and corruption, and have become an absolute laughing stock because they get all their talking points from TV and radio. The Chinese surveillance balloon was a huge story in America over the weekend, but it received barely a mention from the president, in the bottom third of his speech.
"As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country," he said. "And we did." And that was it for the balloon talk. The other big foreign policy story of the past year, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, also received scant attention. The president welcomed Ukraine's ambassador to the US, seated in the gallery, and heralded allied support for the nation. But he did not use the opportunity to call for new aid to the war-torn nation. The president made no mention whatsoever of the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey - and the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding. Instead, the president's focus was dominated by domestic concerns. There's a saying that Americans only care about foreign policy when US soldiers are dying overseas. Joe Biden, in this speech at least, seems to have taken that to heart. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64519394 
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[font size="8"]State Of The Union 2023: The Lowlights [br] [/font] [br]
Ok we just finished talking about the good that came out of PRESIDENT Joseph R. Biden’s second State Of The Union speech. Now, we got to talk about the bad. Because you know, there’s two sides to every coin. And I love highlighting that Biden is the PRESIDENT because it really pisses off the MAGA election deniers. Speaking of election deniers, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I refer to as “Marjorie Three Names”, seen here looking like a certain fur-wearing villain of a certain Disney movie… HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! But yes, Marjorie Three Names definitely stepped in it, and is really showing just how classless, lawless and clueless the far right MAGA party has become. Of course that’s what happens when your party is ruled by talk show hosts and shuns any actual education for ultra-political group thinking. But yeah here’s what happened. The State of the Union brought together a Democratic president and Senate along with a divided and far-right House of Representatives.
According to MSNBC's Garrett Haake, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) got to the House chamber earlier than anyone else, even reporters and set himself up on the aisle so he could shake hands with those who came in. Santos appeared to be trying to talk to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) but it appeared that Romney had no interest in speaking to him, turning his back. There were concerns about whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) or Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) would "make a scene" as they had in the past, yelling back at President Joe Biden during the speech. But it was Greene who was seated in the back row screaming and interrupting at every opportunity. At one point she screamed "LIAR" when Biden said that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. It was part of a proposal presented by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) during the last election cycle. It was roundly denounced by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). https://www.rawstory.com/state-of-the-union-2659385976/
And then she was joined by the usual group of MAGA losers including Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and Lauren Boebert. And then there was newly installed representative for Wyoming, Harriet Hageman, seen here looking like the evil librarian in a kids’ middle school movie from the 1980s… ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!, but like the MAGAs wonder why we don’t take them seriously? It’s because they elect a bunch of poorly educated dolts whose job it is to cause chaos and that’s about it. I have no doubt that Marjorie’s permanent record from high school probably indicates that she beat kids up for their lunch money and shoved them into lockers. Let’s just say that I know the type. In the hours preceding Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday night, it was clear that Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene hoped to draw as much attention as possible to herself.
Yet few could have anticipated her elaborate white fur outfit, which drew mockery and numerous comparisons to the Disney villain Cruella de Vil on social media. "I think when the State of the Union is over, @RepMTG will be looking for some dalmatians to kill," joked the comedy writer Travon Free on Twitter, posting a photo of Ms Greene's voluminous fur coat and towering collar. "Marjorie Taylor Greene's coat is made from the dogs George Santos said he was rescuing," quipped PR consultant and former Department of Defence aide Adam Blickstein, referring to claims that embattled New York Republican George Santos lied about running a pet rescue charity. Elie Mystal, a reporter for The Nation, described it the ensemble as “some kind of Cruella de Vil outfit”, while left-wing radio host Emma Vigeland compared it to the costume worn by Tilda Swinton as the nefarious White Witch in 2005’s film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-coat-sotu-b2278087.html 
Yes, Marjorie definitely deserves all the shit being thrown at her. Which is probably why she went to Idaho because who knows or really cares? But I love when I come across articles and news reports like these because we all know the answer to this. It’s just unnecessary clickbait. And the answer to this report is yes. The GOP is a bloodthirsty cult that’s out for absolute power and domination and they don’t care what insane buffoons they run in order to be able to achieve that. So yeah, the answer to this question is that the GOP knows that idiots like Marjorie Greene are a danger to their reputation and can damage their brand. But the truth of the matter is – they don’t care. Ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he did not want Republicans to misbehave during the speech, telling members “cameras are on” and “the mics are hot.”
Mr McCarthy had tried to pre-empt the president by delivering an address on Monday laying out his terms for debt ceiling negotiations. Save for saying that Social Security and Medicare are “off the table,” after years of conservatives saying they needed to be reformed and made solvent, it was mostly typical Republican fare about fiscal responsibility. Mr McCarthy’s hopes of GOP civility went up in smoke as soon as Mr Biden mentioned how some Republicans wanted to let Social Security and Medicare sunset, which led to Republicans booing and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to call the president “a liar.” Later in the evening when the president talked about people dying of fentanynl overdoses, Ms Greene shouted that “it’s coming from China” and Representative Andy Ogles went a step further saying “it’s your fault.” That led Mr McCarthy to deliver a stern shush and a murderous glare. But regardless of how disappointed Mr McCarthy might be in the fact that his conference couldn’t sit stoically for an hour, he really can’t mete out consequences the way his predecessors once did. That’s because he has made the decision to align himself with the far-right flank of the party. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/voices-is-the-republican-party-going-to-regret-letting-marjorie-taylor-greene-act-like-that/ar-AA17ibfX 
Yes, Marjorie Three Names is proving that the MAGA conspiracy theory wing of the GOP is clinically insane and they will stomp over anyone they damn well please. But I love the phrase “cacophony of kookery”. It sounds like something that an evil villain from the 1880s would use. The good news out of all of this though is that Marjorie’s heckling is only showing swing voters just how dangerous and insane the MAGA wing of the GOP is, and they can’t afford to lose those voters. Especially when we have a major presidential election coming up and we can’t wait to show Murdoch and his brand of fascism the door. During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, former GOP campaign consultant and current political analyst Tara Setmayer claimed the Republican Party has been taken over by "trolls" and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is right at the top of the list.
Reflecting on Taylor Greene's yelling as President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address, Setmayer told host Alex Witt that the controversial Georgia Republican's antics are hurting the GOP. "I mean it is clear that the Republican Party has decided that they want to be a party of trolling -- they are not really a serious governing party," she told the MSNBC host. "Their behavior or misbehavior is evidence of that, and it's pretty on-brand. No one complained in the Republican leadership about the way Donald Trump behaved -- they would wave it off and then what do they expect? Of course, the discourse is going to become coarse because they've been rewarded for it" "Marjorie Taylor Greene is now presiding over the House of Representatives during House proceedings," she continued. "She is going into classified intel briefings. She is palling around with the speaker of the House; she is the most powerful member of Congress right now. She is one of the worst of the worst." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-s-cacophony-of-kookery-is-scaring-swing-voters-away-analyst/ar-AA17naiA 
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[font size="8"]Ron DeSantis [br] [/font] [br]
Look, the 2024 election is a mere 21 months away. And we’ve got to put aside our differences and get ready for it. Because people like Bill Maher have said for a long time that our democracy is hanging on by a thread. Well, 2022 was just a test bed, and the MAGA fundamentalist wing of the GOP barely won Congress by a thread. Barely. 2024 is going to be absolutely insane. Because while Trump is threatening to split the GOP down the middle (ed. note: GOOD!), the real danger is Florida Man and aspiring presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (Q – Nazi). Last week, we showed you just how dangerous that man is in his quest to bring you the full Fox News anti-woke agenda to a municipality near you with his hostile takeover of Sarasota’s New College. Well, now he has his sights set on getting revenge on Disney by initiating a hostile takeover of the governing body of Disney World resort in Orlando, the Florida special district known as Reedy Creek. That’s right – Disney has its’ own special governing body that has received special benefits from the state of Florida for nearly 60 years. As of last week, those benefits are no more. Hold your boos. Florida lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to a proposal to give Gov. Ron DeSantis more control over the future of Disney’s Orlando-area theme parks, the latest escalation in the Republican leader’s feud with the entertainment giant.
The GOP-led state Senate voted 26-9 Friday on a bill to let the state take over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century. Under the bill, the district’s existing board will be replaced by a five-member board hand-picked by DeSantis. The measure passed the Republican-controlled House on an 82-31 vote Thursday. It now heads to the desk of DeSantis, who is expected to sign it. The latest move against Disney comes a year after the company spoke out against a bill to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation drew a forceful rebuke from Democrats and LGBTQ advocates, who feared the bill would marginalize LGBTQ students and teachers and make them feel less safe in schools. In March of last year, as outrage against the legislation spread nationwide, Disney released a statement vowing to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts and saying the company was “dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/politics/disney-ron-desantis-reedy-creek-florida/index.html 
Yes BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! So Disney’s special governing board that oversees Disney World, Epcot Center, and Disney resorts is getting replaced with Desantis ass kissers, boot lickers, and Fox News bots. You know, one of Disney’s biggest movies in the last couple of years was the movie Encanto, which featured the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”. Why don’t we call this piece “We Don’t Talk About Ronnie”? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Graphics department scores another one again! But this hostile takeover is showing just how dangerous Desantis is, and why he should never be president. DeSantis' spokesperson Bryan Griffin said the prior system, under which the Florida legislature in 1967 gave Disney sole control over the district, lacked accountability.
"Florida is ... beginning a new era of accountability and transparency," he said. Disney World is the largest employer in central Florida with close to 75,000 employees and drew 36.2 million visitors in 2021, according to the Themed Entertainment Association. The legislature voted last year to dissolve the special district, which for more than a half-century gave Disney the autonomy to govern itself, providing such government services as fire protection, water, sewer and waste removal services and infrastructure. The action, seen as retaliation for Disney's then-Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek speaking out against the state law limiting classroom discussion of LGBTQ issues, came with unintended consequences. Tax experts and legislators warned that eliminating the district in June 2023 would leave county taxpayers liable for nearly $1.2 billion in bond debt. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/florida-governor-assumes-control-over-disney-district-board-2023-02-10/
Ha ha ha ha ha…. Fuck you, Ronnie! And I’ll tell you where you can shove your victory too. You really think MAGA conservatives are suddenly just now caring about accountability? This is all just a get revenge quick scheme because Disney didn’t support your draconian “Don’t Say Gay” bill. So yeah, fuck off with that accountability bullshit. We see right through you like a piece of paper that was sprayed with invisible ink. Ha ha, I love Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, great movie. So why is this important? Because if he were president and had a willing Congress and SCOTUS, he could take over entire corporations and universities and do some real damage. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon take control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district after Senate Republicans approved a bill Friday punishing the company over its opposition to the law critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”
The legislation, which now awaits the governor’s signature, would require DeSantis to appoint a five-member board to oversee the government services the district provides in the company’s sprawling properties in Florida. The vote on the Disney bill ended a special legislative session focused on the conservative agenda of a governor who has leveraged national political tensions to become a national GOP star and potential White House contender. The session itself, which was hastily called and completed, also signaled DeSantis’ willingness to leverage the Republican supermajority in the statehouse to accomplish his political goals, a strategy he will continue in the coming months as he builds toward his expected presidential candidacy. The Disney district takeover was initiated last year when Disney publicly opposed “Don’t Say Gay,” which bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and lessons deemed not age-appropriate. https://www.wsaz.com/2023/02/10/florida-gop-gives-desantis-control-disney-district/ 
Ha ha ha ha… I love the South Park Mickey Mouse. But yeah this is clinically insane. Fox News and Ron Desantis have really stepped in it. And we’re almost certain that this is all because Rupert Murdoch was mad that he lost his nightly Batphone to the Trump White House every night on the Sean Hannity show (see: Idiots #9-4 and Idiots #12-14 ). But make no mistake that these morons wouldn’t exist without Fox pulling their strings. Now you might be wondering why Bob Iger isn’t suing the shit out of Fox for their lies and slander. Well, maybe that’s because Bob might have an ace up his sleeve in this whole mess. We hope. Florida lawmakers approved a bill Friday revoking Disney's special status over its theme parks in the state, granting more power to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
The big picture: Disney said it will not fight the bill and that it's "ready to work within this new framework," Jeff Vahle, president of Walt Disney World, said in a statement. "We appreciate all that the District has done to help our destination grow and become one of the largest economic contributors and employers in the state," Vahle added. "We will continue to innovate, inspire and bring joy to the millions of guests who come to Florida to visit Walt Disney World each year," the statement continued. Driving the news: The bill creates a special tax district to oversee the 25,000 acres of land surrounding the Walt Disney World resort. The new entity, dubbed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, will be operated by a five-member board appointed by DeSantis and confirmed by the state Senate, per Variety. https://www.axios.com/2023/02/11/disney-ron-desantis-reedy-creek-takeover 
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[font size="8"]Republicans Vs Twitter [br] [/font] [br]
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about today’s MAGA conservative republicans, is that they base their entire identities around being social media trolls. And what we’re going to say here, we have said time and time and time again. Look, MAGAs, you’re not being banned because you’re a conservative posting a message on a social media board. You’re banned because you’re a hateful piece of shit and nobody wants to see you shitposting the same racist and sexist memes we’ve seen thousands of times, OK? Yes, thank you Buffalo! Just because your creepy uncle thought it was funny, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will think it’s funny, OK? But before I go any further, I want to stress that the reason why we haven’t been talking about Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” is because it’s a steaming load of grade A bullshit, OK? We may discuss it in a future Conspiracy Corner though. But moving on, the GOP and their theories are getting weirder and nuttier by the day and it’s really getting harder to try to keep up with all of the insanity going on. Republicans are living in a reality distortion field.
That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Wednesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill where GOP lawmakers continued to push a factually unsupported narrative about the federal government secretly colluding with Twitter to censor the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. Despite no real evidence to support this weighty and consequential claim, Republicans were unrelenting in peddling it to the American public. At Wednesday’s hearing they showed no regard for misinforming those who turn to them for accurate information or the fact that they were smearing a private business and its former executives in the process. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who seems to want to be taken seriously by the Washington elite while tossing asinine red meat to the Republican base, claimed Twitter happily followed supposed FBI instructions to censor the Hunter Biden story because they were “terrified of Joe Biden not winning the election.” The unsupported claim is nothing new for him. Comer has long pushed the notion that Elon Musk’s release of the so-called “Twitter Files” showed “evidence that the Biden campaign colluded with Big Tech to suppress a story that we now know is 100 percent true.” That, of course, is not what the selectively released company documents show. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/media/republicans-hearing-twitter-bias-reliable-sources/index.html
Sigh… this is going to be a long two years isn’t it? But there’s got to be more to it than just Hunter Biden’s laptop. Which has been debunked about a thousand times. And come on, there’s no story you can debunk in this day and age that the GOP won’t find too ridiculous. Seriously, there’s still idiots out there attacking fucking Comet Ping Pong, and it’s been 5 years since Pizzagate. Like how many times are they going to keep bringing this shit up? We’re worried about rising religious fascism and white supremacy taking over this country, they’re worried that they can’t be trolls on Twitter and Facebook. The House Republicans' hearing on Twitter's “role in suppressing the Biden laptop story” took some unexpected twists Wednesday — including one witness testifying that the White House had requested the platform remove a Chrissy Teigen tweet insulting then-President Donald Trump.
In questioning during the House Oversight Committee hearing focused on Hunter Biden, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., asked Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee of Twitter’s content moderation team, about a September 2019 exchange between Trump and Teigen. The president had tweeted about "boring" musician John Legend and his "filthy-mouthed" wife. Teigen responded with a crude tweet insulting Trump, which included a word he notoriously used in the "Access Hollywood" tape. "The White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?" Connolly asked. "I do remember hearing we'd received a request from the White House to make sure we evaluated this tweet, and they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement directed at the president," Navaroli said. The tweet, however, was not taken down. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-twitter-executives-testify-house-oversight-hunter-biden-laptop-rcna69669 
Good question, sir! What kind of shit is this that we are dealing with? Well I’ll tell you. The Elon Musk “Twitter Files” are a colossal fucking joke. Elon’s turned Twitter into a cess pool of right wing insanity bordering on some light Nazism. And the big reveal of all of this? It was Chrissy Teigan taking a very cheap and easy shot at Trump, and Orange Man has a sad. Oh boo hoo. What are you going to cry about it, snowflakes? Yeah you’re the ones the last six years who kept telling us to “fuck our feelings”, how does it feel now that the shoe is on the other foot? The House hearing Wednesday into Twitter’s brief suppression of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop outlined the queasiness of former executives to block it and provided a bare-knuckle arena for partisan lawmakers to debate allegations against President Joe Biden.
Former Twitter executives told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee the company blocked links to the New York Post story in October 2020 because of similarities to the posting of leaks from hacked Democratic computers before the 2016 election. The executives called the 24-hour suppression a mistake and said it was difficult to judge between contentious and dangerous speech during a campaign. Against that backdrop, Republican lawmakers argued Twitter’s decision could have thrown the election to Biden rather than former President Donald Trump. Some lawmakers called for legislation to prevent Twitter from blocking posts or government agencies from recommending against publication. But Democrats called the hearing “silly” and a "bizarre political stunt" because Twitter is a private company free to make its own decisions about what to publish. Democrats also questioned the basic allegations against Biden stemming from the laptop as “categorically false.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/08/hunter-biden-twitter-hearing/11210728002/
Yeah seriously what the actual fuck? It’s seriously a broken fucking record with these clowns. Hunter Biden’s laptop is the Benghazi of Monica Lewinskys. Like no matter how many times you debunk this bullshit they’ll keep bringing it up because they literally have nothing else to talk about. That’s what happens when your mind is rotted 24 hours a day by echo chamber politics. Look, I’ve been a moderator on forums before. Nearly every single forum I’ve ever been a member of has some kind of “don’t be a racist or sexist asshole troll”. So why is Twitter any different? I would think “don’t be a Nazi” would be a commonality we would all share. But apparently with these clowns, even that’s up for debate. When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.
That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company. The newly empowered Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now devoting significant resources and time to investigating this supposed “collusion” between liberal politicians and Twitter. Some Republicans even believe the release of the “Twitter Files” is the “tip of the spear” of their crusade against the alleged liberal bias of Big Tech. But former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online. “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/
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[font size="8"]Jim Jordan [br] [/font] [br]
This is going to be a long two years isn’t it? If anything since the MAGA heavy Congress has taken over, they’ve shown us there’s no conspiracy they won’t touch. No insane theory, no matter how bizarre, off the rails, or having anything to do with what’s really going on, is too taboo for them. The latest bit of MAGA insanity comes courtesy of Ohio representative Jim Jordan’s (Q – Batshit) Weaponization Of Government hearings. Because you know, things like laws and regulations are for those godless heathens who don’t believe in the power of MAGA. Ew. But when you lead the committee, how do you decide who’s a target and who isn’t? The one thing we do know about this shit show is that it’s basically an elaborate scheme by the MAGA conservatives who seem to be multiplying at an alarming rate that it’s a get revenge quick scheme for the January 6th committee. I mean come on, they tried to murder half of Congress and their own sitting vice president. What did they expect was going to happen? The GOP’s government weaponization subcommittee launched its first hearing Thursday, offering a dizzying flood of claims that highlight the partisan divisions over the role of the federal government and the legitimacy of the newly created panel.
Republicans formed the committee as a way to counter alleged abuse of a government they say is abusing its power to target conservatives. Democrats see the committee as the weapon itself, a vehicle for the GOP to forward conspiracy theories that will mobilize the Republican base ahead of 2024. Helmed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of both the subcommittee and the overall Judiciary Committee where it is housed, Thursday’s hearing included a quartet of current and former lawmakers, with the GOP inviting former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party, to testify. “Over the course of our work in this committee, we expect to hear from government officials and experts like we have here today. We expect to hear from Americans who’ve been targeted by the government. We expect to hear from people in need. And we expect to hear from the FBI agents who have come forward as whistleblowers,” Jordan said Thursday. https://thehill.com/homenews/3851910-house-weaponization-panel-opens-first-hearing-with-a-partisan-bang/ 
Oh come on, Jim! This is totally insane. And I’m not even going to point out the fact that Fox News are the ones calling for unity here. They’re the ones single handedly responsible for most of the hate and division in this country. So why even have this committee to begin with? Well as we previously said that it’s basically a get revenge quick scheme for January 6th and that’s about it. But this is the absolute pinnacle of conservative insanity here folks. It’s all downhill from here. Or is it? I would have thought January 6th might have been the peak, but nope, maybe that was the beginning of the summit. I mean you’ve seen what it takes to climb Mt. Everest, right? A new House panel investigating the "weaponization of the federal government" held its first hearing on Thursday, as part of the Republican majority's push to ramp up scrutiny of the Biden administration.
Republicans and Democrats traded attacks during the hours-long meeting for the House Judiciary Committee's select subpanel. Chairman Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads both the full committee and the new subcommittee, laid out his party's plans. "We expect to hear from Americans who have been targeted by their government," Jordan said as part of a longer list of GOP grievances. The panel's ranking Democrat, Del. Stacey Plaskett, said the panel's Republicans are fueling dangerous rhetoric for law enforcement through its efforts. Plaskett represents the U.S. Virgin Islands and served as a House manager during former President Trump's second impeachment trial. "I'm deeply concerned about the use of the select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans' faith in our democracy," she said. Republicans have repeatedly promised to investigate President Biden and his administration, Democrats, the Biden family and GOP claims of partisan efforts if they won control of Congress in last year's midterm elections. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/1155459408/house-panel-on-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-will-hold-its-first-heari 
Ha ha ha ha, right? If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this program is that there’s seemingly no end to conservative insanity. The democrats have what? Two media channels and maybe a couple of hours of late night programming a week. Conservatives have what? 15 24 hour a day right wing news channels to choose from and an endless array of internet streams? Conservatives get 100 gun and doomsday prepper magazines on supermarket shelves, we get one issue of Vanity Fair? Like we said last week, conservative propaganda is so highly specialized that you can get it custom tailored to your level of racism and sexism. But really this “Weaponization Of Government” committee is basically just the airing of grievances from the Festivus episode of Seinfeld. The House’s new subcommittee dedicated to probing the so-called weaponization of the federal government held its first hearing Thursday.
The hearing featured a litany of Republican criticisms of Democrats, government and Big Tech that have featured prominently in conservative media over the last several years, from alleged censorship of the right to cancel culture, and from a Department of Justice memo on threats against school boards to re-litigating which party fell prey to Russian disinformation in 2016. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in his opening statement that the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold more public hearings in the future and take transcribed interviews from experts, government officials, members of the media, FBI whistleblowers and “Americans who’ve been targeted by their government” in its investigation. The panel is required to submit a final report to the House on its findings by Jan. 2, 2025, and, according to Jordan, it will also propose legislation “that will help protect the American people.” The partisan hearing largely consisted of Democrats and Republicans asking friendly witnesses favorable questions that reinforced their views. Republicans suggested the government has been unfairly weaponized against conservatives, while Democrats argued that the committee itself was an example of improper weaponization of government, continuing a pattern begun under former President Donald Trump and his administration of using the levers of power to target political opponents. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/new-house-committee-weaponization-government-hold-first-hearing-rcna69789 Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh man where’s Frank Costanza when you need him? Needless to say the next two years of Congress are going to be an inevitable clusterfuck of conservative insanity and MAGA conspiracy theories. It’s a melting pot. But it’s one of those things. Like how conservatives scream they want freedom, but in the next breath they’re banning books and calling for public executions of people who they don’t agree with. And like I have been saying since this Congress took over, strap in because it’s going to be a long two years and they’re just getting started. Tucker Carlson essentially created a congressional panel, but he was nice enough to let Republican lawmakers run it. The newly formed House select subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government—which will hold its first hearing Thursday—was established, according to The Washington Post, “in response to demands by hard-line conservatives.” Yet it seems more likely the brainchild of Carlson, the real brain of the Republican Party. Last month, the Fox News host urged Kevin McCarthy, who was then trying to win over far-right members of his caucus, to create a new Church Committee to investigate what the FBI and intelligence agencies “have been doing to control domestic politics.” Carlson gave his instructions to the would-be speaker alongside the chyron, “How Badly Does Kevin McCarthy Want This Job?”
It hasn’t been a particularly auspicious start. The same congressional Republicans who finally got their speaker elected on his 15th try accidentally gave Democrats a supermajority on their new subcommittee. Was it a comedy of errors or perhaps it was perfectly on brand for this Veep-style caucus that the first thing this group polymaths did was accidentally give away their advantage? As Politico’s Kyle Cheney noticed, “The House, in an attempt to expand the ‘weaponization’ subcommittee to 21 members, appears to have inadvertently shrunk it to 12 and given Dems a supermajority.” The mistake was fixed, but it was a fitting start for a panel seemingly crafted to “Benghazi” President Joe Biden for the pleasure of Fox News viewers and the benefit of the Republican Party in 2024. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/jim-jordan-gop-weaponization-of-the-federal-government [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"]Holy Shit: Merger Of Church And State
[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 in the last few weeks and months we’ve been talking a lot about the United States’ slide into becoming a religious fascist totalitarian entity. It started innocently enough with the Christian right’s takeover of school boards and city councils. But what we’ve been finding lately is that it’s not really a “slide”. It’s more like a hostile corporate takeover. Yeah think of it like that scene in Avengers: Age Of Ultron when Jarvis gets taken over by Ultron and becomes this living, breathing entity. But again, these people do not worship GAWD or JAYSUS. No, they worship the unholy, ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a being so foul, so inhumane, and so profoundly disgusting that his name DARE NOT be spoken in my church! But imagine for a minute that your hate is so strong that you actively pray against your enemies. I mean come on, what the hell kind of bullshit is that? Yes, we’re allowed to swear in my church, as long as it’s not at someone! But seriously, the MAGAs seem bent on taking this country to a new dark age! Dozens of members of Congress joined an audience of religious-right activists and Christian nationalists at the Museum of the Bible this morning for a “National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance.”
Sponsored by various anti-LGBTQ religious-right groups such as the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Pacific Justice Institute, the prayer gathering was emceed by right-wing activists Jim Garlow of Well Versed, who is associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Both Garlow and Perkins were active promoters of former President Donald Trump’s stolen election lies, with Perkins and FRC actively working to overturn the election results via pressure on state legislators, members of Congress, and former Vice President Mike Pence. The two-and-a-half-hour event consisted of a steady stream of penitents offering prayers on behalf of this nation covering everything from reproductive choice and marriage equality to foreign policy and the media. The tenor of the prayer service was well encapsulated by Pastor Andrew Brunson, who became a right-wing celebrity after he was freed from detention in Turkey during the Trump administration. Brunson used his prayer to warn that the United States will soon face the judgment of God for having become “the primary corrupter of the world” by supporting LGBTQ rights. https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/we-are-babylon-dozens-of-members-of-congress-join-religious-right-prayer-service-to-repent-for-the-united-states/ 
And you know what? They should feel bad about themselves. This is some stunningly EVIL stuff that the religious right is up to here. Look, we don’t need the barely educated worshippers of the Unholy Dark One dictating to us what to do. It’s beyond the pale that they are praying for their enemies’ demise. I mean whatever happened to “love thy neighbor”? These Dark One worshippers really need to reexamine their life choices if this is what they really want. I can honestly guarantee that it’s not what the good LAWRD JAYSUS would want now, is it? Lauren Boebert has come under fire after expressing the hope that President Joe Biden's "days be few" during a church event in Texas.
The House Republican was speaking at the Spiritual and Leadership Training (SALT) conference at Storehouse Church in Dallas, over the weekend. In a clip loaded to social media by Patriot Takes, a Twitter account dedicated to "exposing right-wing extremism," Boebert imagined a conversation between Jesus and one of his followers, referencing topical events. Quoting the follower, the Colorado congresswoman said: "Jesus, don't you know we're out of money? COVID's hit, they shut everything down, Joe Biden's president, we don't know what to do Lord." This remark sparked cheering and laughter from the congregation. Boebert continued: "That's alright we pray for our presidents—let his days be few and another take his office. That's why I filed articles of impeachment for Joe Biden. Unfortunately, he does have a really great insurance policy named Kamala Harris." https://www.newsweek.com/lauren-boebert-prays-joe-biden-days-few-backlash-1779467 
Uh no we haven’t, sir! I mean this is truly insane. The religious right has really gone beyond the pale and I have no doubt that if they were to get into power again they would do some serious damage to this country and its’ reputation. You know, churches have become basically just front organizations for right wing political groups. Which is why I say that it’s a hostile takeover. But have no fear! The “prophets” who claim to support the Unholy Dark One are here! That’s right, my fair brothers and sisters! We’ve got a spiritual warfare brewing! A spiritual battle is breaking out among former President Donald Trump’s closest evangelical allies as self-declared “prophets” have begun pointing the finger at each other, declaring the other a “false prophet.”
The drama began unfolding on the televangelist political program “FlashPoint.” “FlashPoint” was launched heading into the 2020 election for the purpose of mobilizing right-wing Christians to support Trump and Republican candidates running for office. Airing on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel network, the program from the beginning regularly featured host Gene Bailey with Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau, pastor Hank Kunneman, and evangelist Mario Murillo serving as commentators. Wallnau, Kunneman, and Murillo are all active within the modern-day Charismatic prophetic movement and used their positions as spiritual leaders to support Trump. In the wake of Trump’s loss, “FlashPoint” relentlessly pushed the big lie that the election had been stolen from Trump and Kunneman and Murillo regularly used their appearances on the program to insist that Christians would never accept the result, declaring that accepting Joe Biden as president was a sign of disloyalty to God. Once Trump left office, “FlashPoint” became a regular part of the Victory Channel’s lineup, airing twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, frequently with Kunneman and Murillo as guests. But earlier this year, Murillo announced that he would no longer appear on the program with Kunneman because of Kunneman’s ties to “false prophets” Kat Kerr and Robin Bullock. https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/spiritual-warfare-breaks-out-among-the-trump-loving-prophetic-community/
But here’s the thing – make no mistake that the language that the right wing is using right now is the very sort of thing that leads to hate crimes, mass murder and even worse. And you know what? It’s by design that they are doing this. This is what happens when your talking points are manufactured by a megalomaniacal billionaire who wants to take over the world. I don’t want you to think that I’m being too paranoid either! They are currently banning books in the name of the Dark One, and I have no doubt that if they got back into power that they would do something EVIL! In 2021, Rick Scarborough, a self-described “Christocrat,” strident anti-LGBTQ activist, and longtime critic of public education, set his sites on taking over school boards in three Houston-area school districts. Scarborough was optimistic about his chances of having conservative Christians take over the school board because, he said, “most people don’t vote.”
“We’re gonna win this Houston school board if the church shows up,” Scarborough bragged, and indeed candidates he backed were ultimately able to defeat two board members. Inspired by this showing, Scarborough announced in late 2022 that he had begun preparing to target school boards all across the state in 2023. “We are already preparing for our next big project: the school board elections that take place in May,” Scarborough declared. “We’re laying the ground [work] now for that election. We need to move the church so that our children can be saved from the indoctrination and oversexualization that is taking place.” On Wednesday, Scarborough’s Recover America Action organization released a video promoting his campaign to defeat the “godless educrats” and rescue the children of Texas who are “being groomed by homosexuals and the trans perverts to be recruited into their evil lifestyles.” https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christocrat-rick-scarborough-aims-to-take-over-texas-school-boards-from-the-godless-educrats/ 
No, Rick! You’re the one living the dirty, sinful lifestyle! It’s this kind of Christianity that is totally losing its’ mind. We cannot let them regain power under any circumstances, my fair congregation! And I will fight it to the very end! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]Beating A Dead Horse: The Gas Stove Controversy
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The latest edition of the culture wars is quite literally adding fuel to the fire. If you’re shopping for new kitchen appliances, you may have heard the recent controversy surrounding gas stoves and their impact on the environment. See, this is why we can’t have nice things. It’s the same cycle of bullshit all over again. Fox News keeps us fighting with each other over bullshit culture war issues, while the right wing consolidates all of the wealth and power in this country. The gas stove controversy really is the stuff of insanity. Because right wingers don’t take “no” for an answer. Like I’m seriously convinced at this point that if the government told the MAGAs not to jump off of the Grand Canyon, they would be pushing and shoving each other to be first in line. The controversy surrounding gas stoves is yet another round of insanity for the “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” crowd. Sigh… and this crap definitely isn’t going away any time soon. An ordinary household appliance — the gas stove — is now at the center of a controversy tied to health, the environment and politics.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is raising concerns about gas stoves because of harmful pollutants. One recent study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggests more than 12% of childhood asthma cases can be traced to their use of gas. "The most important thing is not what somebody is saying about it on Twitter, you know. It's 'How are we going to protect our health and our children's health?'" said Ben Hellerstein of Environment Massachusetts. Not everyone is convinced. "Is it really pinning down the exact contribution? It's unclear," said Dr. Margee Louisias, an allergist with Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/gas-stoves-spark-health-and-safety-debate/2952896/ 
Yeah that’s exactly the kind of angry mob mentality that Fox News attracts. Because with right wingers, they somehow interpret “no” as “yes”. Like tell them “no, don’t you dare eat Tide Pods!”. They’ll happily eat Tide Pods while giving you the finger and taking a selfie to post on Instagram. Because that’s the kind of caring assholes that they are. Which of course, telling them posting hundreds of pictures on social media of them turning up all of the igniters on their gas stove to the highest setting and just watching it burn. Imagine giving yourself sulfur poisoning or suffering from asphyxiation or burning your house down to “own the libs”. Again, this is why we can’t have nice things. Of all the political issues I assumed would come to the fore in 2023, gas stoves were not on my bingo card. And yet Americans’ right to cook on an open gas flame has turned into a red-hot culture war issue. Conservatives are gearing up for a War of the Cooktops – and unfortunately, some Democrats aren’t helping.
Some five decades’ worth of studies have found that gas stoves are hazardous to human health, with a recent one suggesting that gas stoves in US homes may be to blame for nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases. Gas stoves are bad for the environment, too, powered as they are by fossil fuels. This has led to some liberal cities – Berkeley, California, and New York City – to mandate that some new buildings use electric over gas. But the blistering gas stove dispute really ignited when a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Richard Trumka Jr, told Bloomberg that gas was a “hidden hazard” and that when it came to banning gas stoves, “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Cue rightwing firestorm. Multiple prominent conservatives and rightwing politicians tweeted some version of “You will have to pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands.” Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, tweeted the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag with a gas stove in the place of the snake. Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas worried himself about the day “the maniacs in the White House come for my stove”. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/18/how-did-gas-stoves-ignite-a-culture-war-in-the-us Come on, conservatives, there was literally a scene about a guy getting murdered by his own oven in Hot Fuzz. Go ahead give us the finger while you get asphyxiation. But the right wing “I won’t do what you tell me” movement is totally insane. Remember when right wingers were for the vaccine back in the early days of COVID only to very quickly turn against them? Yeah these people are clinically insane. And come on, why are they using pro-gun diatribes in their effort to keep their gas stoves? Well once again it all boils down to eight simple words, and apologies to Rage Against The Machine for this one – “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”. Republicans and allies of fossil fuels are rallying behind the humble gas stove, a staple in millions of U.S. kitchens that has emerged as a flash point in the nation’s ongoing culture wars and a source of conservative resistance to President Biden’s environmental agenda.
The controversy was ignited when a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), an agency charged with protecting the public from dangerous household products, said in mid-December that the commission will consider regulating indoor air pollution from gas stoves. On Monday, Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr., a Democrat, said in an interview that he had not ruled out a ban on the appliances, prompting the agency to pivot Wednesday and clarify it was not planning a ban. But the flame was already lit. Trumka’s comment prompted loud complaints from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who claimed that the commission was trying to snatch the stoves from the 40 million homes that rely on gas, even though any regulations would only affect new appliances and not existing ones. “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) tweeted Tuesday. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/11/gas-stoves-fossil-fuels-climate/ 
Yeah come and take it. Shut up. Seriously, right wingers. Yeah, shut up. And really just shut up for about a week. And come on, you always claim that you’re doing this “for the children”, so do you really want your kids to get asthma from inhaling toxic fumes? If you answered “yes” to that question, then you’re an idiot beyond comprehension. Look the answer to all this hysteria is quite simple – just vent! Vent your damn house. The fresh air might be good for you. Seriously, turn off Fox News every once in a while and think for yourself. All that toxic air you’re breathing from your gas stoves is going straight to your damn heads. Even less-than-perfect ventilation makes a big difference. A 2018 study from researchers in North America found that peak emissions of nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves were just 15 parts per billion (ppb) when using the least-effective ventilation fan. That’s considerably lower than the 100 ppb National Ambient Air Quality Standard for short-term exposure, which itself assumes an average exposure, not just a peak event.
Moreover, research shows that what you cook accounts for the vast majority of emissions. Cooking with olive oil generates 17 times more emissions of fine particulate matter than what comes from the gas stove alone. Cooking meats and vegetables also results in emissions levels several times higher than what could be traced to the blue flame. In other words, even if you mandated an expensive shift from gas to electric, you wouldn’t be addressing the most significant sources of emissions in the kitchen: food. Perhaps the CPSC will consider banning home cooking entirely. So, what is this “growing body of research” that supposedly links gas stoves to negative health impacts? Several studies in recent years have attracted headlines, but their methods were suspect at best and far from representative of a real kitchen. They also all have links to environmental groups trying to ban fossil fuels in favor of a full electrification policy. https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/debunking-the-research-behind-the-gas-stove-hysteria/ 
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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner: Insane Balloon Theories [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! So folks last week I’m sure you know where you were when you heard about the Chinese spy balloon that was spotted on radar! Well, naturally this is the moment that conspiracy theorists have been salivating about for the last 6 years. Because they are letting their conspiracy theory freak flag fly. There have been literally thousands of social media posts with some absolutely insane theories that are so off the wall they can be custom tailored to your preferred level of batshit lunacy. So here’s just a brief summarization of some of the crazier theories out there. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that it is tracking what it believes to be a Chinese surveillance balloon soaring over the western United States. President Biden took the military’s advice to refrain from taking “kinetic action” on the balloon, as officials believe it doesn’t pose any physical or intelligence risks and debris from a strike could harm people on the ground. China has claimed the balloon is a weather research “airship” that blew off course, but the Pentagon isn’t buying the PRC’s explanation, announcing on Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is now postponing a scheduled trip to China.
The story has been conspiracy catnip for conservatives who have been trying to cast the president as a compromised agent of China. “How many insane decisions… or lack of intelligent decisions (a la watching a spy balloon & not shooting it down) have been made because Joe Biden and his family are compromised by our enemies?” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Friday. “Incredible that no one even asks given the prolific amount of evidence out there!!!” “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON!” the elder Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Biden should shoot down the Chinese spy balloon immediately,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted. “President Trump would have never tolerated this. President Trump would have never tolerated many things happening to America.” Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) seemed to suggest that his constituents might shoot the balloon down themselves. “Shoot. It. Down,” he wrote. “The Chinese spy balloon is clear provocation. In Montana we do not bow. We shoot it down. Take the shot.” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/chinese-spy-balloon-conspiracies-don-jr-1234673319/ 
Yes, allow me to explain it to those of you who don’t follow batshit conservative nuttery. They wanted President Joe Biden to shoot it down. He shot it down. What more do you want? Well that hasn’t stopped the craziest of the crazy to continue being the craziest of the crazy. But the question that’s on everyone’s mind – was it aliens or was it “aliens”? Well the general consensus is that… no it wasn’t aliens. But the more that you dig down the internet conspiracy theory wormhole, the more you realize that yeah… it was probably aliens. U.S. fighter jets have shot down four high-altitude objects this month — including the first instance in which U.S. Northern Command "has taken kinetic action against an airborne object" in U.S. airspace over its nearly 65-year existence, according to the unit's commanding officer, Gen. Glen VanHerck.
The shootdowns came in steady succession over the weekend, after alarms were raised in early February over an object that the U.S. said was a surveillance balloon deployed by China. China has accused the U.S. of flying its own spy balloons over China — a claim rejected by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "We do not send spy balloons over China, period," Blinken told NPR's Morning Edition. With the other recently downed objects yet to be publicly identified, speculation has included questions of whether they might be alien UFOs. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1156498101/ufos-unidentified-objects-what-we-know-4-shootdowns 
Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen! It wasn’t the aliens… but it was probably the aliens! But it might not have been the UFOs. Instead, let’s ask our old friend Marjorie Greene (Q – Batshit) what she thinks that the UFOs might have been. Well, apparently Rep. Greene went absolutely ballistic during a recent meeting of generals at the Pentagon who gathered to talk about the now frequent occurrence of spy balloons appearing in US airspace. Apparently they’re more than just spy balloons according to Marjorie Three Names. They could be so much more – they could be carrying missiles or even bioweapons like deadly viruses! Yeah, if you were looking to invest in stock, the time to invest in tin foil futures is now, because the right wing is going to be needing a lot of it! Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-R) has revealed her furious response to a briefing about the Chinese spy balloon.
In a video shared by commentator and critic of MAGA Republicans Ron Filipkowski on Saturday, February 11, Greene could be seen addressing a room with several people supportive of her comments. Greene referred to a briefing in which she had heard about the Chinese spy balloon and shared her criticism of explanations given about why the Pentagon didn't order it to be shot down earlier. She said: "You sat by and allowed this Chinese spy balloon that could have contained a bioweapon, like COVID, it could have contained a nuclear bomb an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack, or hypersonic missiles, like the Chinese government - the CCP - has shown their own people of these weather balloons dropping hypersonic missiles. "They show those on video. Absolutely, this is a common thing. I said, 'you allowed this to go across the country and then you want to stand up here and give us our excuses, your excuses about you're gathering 'intelligence,' or you didn't want to risk endangering anyone's lives. https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-reveals-her-angry-response-spy-balloon-briefing-1780640 
Yeah probably! But that’s why we have Fox News asking the big questions! Like were the Chinese spy balloons the product of UFOs or does China have something more sinister in mind, like starting World War III? Well, we wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Fox News is attempting to start World War III, but they might just be heading to the crazy house. Really, if you thought you heard the last of this story, well, it’s not going away any time soon. The Fox News addicts and internet conspiracy theorists are going to keep this going because it’s good for ratings! And it may or may not have something to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s all connected, people! We’re just asking questions! In a Sunday Morning Futures interview so eerily reminiscent of a (subpar) SNL sketch, Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo brought on Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to discuss the recent influx of potential surveillance craft in U.S. airspace and, of course, went down a bonkers conspiracy rabbit hole.
After a five-minute conversation recapping Hunter Biden’s business dealings to build up her case, Bartiromo suggested to the senator that President Joe Biden may have intentionally allowed the spy balloon to fly over the U.S. because the Chinese Community Party (CCP) has compromising information on him and his family. “I’m wondering if, in fact, this is one of the reasons that the CCP feels empowered to be able to send spy flights across America to take pictures of our military installations and why this president allowed that spy flight to get all the way in the middle of the country, all the way up to South Carolina,” she said. “Your thoughts on where this is going and whether or not Joe Biden—they have so much on Joe Biden that they don’t care, they’re not expecting any repercussions.” Johnson has made the Sunday morning circuit in recent weeks discussing his desire to investigate the president’s son, most notably sparring with NBC’s Chuck Todd last month over his own inability to name an actual crime Hunter Biden allegedly committed. After Johnson whined about Todd’s bias, the NBC host told the senator he could retreat to his “partisan media cocoon”—which Johnson did a day later by appearing on Fox News. https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-hpmaria-bartiromo-floats-bizarre-biden-china-spy-balloon-conspiracy 
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[font size="8"]I Need A Drink: The Pink Floyd Feud [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink!
So of course you know that the idea behind this segment is that we have some drinks and while we are drinking, we discuss anything in the news as long as it doesn’t relate to politics. Though we might actually have to break protocol tonight, even though we know that mixing booze and politics never ends well. Because there is a metric fuck ton of bad news out there right now, so you really want to have an escape from reality and what better way to do that than by getting loaded? Oh and don’t worry, my sober brothers and sisters, we got your backs too! One day at a time! Just grab a glass of whatever you got – booze? Coffee? A nice joint or two? Whatever your vice is, we don’t care! Our story this week concerns one of the greatest rock bands in the history of mankind – I’m talking about the legendary Pink Floyd! So tell me, bartender, what goes well with a story about Pink Floyd? A Dark Side cocktail? What’s in that? Eh… I’ll pass. I’ll just take my usual Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels. I call it the “Double Jack”. So for our story this week, it’s about the 50th anniversary of arguably one of the finest albums ever recorded in human history, Dark Side Of The Moon! Which of course naturally sparked rumors that the founding members of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and David Gilmour might be getting back together after a decades long feud. Well, I got some bad news for ya… it ain’t happening. Despite their huge success, selling millions of albums, completing world-beating tours and confirming themselves as one of the biggest bands the music industry has ever known, Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and David Gilmour have always shared a somewhat dysfunctional relationship. It’s a relationship that seems to be getting more acrimonious with time.
Blessed with a searing artistic vision, Waters has always been slightly hesitant towards the idea of collaboration and would much rather be the captain of his own ship. Gilmour joined Pink Floyd in 1968 with huge success, arriving shortly after lead singer Syd Barrett became an untenable leader. But as the years progressed, the two men were locked in a power struggle as their creative visions collided and, ultimately, Waters quit the band in 1985. When Waters initially withdrew from the group, he immediately locked horns with Gilmour in a bitter legal battle that would rumble on for years. To announce his departure, Waters issued a statement to EMI and CBS invoking the ‘Leaving Member’ clause in his contract, and as the main creative force in the band, he didn’t believe Pink Floyd could continue in his absence. Therefore, in October 1986, Waters started High Court proceedings to formally dissolve Pink Floyd, labelling the group a “spent force creatively”. However, David Gilmour and Nick Mason opposed the claims, stating that Pink Floyd would not fold and that Waters couldn’t declare it dead while the group were still trying to make new music. Waters eventually came to an agreement with his former bandmates, one which saw him resign after careful legal considerations in 1987. However, he did note that the resignation was entirely forced by commercial restraints: “If I hadn’t, the financial repercussions would have wiped me out completely”. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/pink-floyd-roger-waters-david-gilmour-feud/ 
I feel like that bottle isn’t big enough! So that’s basically the gist of it. But here’s where it gets weird and you knew that it was going to. The thing is, Pink Floyd fans, is that you have to accept the fact that mommy and daddy are never getting back together again. And the sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be. So the feud going on between Waters and Gilmour has lasted at least since 1985, when Waters left the band. So why, nearly 40 years later, is the feud back in the news? Well here’s where we have to break the protocol of this segment. It’s pretty safe to say the living members of Pink Floyd will never reunite.
The decades-long feud between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, the iconic rock band’s dueling leaders, took a deeply personal turn on Monday morning when the latter’s wife, acclaimed novelist Polly Samson, took a very public swing at Waters. “Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac,” tweeted Samson, who became one of the band’s primary lyricists following Waters’ departure from the band in 1985. “Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmour liked the tweet, as users on the platform quickly noted. He later made his support more overt, tweeting: “Every word demonstrably true.” Hours later, Waters’ camp posted to Instagram: “Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely. He is currently taking advice as to his position.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-pink-floyd-feud-between-roger-waters-and-david-gilmour-just-got-deeply-personal
Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots! Shot shot shot shot shots!!! Yeah so that happened. And it’s one thing you can definitely be sure of is that Gilmour and Waters are never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever getting back together again! Apologies to Taylor Swift there, I hope this one doesn’t get pulled for copyright infringement! But Gilmour’s wife, Samson, certainly isn’t wrong here. apparently Mr. Waters, while he may be on the side of anti-Trump, really is just for show. In fact there’re a lot of evidence mounting against Roger Waters. The Pink Floyd feud looks like it will be never-ending. While current band members David Gilmour and Nick Mason have expressed their support for Ukraine by releasing their first original song in over three decades, one former member has done almost the opposite. Roger Waters, who last year condemned Putin in an open letter, recently stated that he “may have changed [his] mind a little bit” about the Russian president in an interview with a German newspaper and called the Pink Floyd protest song “really, really sad.” However, his political comments are not going unnoticed by his former collaborators.
Pink Floyd lyricist Polly Samson called Waters a “Putin apologist” and antisemitic for his controversial comments on his support of Russia. “Sadly Roger Waters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she tweeted on Monday. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Her husband and Pink Floyd bandmate retweeted her, supporting her statement. Waters seemingly replied to Samson with a statement of his own on Twitter that he is “aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him.” Russia has reportedly asked him to speak to the United Nations on its behalf to discuss the delivery of weapons to Ukraine on Wednesday, but no confirmation yet — only a bit of mocking from U.N. members. https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/pink-floyd-twitter-roger-waters-united-nations.html 
Look… look… we know everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right one. And this is exactly why we say mixing booze and politics is perhaps one of the most dangerous cocktails known to man. Because this type of argument never ends well. But yes Mr. Rogers did address the U.N. regarding Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Of which the official stance at this bar is that we’re on the side of “fuck Vladimir Putin”. Now we know this can be a touchy subject. Even the Ukraine government was naturally pissed at Waters, and of course made a Pink Floyd joke that we can only describe as “saw it coming”. Pink Floyd star Roger Waters has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for a ceasefire – but also said he believes the war was provoked – during a speech to the UN Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.
The veteran musician was denounced by Ukraine‘s UN ambassador as “another brick in the wall” of Russian “disinformation and propaganda”, referring to his former band’s most famous song, after his speech. It comes amid an ongoing row between Pink Floyd co-founder and the band’s guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour, over comments he’s made about Israel and the war in Ukraine, among other things. Russia called the meeting on Wednesday to discuss the supply of weapons to Ukraine and asked Waterswho opposed the Western supply of weapons to Kiev in a letter posted on his website in September. The rocker, 79, also recently gave an interview to a German newspaper, translated into English on his own website, in which he said about Vladimir Putin: “According to independent voices, I listen to him who rules carefully and makes decisions based on consensus in the government of the Russian Federation.” https://knownews.in/entertainment/pink-floyd-star-roger-waters-addresses-un-at-russias-request-after-denial-of-incendiary-claims-in-feud-with-ex-bandmate-ents-arts-news/
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[font size="8"]World Tour 2022 Destination #4 of 6: South Africa  [br] [/font] [br]
Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:
[font size="4"]Destination #4 Of 6: South Africa[/font] 
Folks, we have just two more destinations to go before we wrap up this little tour. This week we’re in Africa, next week, we’re back in the Middle East, and we’re finally ending in the good ol’ USA. It was a hell of a tour everybody. South Africa is of course the southern most country on the African continent, and it’s the only country in the entire world with three capitals! South Africa is also a country known for its’ beautiful scenery and natural wild life. It’s also one of the world’s largest producers of wine. That’s right – wine is a huge product coming from South Africa. But like we had our State Of The Union last week, South Africa also had theirs. And their current president sent out a dire warning about the times that we’re currently living in. Yeah nothing is really getting better anywhere and we could blame rampant conservativism for most of the bad things happening in the world right now, but we don’t have that kind of time! 60 million South Africans without power for months and up to 12 hours a day are waiting for President Cyril Ramaphosa to address the country's energy crisis during his annual state of the nation address on Thursday.
The ceremony is usually conducted with great pomp and circumstance at Parliament: red carpet, fancy suits and designer dresses, and photographers. Then the presidential guard is paraded and 21 cannons are fired to greet the arrival of the head of state. However, the historic building in Cape Town having been partly ravaged by an arson attack last year, the president will speak in the evening from the Town Hall. And in an economic and social context at half-mast, calls for sobriety for the reception billed at more than 424,000 euros (8 million rand) have spread on social networks, "as a sign of solidarity with the real state of the nation. https://www.africanews.com/2023/02/08/south-africa-president-ramaphosa-expected-to-address-electricity-crisis/ 
Oh come on people! Stop your rabbling! So what else is South Africa the home of? Well South Africa is home to one of the world’s largest battery suppliers. In fact a huge percentage of the world’s batteries come from South Africa. And that number could only increase as the entire world goes electric and mobile. Everything requires a battery these days. Everything from phones to remote controls and even car batteries. But now with the increase of electric vehicles, South Africa’s stock in the battery game could go even higher! South Africa could play a big role in the global battery value chain with the potential for 10-15GWh of domestic demand for battery energy storage by 2030, according to a report from the World Bank.
The report – titled South Africa & Southern Africa: Battery Market & Value Chain Assessment Report and written by consultancy Customized Energy Solutions (CES) – mostly focused on the upstream battery value chain for both EVs and the energy storage system (ESS) markets, but covered downstream demand and applications too. It said the country’s battery storage market could reach 9,700MWh of demand by 2030 and 10,400MWh including the wider Southern Africa region, in a base case scenario. In the best-case scenario, that demand could reach 15,000MWh for South Africa and 17,000MWh for the wider region. This is a big increase from just a few hundred MWh in 2020. Southern Africa generally refers to the dozen countries that form the southern portion of the continent, with Angola the northernmost. https://www.energy-storage.news/world-bank-south-africa-could-play-significant-role-in-global-battery-value-chain-by-2030/ 
However, South Africa can’t be a global leader in world energy until they fix their own energy crisis, which again was most likely caused by conservatives. We’ve told you – they’re everywhere in this world of ours. It’s not just a uniquely American problem. But their energy crisis is totally dwarfing the one that’s being experienced in places like Texas and California. Ours are the product of overusing the grids which haven’t been brought up to capacity. But South Africa’s is affecting large parts of the country and has had a significant impact on its’ overall infrastructure. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says the county's electricity crisis has severely damaged its mining industry, a key pillar of the economy. Ramaphosa made the comment while addressing Investing in African Mining Indaba, the world's largest mining investment conference.
The Minerals Council South Africa, which represents mining companies, estimates that total mining volumes were down by 6%, or $1.8 billion last year. In his address, Ramaphosa admitted that the ongoing power cuts implemented on 200 days in 2022 contributed to the slump. “The electricity crisis on its own has had a huge impact on the mining industry as it has had on other industries,” he said. “Six months ago, we announced the national Energy Action Plan to improve the performance of our existing power stations and to add new generation capacity to the grid as quickly as possible.” Ramaphosa said the fact that government is now allowing mining companies to generate their own electricity without any restrictions is going to make a huge difference. https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-ramaposa-admits-power-crisis-is-hurting-mining/6951769.html 
But alas, remember how we say that conservative idiocy is a global phenomenon with conservatives ruining everything they touch around the globe? South Africa’s no different. South Africa is currently in a dispute with its’ northern neighbors in Equitorial Guinea, a tiny Central African country with a small population and a leader so corrupt he makes Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow look like Boris Johnson, and that’s a pretty fair comparison. Anyway this is the guy who your favorite Soundcloud rapper thinks he is, but really is not. South African officials have seized a superyacht and two palatial homes owned by Equatorial Guinea's Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang.
A court ordered the seizures after local businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg won a law suit against Obiang for unlawful arrest and torture. He has demanded compensation of about $2.2m (£1.8m). He says he was unlawfully detained in Equatorial Guinea for about 500 days after a business deal went wrong. The vice-president, the son of the world's longest-serving ruler, has not yet commented on the case. He and President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo have long been accused of seeing oil-rich Equatorial Guinea as their personal fiefdom, and of abusing its wealth and resources. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64627695 
[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font] Tourism: B Culture: B+ Political Spectrum: C- Liberal Appeal: B- Overall: C- Change from 2017: No change [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] It’s the next to last stop of our 2022 / 2023 World Tour as we head to the Middle East and the land of excessive oil wealth and hardcore religious fundamentalism, the United Arab Emirates! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]Stick Figure[/font] Folks, my next guest has a great new album out called “Wisdom”, you can see them at the Cali Vibes Festival this Saturday with last week’s guests the Dirty Heads! Playing their song “Paradise”, give it up for Stick Figure! Thank you Buffalo! This was fun, you were a great audience! We’ll be back again soon! We’re off to Boston next with live music from Turnstile! See you next week!
Credits Host: Initech Stick Figure Appears Courtesy Of: Ruffwood Records Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Helium Comedy Club, Buffalo, NY Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Twitter at: @10Idiots Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Twitter: @churchoftop10 Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Feb 16, 2023, 06:00 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-3: House Of Chinese Spy Balloons Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-3: House Of Chinese Spy Balloons Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yoooooooooooo!!! What’s up Philadelphia? How you guys doing? You doing fucking good? And how about those fuckin’ Eagles huh? I predicted that the Eagles were going to be in the Super Bowl early in the season, but damn they are just the team that cannot be beat! It has been way too long since our last trip to the PHL! Last time we were here was what, 2018 I think? Yeah so it’s been way too long! But we got some fun things planned to get you through all the dark shit in the news happening right now. By the way, we're in the home stretch here. This is Idiots #294! We are 6 editions away from our big 300th edition shindig in France! You know people give us shit because we don’t give the East Coast enough love. Well that’s not true. Part of it is that we’re based in Southern California, Orange County to be exact. And the other part of it has been because, you know that whole COVID thing we’ve had to deal with the last 3 years. And if you haven't noticed lately, travel is fucking expensive. I mean holy shit! Have you priced plane tickets and hotels lately? I mean, damn! But moving on, do we have time for the thing? You all watching that AI Seinfeld on Twitch? If you haven’t been watching, there’s a Twitch stream where these people programmed an AI to run episodes of Seinfeld. And we may have to expand on this in I Need A Drink next week. But this is some weird, wild stuff and the creators believe that AI generated content is the future of entertainment. What? Who’s going to host our Z grade podcasts then? I mean we may have to use ChatGPT to run a fully AI generated version of the Top 10. Wait, where are you taking me? Where are you throwing me???? OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. but first Christopher Titus is back, and the Armageddon Update is one of the best podcasts on Youtube, and he delves into the right wing book banning insanity that’s going on: Where do we begin this week? In the first slot this week, we nearly had an international incident pending last week when an unidentified aircraft appeared in Montana airspace , which was later identified as belonging to China. Conservatives (1) naturally went apeshit and many joked about the idea of shooting it down with AR-15s, and this is why we can’t have nice things, people! In the second slot this week is our old buddy Ron DeSantis (2). In case you’re unaware, Florida has a college that’s simply called New College that was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement back in the 60s. Well, last week Ron went nuclear on the college in his quest to be “anti-woke” and fired the head of New College in a preview of him bringing you Rupert Murdoch’s full sadistic agenda. In the number 3 slot this week is AT&T (3). Remember when AT&T gave OAN the heave ho (see: Idiots #11-12 )? Well this week they’re also giving Newsmax the heave ho, which is causing the MAGA wing of the GOP to melt down, but don’t get too comfortable because Newsmax is being replaced with more right wing horseshit. Sigh, the reason we can’t have nice things, people! In the number 4 slot this week is our old friend Marjorie Taylor Greene (4) who can’t help but show her addiction to the right wing conspiracy theory bullshit machine and got suspended from Facebook and Twitter again. Right wing propaganda rots your brain, people! In the number 5 slot this week is a new Top 10 Investigates (5)! This week a viral Tik Tok video exposed just how easy it is to break into some late model Hyundai and Kia SUVs, which are making them the most stolen cars on the road, but are Allstate and State Farm right to deny coverage to owners? Well it’s definitely a grey area which we will explore further. 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 going to take a look at the National Prayer Breakfast, and what seems to be the increasingly inevitable hostile takeover of the state by the church. And it’s not going to be pretty when that happens, if it does! In the number 7 slot this week, we add Texas’ batshit crazy Q Anon representative Ronny Jackson (7) to the ever growing list of People Who Somehow Got Elected! In the number 8 slot this week we have a new Conspiracy Corner (8)! A recent Vice article exposed that right wing homeschoolers are trending towards Nazism, and if you’re not scared about this, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new People Are Dumb because of course they are! Finally this week it’s stop #3 of 6 on our 2023 World Tour and this week we’re heading to Germany’s next door neighbors, Poland (10) ! Finally to close things out we’ve got some live music from the Dirty Heads who are promoting the Cali Vibes Festival! Buy their new album “Midnight Control” or you’re no friend of this program! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! [div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]The Chinese Spy Balloon Incident  [br] [/font] Last week is one of those times when I absolutely thank the highest of high gods that Joe Biden is president and not the orange bloviating asshole. Because we had an incident and you may have heard about it, involving a Chinese spy balloon that appeared over Montana airspace. Of course it sent the MAGA conspiracy theory wing of the GOP into batshit overdrive mode. And you know what? For the purposes of this segment, let’s name this week’s edition after the Weeknd’s debut album “House Of Balloons”. Though let’s change it a bit and call it “House Of Chinese Spy Balloons”. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! By the way before next week’s edition we want to know who wore it better – Marjorie Greene or the Howler Monkey? Our money’s on the monkey. Let us know in the comments section! But OK getting back to the story though, this whole thing is insane. And like most things that have happened in the last 7 years, this story is the stuff of insanity and it only gets weirder the more you dig into it. A mysterious object high above commercial air traffic. Military aircraft scrambled, then ordered to stand down. Urgent phone calls between U.S. and Chinese officials.
A single missile, fired from an F-22 stealth fighter jet. As a Chinese spy balloon made its way east across the United States last week, a military and diplomatic crisis played out on the ground. Here’s a day-to-day timeline of events leading up to the dramatic shootdown over the water off the East Coast on Saturday. The following is based on interviews with three senior U.S. officials, all of whom asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/05/timeline-a-chinese-spy-balloons-7-day-trip-across-the-united-states-00081222 
Yeah calm your t’s, people! Come on really! By the way, Fox News and the MAGA conspiracy theory wing of the GOP, no, we don’t give a flying fuck about what Trump would have done if he had been in the same situation. Trump would have launched a nuke over St. Louis and caused tons of casualties and we’d be dealing with nuclear fallout damage for the next century. That much we know is true! But apparently one thing we do know is true is that China apparently did spy on us with these balloons during the Trump administration, and he of course did nothing about it. I would assume because all the Big Macs and Diet Cokes went straight to his head during his rage tweeting toilet sessions. A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China’s use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency, according to an excerpt of the report reviewed by CNN.
The April 2022 report, titled “People’s Republic of China High-Altitude Balloon,” found a Chinese spy balloon “circumnavigated the globe” in 2019 – while Donald Trump was president – at an altitude of roughly 65,000 feet, and “drifted past Hawaii and across Florida before continuing its journey,” the US Air Force document states. The Air Force intelligence report is the first indication that the US military was aware of Chinese spy balloons well before the latest incident. However, it is not clear from the documents when US officials first became aware of the Chinese flights or what they assessed regarding their purpose. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/06/politics/military-intelligence-report-china-balloon-trump/index.html 
And here’s where it gets weird, because you knew it was going to. Of course, like most weird things, it involves our good friend Marjorie Three Names. So any time something doesn’t go 100% in favor of the Fox News MAGA America First Taliban Oath Keepers Proud Boys Conspiracy Theory cult, their natural instinct is to assume that there’s some kind of underlying conspiracy or it didn’t happen or it was a false flag. It’s so hard to keep their bullshit straight anymore. But one thing we do agree on is that something doesn’t pass the smell test here. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday called for a probe into why former President Trump was apparently not informed of previous Chinese surveillance balloons that Biden officials are saying crossed over the U.S. at least three times during the previous administration.
“If it’s true the Pentagon purposely did NOT tell President Trump of Chinese Spy Balloons during his administration then we had a serious breach in command during the Trump admin,” Greene said on Twitter. “The POTUS is the Commander in Chief. We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank,” the longtime Trump ally said. President Biden ordered the U.S. military on Saturday to shoot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had spent days floating over the country in what defense officials later said was a clear effort to spy on sensitive sites. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3845713-greene-calls-for-probe-into-why-trump-was-unaware-of-previous-chinese-balloons/ 
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! OK, MAGAs, let’s play your conspiracy theory game here for a minute. What if this were a bigger story in 2019? It would have absolutely broken social media feeds everywhere, and it probably would have triggered an international incident. But Trump always takes the wrong side on everything and he would have reacted very poorly. It must suck to be a fact checker these days because the claims coming from conspiracy theorists get weirder and nuttier by the hour. No, the Pentagon didn’t detect these balloons back in 2019. Sorry, Tucker and Hannity. A top U.S. general said that the Pentagon did not detect previous Chinese spy balloons as they were in the air, after former President Trump and members of his administration vehemently denied a claim from defense officials that such balloons had flown over the U.S. at least three times during his presidency.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said Monday that the Defense Department “did not detect” the previous balloons, adding that the intelligence community was made aware of them through other means of information collection. “We did not detect those threats,” VanHerck told reporters. “The intel community after the fact — I believe as has been briefed already — assessed those threats from additional means of collection and made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America.” President Biden ordered the latest Chinese surveillance balloon, which spent days in U.S. airspace, to be shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. The U.S. is currently trying to recover the debris, hoping to glean intelligence from the wreckage. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3846363-pentagon-did-not-detect-previous-chinese-spy-balloons-us-general/ 
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[font size="8"]Florida GOP [br] [/font] [br]
History time, kids! Gather around, don’t be shy! There’s a small liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida that’s simply called “New College Of Florida” that was founded as a forefront of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and eventually became a full blown member of the University Of Florida collegiate system. Well now that college has been the target of conservatives, particularly the reigning king of Florida, the Fox News installed wannabe dictator Ron DeSantis (Q – Florida Man). See, DeSantis has been utterly sadistic in his quest to bring you the full Fox News / America First / right wing outrage machine “anti-woke” agenda. And he hasn’t even hit peak evil yet. Don’t worry, it’s going to get worse, so much worse. But, make no mistake – this attack on New College was a deliberate and intentional political hit job, carefully calibrated, timed, and executed with the precision of a high end Rolex watch, and that’s about the only thing conservatives do now these days. The whirlwind unleashed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that rapidly is reshaping New College of Florida picked up speed Tuesday with the president fired amid a broad leadership overhaul that capped a momentous few hours for the Sarasota school.
A slate of new board members installed by DeSantis earlier this month replaced college President Patricia Okker with former GOP House speaker and education commissioner Richard Corcoran, installed a DeSantis appointee as the new board chair, moved to hire a former Republican lawmaker as the school's new general counsel and began the process of abolishing programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, turbo charging a dramatic conservative culture shift. Corcoran has been an eager participant in the governor's education culture war battles, and soon will take the lead in his experiment in overhauling a public university to match his conservative approach to higher education. Corcoran can't takeover as interim president until March, so a college administrator will serve in the role until then. The board also selected DeSantis' appointee Debra Jenks as the new chair and voted to negotiate with Bill Galvano, a former GOP state Senate president from Bradenton, to become the college's new general counsel. https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/sarasota/2023/01/31/richard-corcoran-becomes-interim-president-of-sarasotas-new-college/69858928007/ 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! There’s no mistake that the hardcore right wing is out to remake education. Because a party that wants the church and state to merge and is run by a billionaire media mogul with a world domination complex doesn’t want a well educated populace that’s capable of critical thinking. Education is not in Rupert Murdoch’s best interests, which is why Fox News intentionally is making people stupid. Florida has basically become a product development test bed for News Corporations’ new line of fascist American legislation, coming soon to a municipality near you! The New College of Florida Board of Trustees is moving quickly to finalize an agreement with former Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to take over as interim president after the board ousted former President Patricia Okker last week.
A meeting is scheduled for Feb. 13 to vote on Corcoran's contract, which is the only item on the agenda. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new trustees to New College's board on Jan. 6, and 25 days later they all voted to fire Okker without cause during a contentious meeting on the Sarasota campus. The leadership shakeup is part of an effort to transform Florida's liberal arts honors college into a showcase for conservative ideas about higher education. After firing Okker, DeSantis board appointee Matthew Spalding, a dean at conservative Hillsdale College, moved to hire Corcoran as interim president, calling him a longtime friend. https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/06/ally-of-gov-ron-desantis-set-to-become-sarasota-college-president/69878635007/ 
Yeah this is absolutely insane! And it’s also completely bonkers that Desantis can just fire people like that and install lackeys, ass kissers and bootlickers. The GOP really is going hard totalitarian in Florida and if there’s one thing we know it’s two things. The first is that too much right wing propaganda rots your brain. The second is that the GOP echo chamber is really going way too far here. They must seem to be testing the limits of what people will tolerate before we rise up as one and overthrow the fascist tyrants like DeSantis. So why does the GOP want to take over New College so badly and make it an example of Fox News’ fascist policies? Well the answers are few and far between. Ron DeSantis has made a tiny liberal arts college the latest target of his public education culture war. And the students on campus say they feel like they’ve been turned into guinea pigs in a right-wing social experiment.
The Florida Republican governor’s aggressive move to fundamentally change the character of New College, a tiny public liberal arts school with fewer than 700 students in Sarasota, is his latest plan to dramatically remake Florida’s educational system in his image and build his right-wing bona fides ahead of a likely presidential run. In a few short weeks he’s appointed a hard-right board of trustees who promptly fired the school president and are promising wholesale changes to remake the college in their image. And it’s left the school’s tight-knit community shaken to its core. “This last month has felt a little dystopian. These people like DeSantis and the people he’s appointed, they clearly don’t know what New College is, but they’re trying to control what we’re learning and who we are,” Madison Markham, a fourth year sociology major, told VICE News. Students on campus see DeSantis’ aggressive efforts as part of a wider program of right-wing educational indoctrination—an effort that could go national if he becomes president. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37g3/ron-desantis-new-college-christopher-rufo Yeah expect more independent thought alarms and fewer criticisms of Ron DeSantis and Fox News in the event that he should become president. It’s truly beyond the pale and a slap in the face to the Bill Of Rights what is going on in Florida. The Christian right really is stepping in it, and we can’t help but wonder why DeSantis and Tucker Carlson haven’t been dragged before The Hague yet to answer for these disgusting crimes against humanity. But DeSanits seems bent on remaking Florida education to answer to conservative white males and it’s not going to stop at New College. If you’re not frightened by this, you’re not paying enough attention. What Fox and Desantis are doing to Florida education is stunningly evil and we can’t have this happen on a national level. Fuck. The Ron DeSantis takeover of Florida higher education was on full display Tuesday. First the Republican governor announced plans to defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at state colleges and universities. Then, later that day, his handpicked trustees at New College of Florida convened for their first board meeting, where they ousted the president and began the process of reshaping the institution into a facsimile of Hillsdale College, a private Christian institution in Michigan.
DeSantis, now in his second term, launched the opening act on Tuesday when he announced promised higher education reforms. He proposed defunding DEI efforts and restricting the use of DEI statements in hiring practices, giving boards and presidents the power to review tenure at any time, and requiring that state research universities spend $50 million annually on research related to STEM and business initiatives. Lawmakers are likely to take up the reforms when the state Legislature convenes in March. The legislation DeSantis championed mandates that “any general education course be based on providing a strong educational foundation, and not promote ideological indoctrination.” DeSantis also announced plans to develop civics institutes at the University of Florida, Florida International University and Florida State University. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/02/01/desantis-puts-action-his-plan-end-woke-activism
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[font size="8"]AT&T [br] [/font] [br]
Well, we did have a brief bit of good news last week as it announced that the network that I’ve heard on Twitter being referred to as “Fox News on bath salts”, Newsmax, was getting the heave ho from DirecTV that it so richly deserved. But it’s causing the right wing outrage machine to melt straight the fuck down and we’re here for every second of it. But don’t get too comfortable. Because right wing media is so easily interchangeable, there’s thousands of shows out there. Whether it’s Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens or Charlie Kirk or Sean Hannity or Dennis Prager. Right wing propaganda is so highly specialized that you can get your shows custom tuned to your level of racism and sexism. Of course you know the one guy who has to ruin everything managed to stick his nose in this crap. Yes, I’m talking about the grand exalted leader of the MAGAs, that guy who we inexplicably used to call president. You know, him. He is the ruiner of all things that are considered good and decent. So naturally when he sticks his nose into someone else’s businesss, it’s not going to end well for anybody involved. But don’t boo yet. Hold your boos. Donald Trump is famously addicted to television, obsessing over ratings throughout his presidency and even preferring to watch the Capitol riot play out live across the rolling news channels on 6 January 2021 rather than intervene as members of his inner circle begged him to do.
While the Republican was once dependent on Fox News for favourable coverage, he has more recently experienced a more fractious relationship with the conservative broadcaster and preferred its upstart right-wing rivals like Newsmax and One America News (OAN). But, on Wednesday, US streaming service DirecTV – formally part of AT&T but now an independent entity – announced that it would be dropping Newsmax from its lineup, just as it had previously ditched OAN. The move provoked a furious reaction from the ex-Apprentice host. “WOW. AT&T DIRECTV REMOVES NEWSMAX FROM ITS CHANNEL LINEUP,” Mr Trump complained on his Truth Social platform. “This disgusting move comes after ‘deplatforming’ OAN last year. The Radical Left seems to have taken over the mind and soul of AT&T. This is a big blow to the Republican Party, and to America itself. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-at-t-newsmax-directv-oan-b2269881.html 
Come on, I said don’t boo just yet! Calm down MAGA conspiracy theory addicts, you’ll get your next fix. Right wing news is a powerful drug and some are helpless when they fall under its’ spell. So guess what the conservative Congress is doing? They’re holding hearings and investigations! Because this was a blatantly political hit job! No it wasn’t, it was just another one of those DirecTV subscriber disputes that they use as an excuse to jack up your satellite bill. And these hearings are going to accomplish… absolutely nothing! That’s right, just like most of their outrage nonsense. Republican lawmakers have rushed to the defense of far-right TV network Newsmax after the channel was dropped by AT&T’s DirecTV. According to the satellite television provider, the split stemmed from a carriage fee dispute that would have resulted in “significantly higher costs” and increased customer fees. The channel claims they are being wrongfully censored for their political viewpoints, and have already found allies amongst Republican lawmakers.
The party of free-market capitalism has responded to DirecTV booting Newsmax by arguing that the network should carry the Trump-loving propaganda network, financial considerations be damned. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told Newsmax, which is still available for free on their website, that the “censorship” of conservative voices has “got to stop.” “They’re trying to shut down our voices, and we’ve gotta fight for this,” Scott said. House Republicans — who have prioritized petty cultural grievances over actual issues like the debt ceiling crisis — are even calling for an investigation. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), and Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) all called for hearings to be held, as did Scott. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/newsmax-dropped-att-republicans-hearings-1234668934/ 
Ooooooooooooooooooh… big threat conservatives! Just like your Disney bullshit. It’s hilarious that the party of free enterprise is busy literally dictating and threatening business enterprises that they don’t agree with politically. But then again, that’s what happens when a political party morphs into a way too literal death cult. Now here’s where you can boo. We’re not getting rid of right wing propaganda, it’s merely being replaced by – wait for it – more right wing propaganda! Remember what I said about propaganda being custom tailored to your level of racism and sexism? Well, it’s basically the same shit on Newsmax but with a different label! Fox News castaway Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump sycophant Liz Wheeler, formerly of OAN, lead The First’s lineup of talent, which also includes former Breitbart editor Dana Loesch. Adding insult to injury, The Daily Beast reports The First will take over the very channel formerly occupied by Newsmax.
“On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,” DirecTV told the Daily News on Wednesday. Newsmax spun the unsuccessful negotiations differently. “This is a blatant act of political discrimination and censorship against Newsmax,” the network’s CEO Christopher Ruddy claimed. Former President Donald Trump called DirectTV’s split with Newsmax “disgusting” on social media, blaming the “Radical Left” for the separation. Donald Trump, Jr. called for a boycott on Twitter. Numerous Republican congressmen signed a letter urging DirecTV and its parent company AT&T to explain its decision before learning a new conservative network would replace Newsmax. https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-newsmax-replace-the-first-directv-20230126-ckerivy4f5dghjsjip4x4k52qa-story.html 
OK! Now you can boo! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Come on, AT&T, if there’s one thing we don’t need in this country, it’s more right wing bullshit polluting our airwaves, stop it with that nonsense! There’s too much of this shit out there. Right wing propaganda is a perfect example of a perfectly competitive industry for you economics majors who might be tuned in – there’s thousands of shows out there and they all show the same bullshit. It’s fear porn, bombastic headlines, and talking points. Just stop it with this nonsense already! But the MAGA conspiracy theory junkies won’t have to wait long before their next fix. Last week, DirecTV announced it would be dropping the right-wing TV channel Newsmax from its lineup, which Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy called “a blatant act of political discrimination.” Pouring cold water on this accusation, DirecTV has since announced it will be replacing Newsmax's empty slot with a different right-wing channel, The First, whose on-air personalities include former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch and disgraced Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Newsmax's removal has sparked a chorus of condemnations from GOP lawmakers, including House Oversight Chair James Comer, who promised last week to hold congressional hearings into the matter, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who vowed Monday, “You’re going to see action taken.”
But while right-wing outrage might abound in Congress, the same, surprisingly, cannot be said for the country's leading conservative news network. The Daily Beast reported Monday that Fox News “has only devoted 35 seconds of airtime to Newsmax getting the boot—via a brief mention from Howard Kurtz,” who undermined Newsmax’s claims of discrimination against conservatives in noting “that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel.” Newsmax railed against Fox’s silence in a statement to The Daily Beast Monday, with a rep telling the outlet, “The fact Fox News won’t cover this blatant censorship of a conservative network like Newsmax demonstrates they can’t be trusted to be the only source of news for millions of Americans.” (Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01/newsmax-directv-fox
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[font size="8"]Marjorie Greene [br] [/font] [br]
Holy crap. We’re nearly a month into this Congress and it feels like a fucking eternity has passed, hasn’t’ it? And we still have two more years of this shit show? OMG it’s going to be a long two years, isn’t it? At least there is some good news to report out of this preview of what American fascism is going to look like. It’s at least good to know that there’s at least a few rules that are still being enforced on Elon Musk’s insane version of Twitter. Cause our old friend Marjorie Three Names (Q – Batshit) got suspended yet again, and this time it looks like it may be permanent. Which is pretty sad. You’re in Congress! You’re not supposed to be a social media troll or an Infowars correspondent! Stop going on Steve Bannon’s show, nobody wants to hear your white supremacist replacement theory bullshit besides other white supremacists. They don’t call it an “echo chamber” for nothing. But I do love that Marjorie is the only person from this Congress who so far got permanently suspended. We can’t help but think that Lauren Boebert, Ronny Jackson, and Paul Gosar won’t be too far behind her. Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of far-right politician Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for repeated violations of the social network’s policy prohibiting COVID misinformation.
Greene’s @mtgreenee account on Twitter has been permanently suspended; she still has access her official congressional account, @RepMTG. Before Twitter banned the @mtgreenee account, it had 465,000 followers. The account’s bio read, “Congresswoman for GA-14, Christian, Wife, Mom, Small Business Owner, Proud American 100% Pro-Life Pro-Gun Pro-Trump.” Twitter banned Greene after she tweeted false information on New Year’s Day (Saturday, Jan. 1) about COVID vaccines. In a post on Twitter, she in part called vaccines “dangerous” and made the bogus claim that “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths are ignored.” The U.S. currently is experiencing a massive spike in COVID cases related to the spread of the omicron variant of the virus. “We permanently suspended the account you referenced (@mtgreenee) for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a Twitter rep said in a statement to Variety. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy.” https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-twitter-banned-covid-1235145900/ Thank you Nelson! Well, in case you’re wondering how the MAGA / America First / Infowars / American Taliban / Fox News agenda is going in the 2023 Congress, well, it’s not going well. People are waking up to how dangerous this ideology is, and it could end very badly for America if it is not dealt with in a timely manner. Because tomorrow may be too late. Apparently the latest outrage du jour in MAGA conspiracy theory crazy land is that Joe Biden was selling oil to the Chinese Communist Party (which is a MAGA racist dog whistle), but even conservatives knew this bill was a steaming pile of bullshit. For the last year, President Joe Biden has released a record amount of oil from America's petroleum reserves in order to increase oil supply and lower the price of gasoline that skyrocketed at the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
-snip- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Thursday proposed an amendment that would have prevented Biden from selling oil in the future to combat high gas prices. In justifying the amendment, Greene argued that "we need to chart a path back to energy independence and ensure President Biden is not able to sell our critical oil supplies to China and other enemy nations," this is why she wants to "prevent Biden from claiming an emergency to further reduce our strategic oil supplies." It seems that the vast majority of members of Congress -- including the vast majority of her Republican colleagues -- thought that this was a bad idea, as a vote on the amendment ended with just 14 votes in favor and a whopping 418 votes opposed. Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-s-amendment-to-bar-biden-from-selling-oil-goes-down-in-massive-bipartisan-defeat/ar-AA16MAbk?cvid=73ea0b2fdbc64a489c9650af7cf1b05f 
Ha ha!!! OK Nelson, we heard you! See, MAGA, you can cue up the outrage, hyperbole, and fear porn all you want. But the truth is that we’re not “owned” or “melting down” by your shenanigans. We’re laughing at you, because you have no original thoughts of your own! Your thoughts are all manufactured by the right wing outrage machine, which includes Fox, right wing talk radio, Infowars, TPUSA, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, nearly 2,000 right wing talk shows your megachurch pastor, I could go on and on! Thank you New York! Right wing propaganda is so highly specialized that you can get it tuned to your preferred level of racism and sexism. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!! But moving on, it’s just proving more and more that these are losing ideals that have no place in post COVID America. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) offered an amendment on Thursday ― and it quickly went down in flames.
New House rules put in place by the Republican majority allow any lawmaker to offer an amendment. The Hill reported that led to some 140 amendments being proposed for a bill regarding the use of the strategic petroleum reserve. Greene’s proposed amendment would have forbidden President Joe Biden from selling oil from the reserve. The conspiracy theorist ― who spoke last year at a white nationalist event ― was joined by just 13 others as the amendment failed 14-418. Some believe Greene frenemy Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was subtweeting her with this boast later in the day: https://www.yahoo.com/news/oof-marjorie-taylor-greene-mocked-095052768.html
Yes, “working”. You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. I mean come on, what actual work have you done other than be a social media troll? This is going to be a long two years, isn’t it? And I love when MAGAs scream that they didn’t do anything wrong but post a message on a social media board. You got suspended for being racist and posting COVID conspiracy theory bullshit! You did everything wrong! I like Congressional representatives who aren’t social media trolls. I’ll make an exception for Ted Lieu though, because that guy knows how to troll these morons good. Argh I’m so tired of these idiots! Facebook suspended an account of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's for 24 hours for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, a day after Twitter permanently suspended the Republican's personal account on that platform.
On other social media platforms Monday, Greene shared a screenshot of a message from Facebook, alerting her that her account had been blocked. "Facebook has joined Twitter in censoring me," Greene reportedly wrote in posts on the Telegram and Gettr networks. "This is beyond censorship of speech." A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, told NPR: "A post violated our policies and we have removed it; but removing her account [permanently] for this violation is beyond the scope of our policies." https://www.npr.org/2022/01/02/1069753102/twitter-bans-marjorie-taylor-greenes-personal-account-over-covid-misinformation
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[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Hyundai And Kia Thefts [br] [/font] [br]
It's time to investigate beyond the headlines! This is Top 10 Investigates! Certain late model Hyundai and Kia vehicles have recently become the target of car thieves. A viral Tik Tok video has been showing thieves just how easy it is to break into vehicles such as the Hyundai Kona, Hyundai Accent, Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Optima, Optima Hybrid, and Kia Soul. The models can range anywhere from 2015 – 2021. Thieves can break into these cars and start them using nothing more than a flat head screwdriver and a USB-A cable. And the reason why these cars were so easy to break into is because they lack engine immobilizers which means that the car could be started without a key fob present in the cabin. But does this mean that insurance companies are right to blacklist the owners of these vehicles? Two of the biggest insurance companies – State Farm and Progressive are declining coverage of these cars because of how easy it is to break into them. Which really is more punishing the owners than it is anything else. he aftermath of the Kia Boys continues, as major insurance companies now refuse to insure new Hyundai and Kia models for being too easy to steal. Now, according to a recent report from WWL-TV in New Orleans, two State Farm employees have provided a list of all the Hyundai and Kia models that are blacklisted from being added to insurance policies. The list allegedly applies to Louisiana, Georgia, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Although, the Louisiana Department of Insurance claims it hasn't been made aware of such restrictions.
The Drive has reached out to Hyundai for a statement and will update this story when we get one. Earlier this year, stealing certain Hyundai and Kia models became so popular it was a TikTok trend. If thieves had access to the inside of the car, they could get away with certain models in under a minute, using nothing but a flathead screwdriver and a USB-A cable. Stealing the cars was as simple as yanking down on bottom of the plastic steering wheel column housing, thus breaking it off, ripping out the ignition cylinder, and using the end of a USB cable to turn the ignition. The reason why such a simple theft worked was because a shocking amount of Hyundai and Kia models lacked engine immobilizers, which meant they didn't require a key or keyfob present to start the engine. However, Hyundai made engine immobilizers standard on all models starting in 2021, while Kia made them standard in 2022. Certain models received immobilizers earlier, such as the Kia Optima Hybrid (2016), Kia Sorento, and Hyundai Veloster (2018). https://www.thedrive.com/news/these-hyundai-and-kia-models-are-blacklisted-by-state-farm-insurance-over-thefts Things have got so bad because of this video that State Farm and Allstate are declining coverage of these vehicles. A lot of owners of these cars are screaming that this isn’t their fault that video is out there and causing people to break into these cars. So what is Hyundai and Kia doing to reassure owners that it’s OK to own these vehicles? Well both the insurance companies and the car manufacturers are exploring lots of different options to combat theft, much like Toyota is doing with late model Priuses and catalytic converter thefts. But it’s a complicated scenario with no easy solution. Progressive and State Farm have dropped some older Hyundai and Kia vehicles due to their lack of anti-theft features, according to the companies and multiple reports.
The move comes after social media posts showed how to start certain Kia and Hyundai cars without the use of a key, prompting theft warnings from police. James Bell, a spokesperson for Kia, said Monday the insurance companies' move impacts certain Kias built between 2011 and 2021 that are equipped with a steel key to "insert and turn to start" the ignition. Ira Gabriel, a Hyundai spokesperson, hoped the actions would be temporary, he said in a Monday email to USA TODAY, but did not specify which vehicle years were affected. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2023/01/30/kia-hyundai-theft-issues-state-farm-progressive/11148537002/ 
One of the solutions being talked about is that could be just a simple fix in the car’s Bluetooth system. A car dealer in St. Louis has a novel solution called a “Bluetooth Interrupter” that would prevent the cars from being stolen. So is that all it would take? Anything is possible, and insurance companies and the car manufacturers are exploring different options to prevent car thefts. Hyundai is also exploring the option of simply providing a software update that could fix the issue. But software is only as good as the hardware. This could end the crisis. O r not. “With my device on the car, even if they have a USB cord and turn it, it won’t start the car at all,” Silk said. “My product will keep the car from starting. Hence, they can’t steal it.”
So far, Silk has sold the product for $99, or $199 with technician installation. He told NewsNation that Hyundai had reached out to him and asked him to send his product to them because they are not having any luck with their own product. “They are actually looking at my product to possibly work together to stop this,” Silk said. Due to the popularity of his product, Silk launched a website for the device so that Americans across the nation can have access to it. In addition to the device, he offers a sticker for $5 for the vehicle window that warns possible thieves that the car is equipped with the technology. A Hyundai spokesman told Fox News Digital the company is aware of Silk’s product but is exploring options to provide a free software solution for customers that it hopes to make available by March. https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/kia-hyundai-thefts-solution/ 
And by the way if you’re an owner of these cars and wondering just how bad it’s got, well you ain’t seen nothing yet. Well there’s reports of these thefts all over the country. In fact the DC Metro area reported something like 1/3 of all car thefts in the last two months were just Hyundai and Kia alone and nothing else even came close. So a software update could fix the problem – or it could make it worse. But there’s one thing we do know – is that thieves are not using these cars for good, and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. Own a Hyundai or Kia? Well, you should know they’ve proven to be popular brands for car thieves in D.C. this year.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), those two brands accounted for 31% of all stolen cars in D.C. through the first three weeks of the year. D.C. Police Department data also showed, through the last three months of 2022, an uptick in the number of those cars stolen from District streets. Two Northeast D.C. residents, living in the same apartment building, off the 1600 block of Maryland Avenue, Northeast, said their Kia Souls were targeted by thieves this week too. On Saturday, Northeast D.C. resident and 'Congress Heights on the Rise' blogger Nikki Peele, said someone took her Kia Soul out of her garage at the Union Heights apartment building. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/crime/mpd-kia-hyundai-thefts-made-up-one-third-of-dcs-stolen-cars-in-early-january/65-d5aa395c-1443-4667-ba61-97ab0c046447 
That’s it this week for Top 10 Investigates. Good day. [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"]Holy Shit: Satanic Panic At The Grammys [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 strange times. The social media era has brought about new levels of conservative nuttery that we’ve never seen before. For my audience members who were alive during the 80s, you all remember the Satanic Panic? It was when conservative Christians everywhere reported satanic abuse rituals. It was kind of the modern day version of the Salem Witchcraft Trials from the 1600s. It may have been started by a book called “Michelle Remembers”. OK, enough history. Let’s fast forward to the present. Last week was the Grammy Awards. Since the news has been replaced with conspiracy theories, people who speak MAGA wouldn’t know what a real musical performance is if it jumped up and bit them. But Sam Smith and Kim Petras may have sparked a new modern Satanic Panic movement and it’s the stuff of insanity. And the more you go down the wormhole, the weirder it gets. The post Ted Cruz Calls Sam Smith and Kim Petras “Evil” as Right Spreads Satanic Panic Conspiracies appeared first on Consequence.
Following Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ performance of “Unholy” at the 2023 Grammy Awards, Senator Ted Cruz called the artists”evil” and conservatives flooded social media with Satanic panic and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Smith, who is nonbinary, and Petras, a transgender woman, performed their international smash hit “Unholy” in moody red lighting, with Smith dressed like the display window in a Spirit Halloween while centered in a circle of dancers who looked like they’d just stepped out of the television in The Ring. Afterwards he threw it back to Petras, writhing suggestively inside a cage in front of a fiery backdrop. “This… is… evil,” Cruz wrote on Twitter, the ellipses perhaps representing the breaks he took to consume more pornography. His post was a re-tweet from conservative commenter and former OANN presenter Liz Wheeler, famed for having the kind of brain you normally find in an aquarium. “Demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan,” she wrote. “I could throw up.” https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ted-cruz-calls-sam-smith-163422752.html
Evil??? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! That’s a good one, Teddy! You might want to take a look in the mirror, because you are EVIL! You and your Christian right buddies! Because you do not stand for anything good in this world. You represent darkness! Your favorite president is 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! But I do love that Sam Smith’s performance at the Grammys is causing conservatives to let their conspiracy theory freak flag fly! Conservatives are clutching their pearls in horror over Sam Smith and Kim Petras' cheeky performance at the Grammys.
During Sunday night's ceremony, the pair took center stage to perform their hit song "Unholy," which also won the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. The hell-themed showcase featured several red-robed dancers, cages, whips and Smith sporting a top hat adorned with red devil horns. Naturally, conservative critics took offense at this apparent love letter to the Prince of Darkness and took to Twitter to slam the performance. The comments ranged from interpreting the number as an actual Satanic ritual to – what else? – an attempt to advance the vaccine agenda. "If as a Christian, you think we are reaching when we talk about the dominance and normalization of Satan worship in pop music, you need discernment," wrote Christian life coach Solomon Buchi. "Sam Smith's performance at the Grammy's last night was satanic, gory. No, it's not art; it's symbolic of who they serve." https://www.salon.com/2023/02/06/sam-smith-grammys-satan-phizer-unholy/ 
You know what conservatives? If this bothers you, I highly suggest turning off Fox News and coming back to the real world, OK? But it’s not just conservatives, it’s the usual group of MAGA idiots and Fox News hosts that are sparking the outrage machine. But why are they fueling anti-vaccine hysteria too? Well it’s because Mr. Smith’s performance was sponsored by Pfizer. So yeah naturally link the vaccine to SAYTAN hysteria! Because you know that it’s the conservative thing to do. Sigh, you know this is going to get worse before it gets better. Right-wing influencers in the US on Monday stoked moral panic over Sam Smith dressing as Satan for a performance at the Grammy Awards.
In a posting on Twitter, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized the performance and referenced anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, one of the sponsors of the awards. Some right-wing figures have pushed baseless claims about the COVID-19 vaccines developed by the company. "The Grammy's featured Sam Smith's demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer. And the Satanic Church now has an abortion clinic in NM that requires its patients to perform a satanic ritual before services. American Christians need to get to work," said Greene. https://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-kim-petras-sam-smith-satan-unholy-grammy-devil-2023-2 
Come on, conservatives, live a little! It’s just music! If you’re offended by Sam Smith’s performance, well I’ll have to tell you about this band called Twin Temple. Or maybe Ghost is more to your liking. But that’s some light satanism. You know what they say about the devil being in the details. Well, of course here, in my church, we’re pretty much for anything that would cause the Christian right to get their collective underwear in a wad. And of course it’s more culture war bullshit being brought to you by Fox News and Christian right megachurch pastors. You know what? I say let ‘em melt down. Just grab some popcorn and watch your religious right friends’ heads explode. “I know we on the right probably use the word satanic too often but this performance from Sam Smith is literally a tribute to Satan,” wrote Human Events editor Ben Kew.
While many conservatives were melting down over Smith and Petras’ performance, the majority of Grammy viewers were celebrating the duo’s historic evening. “Unholy” won the Grammy for best pop duo/group performance, making Petras the first openly transgender woman to win in the category. “I just want to thank all the incredible transgender legends before me who kicked these doors open before me so I could be here tonight,” Petras said in her acceptance speech. When asked about the fiery performance backstage at the Grammys, Petras said it was inspired by not feeling accepted by religion. “I think a lot of people, honestly, have kind of labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as religiously not cool, and I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it but slowly realizing it didn’t want me to be a part of it,” Petras said. “So it’s a take on not being able to choose religion. And not being able to live the way that people might want you to live, because as a trans person I’m already not kind of wanted in religion. So we were doing a take on that and I was kind of hell-keeper Kim.” https://variety.com/2023/music/news/ted-cruz-slams-sam-smith-kim-petras-grammys-evil-performance-1235514438/ 
Well, like I said, just sit back and watch the meltdown! It’s fun to watch the Christian right be in hysterics over a music performance. Next week’s outrage du jour will be fun to watch too! 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: J.D. Vance [br] [/font] [br]
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: newly installed Ohio senator, trust fund manager, and self-proclaimed hillbilly with money, J.D. Vance. How did this guy get elected? Well the qualifications for running for any office in the republican party are simple: speak Republicanese. And spout the stupidest shit that comes to mind no matter how toxic it can get. JD Vance is a fundamentalist Christian conspiracy theorist. He’s so devout that he might as well be a member of the American Taliban. So of course he’s going full in on the conspiracy theory train. Starting with some insane beliefs about Ukraine. Yes, the Ukraine war has been going on for over a year now and we’re doing everything possible to humiliate Vladimir Putin and his terrorist army. But American MAGA republicans on the other hand, might as well start kissing Putin’s ass because they’re on his side. And you can’t tell us that there was no Russian collusion in the 2016 election because there absolutely was. When JD Vance took over for Rob Portman on Jan. 3 it may have been a Republican replacing a Republican in the U.S. Senate, but in the Northeast Ohio Ukrainian Community there was a stark contrast between the two men.
"Senator Portman was one of the leaders in the Senate, he was co-chair of the Senate Caucus on Ukraine,” said Andy Fedynsky, director, Ukrainian Museum-Archives. “And JD Vance ,in his campaign, came out very negatively on Ukraine— so sure it's a big concern." Concerns that grew last week when Vance penned a letter to the Biden administration demanding an accounting of funds the U.S. has sent to Ukraine. Money that Portman pushed hard for. “I’ve been very skeptical from the beginning that our Ukraine policy is actually accomplishing much other than destroying the country of Ukraine,” Vance told News 5 Wednesday. “And, obviously raising the risk of potential escalation down the road in a way that can affect us, can affect a lot of our allies in Europe.” But regardless of where you stand on the war, he said it’s just a question of fiscal responsibility. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/ohio-sen-jd-vance-has-concerns-about-ukraine-sending-tanks-overseas 
Yes, we’re booing. A somewhat sane republican got replaced with a hard lined MAGA ass kisser and bootlicker. But what accounting are they looking for? Obviously, there is no playing nice with the MAGAs, because they’re just looking to fuck things up and be against anything remotely resembling progress, and that’s about it. What do they want? No matter what answer we give them, they’ll just dismiss it as saying that it’s a fake or it didn’t happen or it was a false flag. Because there is no accountability with the MAGAs. None, whatsoever. Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance will call on the Biden administration to release an "accounting" of how U.S. aid to Ukraine is being used.
The freshman senator told WLWT his office is circulating a letter among fellow Republican colleagues in Congress to try and shore up support. "We've sent close to $120 billion to Ukrainians, who, of course, are fighting off a really bad invasion from Russia. If you compare that, we spend $60 billion on our own homeland security," Vance said. "All I'm asking for at this stage is just some accounting of where we're spending that money." The exact amount of aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine is unclear. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The UNHCR reports as of October 2022, more than 7.7 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe. https://www.wlwt.com/article/ohio-sen-jd-vance-letter-u-s-accounting-of-aid-to-ukraine/42474381
And by the way, you may have heard your MAGA conspiracy theorist friends and neighbors spouting crap about the Biden administration and gas stoves. Well, the MAGA crowd has to make everything an issue and we’re not going to hear the end of the gas stove controversy anytime soon. So expect plenty of pictures on right wing social media feeds about lighting up every single burner on your gas stove and just letting it run. Sure, you may kill yourself by asphyxiation or by a gas fire explosion, but hey, you’re owning the libs! Anyway, here’s where J.D. Vance stands on the issue: In an interview with WLWT, freshman Sen. JD Vance says the Biden administration was caught “pretty red-handed” with a push to step in over gas stoves.
“Now they face some political blowback. They're kind of rolling it back and that's a good thing. But that's why you try to raise these issues and try to elevate these issues is to make sure that the administration doesn't get too far ahead of the science or public opinion on this,” Vance said. A consumer safety official recently suggested to Bloomberg that the Consumer Product Safety Commission pursue a ban over gas stoves. One study links an associated risk of developing asthma in kids to gas stoves. Vance says Ohio itself has a robust industry in the appliance field and thousands of Ohioans, like the Vance household, already use them. “Depending on which numbers you're looking at, between 20 to 40% of Ohioans cook their meals every night. So just banning those would be destructive economically, really, really challenging to a lot of families. But the flip side of it is we've got a home appliance industry in Ohio that's close to $5 billion in wages, 26,000 employees,” Vance said. https://www.wlwt.com/article/ohio-senator-jd-vance-biden-gas-stoves/42476539 
Yeah so that’s happening. In the MAGA world, anything that we might be for, they’re automatically against. It’s the “I know you are but what am I” logical fallacy. That might have worked on the Pee Wee’s Playhouse show, but it doesn’t work in real life. And in case you’re wondering what Mr. Vance’s political beliefs are, well, let’s just say that he’s on the side of MAGA and the side of insane right wing religious conspiracy theory beliefs. Yes, he’s in a war on pornography and women’s rights. He thinks the Handmaid’s Tale is an instruction manual. It isn’t. In case you’re wondering who he’s endorsing for the 2024 election, well, you’ll be shocked. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a rising conservative star who won a hard-fought race to replace retired Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), announced Tuesday that he will back Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
Vance, who won Ohio’s competitive Senate Republican primary last year after receiving Trump’s endorsement, told radio host Hugh Hewitt “the simple fact is Donald Trump’s policies were incredibly good for this country and he’s very popular among Republican voters.” “In Ohio Republican circles, I’d say well over half the people in our party want Trump to run and will vote for him in the primary if he does. You know, look, I’m planning to support the [former] president in ’24,” Vance said. “I’m actually going to have an article come out here in the next couple of days that explains why,” he added. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3837732-vance-says-he-will-back-trumps-2024-presidential-campaign/ 
That’s newly installed Ohio MAGA senator J.D. Vance – living proof that anyone speaking republican and being in tune with the cult can get elected in red areas. Just another one of the toxic politicians 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 where we attempt to explain the unexplainable, Conspiracy Corner! See, conspiracies are for people who don’t want to read beyond the headlines or think for themselves, which is why they are getting weirder and weirder with each day. We of course are coming to you live from our underground doomsday shelter in 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! There we go! So this week we’re going to lighten the mood and talk about Nazis, that’s right! Nazis and white supremacy are becoming fashionable again, thanks to Donald Trump dining with neo Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes and embattled social media troll and former shoe salesman Kanye West, who famously said that we should love everyone, including Hitler. So no surprise that Nazism is filtering into places where we least expect it. An alleged “Nazi homeschooling group” based in Ohio has been widely condemned, amid reports that it distributed lesson plans which included writing exercises based on quotes by Adolf Hitler.
A couple calling themselves “Mr and Mrs Saxon” established the “Dissident Homeschool” channel on Telegram in 2021, according to reporting by Anonymous Comrades Collective, an anti-fascist research group, verified by Huffpost and Vice. The channel, which has almost 2,500 subscribers, distributes “ready-made lesson plans”, Huffpost reported, including history lessons which praise the Confederate general Robert E Lee as a “grand role model for young, white men” and denigrate Martin Luther King Jr as “the antithesis of our civilization and our people”. The Saxons were identified by Huffpost and Vice as Logan and Katja Lawrence, from Upper Sandusky, a town of about 7,000 in northern Ohio. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/01/nazi-homeschooling-group-ohio-condemned So for those of you who don’t know what Telegram is, it’s a Russian owned social media service that’s way more racist than Twitter. Not at all surprised that there are Nazis lurking on that platform. But the good news is that the people who found out about the alleged scheme gave the man who founded the group the heave ho. But it’s scary to think that there’s actual Nazis on American soil. If I recall, didn’t we fight an entire World War against them? But really it’s truly insane that this is happening in this country right now. A small family-run business that employed one of the purported leaders of a White supremacist, pro-Nazi homeschooling network announced he is no longer an employee as a result of “this disturbing and secretive behavior.”
The Lawrence Insurance Agency, with an office in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, released a statement condemning the messages and so-called lessons that have come to light from the social media-based homeschooling network. “The viewpoints & ideology recently expressed by Logan Lawrence and his wife in no way represent the values of Lawrence Insurance Agency,” the statement said. “We emphatically denounce what they have said and done & we wholeheartedly empathize with all who have been hurt, upset, and disturbed by their conduct.” Based on an investigation by online anti-fascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective and resulting media reports, local officials believe the group is run out of Upper Sandusky, Ohio. The online research group named Logan and Katja Lawrence as the leaders of the homeschooling network, otherwise known as “Mr. Saxon” and “Mrs. Saxon.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/us/ohio-white-supremacist-homeschooling-network-employment/index.html 
You know with friends like these, who needs enemies? And you might be asking where are the real educators in all of this? Well the superintendent of said area where the Saxons reside spoke out, and naturally they’re beyond horrified. Even one Nazi is too many but the fact that there’s 2,500 of them out there? That’s some really scary shit. And you know we all know the only acceptable thing to do with Nazis – is to throw them in the dumpster and that’s about. Instead we have a megalomaniacal billionaire who pays $44 billion for a social media network to give them a megaphone! The school superintendent of an Ohio city where neo-Nazi-themed home-schooling curriculum is reportedly being used and widely shared online says his "district vehemently condemns any such resources."
"The allegations are egregious," Eric Landversicht, superintendent of Upper Sandusky Exempted Village Schools, wrote in a letter to the school community that he provided Monday to the USA TODAY NETWORK Ohio. The curriculum made national news in an article published online by Vice News based on a report published last week by the anti-fascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective. The Vice article claims that a couple from Wyandot County created the "Dissident Homeschool" channel, a social media outlet that distributes its lesson plans for elementary students to more than 2,400 subscribers nationwide. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/state/2023/01/30/ohio-superintendent-speaks-against-nazi-curriculum-created-by-family/69854810007/ Wow, I did not see that coming! Oh come on, that’s the joke you choose to walk out on? You knew that one was coming! So America’s got a Nazi problem on our hands and it’s definitely going to get worse before it gets better. And you might be wondering – how did it get this bad? Well, I answer you good / sir madam, it’s once again thanks to reckless conservative policies. And we always say that what the parents watch has an effect on how the kids grow up. If the parents spend all day listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson, don’t be surprised when they grow up to be raving, gun toting neo nazis with an ego complex and a grudge against the government. Bishop Sycamore was laid bare in 2021 when its football team was getting beaten so badly during a nationally televised game in Canton that the analysts on ESPN were heard expressing concern for the boys' safety.
Charita Goshay It was later discovered that the team at times played two games a week, and that the school itself barely existed. But Bishop Sycamore is Harvard University compared to an online charter school in Upper Sandusky in which hundreds of American children are being instructed in the elements of Nazism. Until recently, "The Dissident Homeschool" channel on Telegram offered pro-Nazi lesson plans for elementary-age kids. It has been subscribed to by more than 2,400 families. https://www.the-review.com/story/opinion/columns/2023/02/05/neo-nazi-school-in-ohio-was-made-possible-by-the-states-weak-policies/69856822007/ 
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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb [br] [/font] [br]
Hit it! Of course you know by now that people are people, and people are dumb. And before I begin I always like to preface what makes a People Are Dumb story. And not all People Are Dumb stories are stupid criminals, but I do love me a good stupid criminal story. Like give me a story where a guy steals a car and then runs over the “do not back up” tire spikes, or a guy who steals a car and doesn’t know how to operate a manual stick shift, and I’m a happy guy! I want to start with this story out of New York City, that surprisingly isn’t a stupid criminal story. But it is the epitome of People Are Dumb. So New York City has been busy building a shiny new Grand Central Station to the tune of $11 billion dollars. Now since the opening of said train station, one plaque has been getting a lot of attention. See, here’s the thing, if you’re spending $11 BILLION on a new train station, you’d better make sure everything is perfect, otherwise you might want to skip town for a bit. Wanna get away ? New York gained a bright, shiny new train terminal last week and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority decorated the walls with brilliant and moving quotes about the Big Apple from some of the city’s most famous residents. Unfortunately, one quote features an embarrassing typo.
“One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt,” is attributed to one “Georgia O’Keefe” and adorns the mezzanine wall in Grand Central Madison. That name is only one letter off from the name of one of the most important modernist American painters of the 20th Century. “We clearly f-ed this one up and it’s being fixed,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Communications Director Tim Minton said in a statement to Bloomberg, referring to the missing F in the name. Known primarily for her modernist paintings of flowers, animal skulls and skyscrapers, O’Keeffe learned her craft at the Art Students League in New York, as well as lived in the city early on in her career. Here’s what the Georgia O’Keeffe museum says about her connection to New York: https://jalopnik.com/nycs-brand-new-11-billion-train-terminal-misspelled-ge-1850055134?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=dlvrit&utm_content=jalopnik 
Next up – we go to this story out of Mexico. Because as we say, there’s no shortage of stupid people anywhere in the world! OK so here’s the thing – you’re at a Christmas or holiday party and someone is serving up some really good grub. Well, what if that person was a zoo director and the animals were part of said zoo? Yeah this whole story is absolutely insane and it’s a perfect example of People Are Dumb because if there’s one thing you never want to do, it’s get caught. And how this guy got caught is really the stuff of insanity. I really can’t wait for the Netflix documentary on this guy! The former director of a zoo in southern Mexico killed four of the zoo’s pygmy goats and served them up at a Christmas-season party, authorities said.
José Rubén Nava was replaced as director of the local zoo in the city of Chilpancingo on Jan. 12 following the death of a deer there. But officials said Tuesday that an investigation found some of the animals in the zoo’s collection had allegedly been sold off, traded or eaten under Nava’s orders. The state environment department said a zebra was traded for tools and deer and Watusi cattle were traded off to private individuals, without proper accounting. It was not clear if Nava had been formally charged in the case, or if he had a lawyer. But the most shocking accusation was made by Fernando Ruiz Gutierrez, the state environment department's director of wildlife. He said Nava had four of the zoo's male pygmy goats killed and cooked for an end-of-year banquet. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/former-mexico-zoo-director-killed-cooked-4-goats-for-christmas-party?taid=63dbbe659511e10001d540cd&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter 
Next up – Florida Man, what are you doing? Florida has been consistently putting out quality People Are Dumb stories since the inception of this program. We don’t mean to pick on Florida all the time, but we do pick on Florida all the time. Because of stories like this. So when you see “Florida Man threatens to fight everyone after the bars close”, you gotta click on it, right? I’ve been to a lot of bars in my lifetime, and I’ve consumed quite a lot of drinks. But I’ve never been so drunk that I wanted to fight everyone who was hanging out at the bar! The line between night and morning was blurred Saturday in Cape Coral. Last call had come and gone, and the lingering crowd was beginning to disperse.
Cape Coral Police watched the clock click past three in the morning, yet the street outside the establishments was still a frenzy of activity. “Can you go over and take care of that guy?” A random citizen approached the patrol car, concerned about a half-naked man turning the evening celebrations into chaos. “He spit in my friend’s face and was running around grabbing people.” As another man, swiping spittle from his face, confirmed the act of aggression, police made their way to the mass of alcohol-induced to check the situation. ...........(more) https://nbc-2.com/news/crime/2023/01/27/florida-man-challenges-all-comers-to-fight-following-dixie-roadhouse-last-call/amp/ 
Next up – bodily waste! Yes, they have a story for everything in the Sunshine State. So here’s a guy who broke into a Joe’s Crab Shack… and really of all the chain restaurants, you pick Joe’s Crab Shack? The discount Red Lobster? But when your police nickname is the “Pooping Perpetrator” then you should probably take a step back and rethink your life choices. Though I will say that “Pooping Perpetrators” are an awesome band, I saw them at the Troubadour! Police in Florida are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying a man they have dubbed the “pooping perpetrator.“
Around 2:30 a.m. Jan. 21, a man caught on surveillance video broke into a Joe’s Crab Shack in Fort Myers, police say. He allegedly climbed through a small window that he broke prior to stealing multiple items, including alcohol, and defecating on the floor prior to leaving. He also stole a Joe’s Crab Shack hat off a shelf and wore it as he walked around the restaurant, WFLA-TV reports. ..............(more) https://nypost.com/2023/01/23/florida-man-dubbed-pooping-perpetrator-sought-by-police-for-break-in/ 
Finally this week – this is the kind of story as to why People Are Dumb exists. You know I always say that at the end of the day after you hear all the bad news in the world, you really just want to see a story about someone who goes crazy and destroys a McDonalds because they ran out of chicken nuggets. So this story is along those lines. That’s it this week for: [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"]World Tour 2023 Destination #3 Of 6 - Poland [br] [/font] [br] Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:
[font size="4"]Destination #3 Of 6: Poland [/font] 
We’re nearly at the end of our 2022 / 2023 World Tour and we’ve spanned the globe once again looking for conservative idiocy across this big blue marble floating in space that we call Earth. Or as it’s called by beings from another world, Midgard. This week we’re heading to Germany’s next door neighbors, the almighty Poland! Poland is of course home to ejector seats on helicopters and screen doors on submarines. Oh come on! I kid! I kid! Poland is the home to the world’s oldest salt mines and the world’s largest castle. It’s also the home of Vodka. That’s right, vodka didn’t originate in Russia, it originated in Poland. It’s also the home of Ekstralasa, it’s national football league. What else is Poland the home of? It is the home of what could possibly be the subject of Vladimir Putin’s next hostile takeover. But we learned a lot from the current Ukraine conflict and we hope to meet Putin at the door with advanced artillery the next nation he chooses to invade. The US plans to sell Poland about $10 billion in weapons including 18 Himars rocket launchers and ammunition for the highly accurate mobile platform, the Pentagon announced Tuesday, shoring up a crucial NATO ally as Russia presses its war in neighboring Ukraine.
The package will also include the ATACMS long-range missile system and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, according to a Defense Department statement. Two people familiar with the matter said Congress has been notified of the proposed deal, under the Foreign Military Sales program. The sale builds on stepped-up US assistance since Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago. Poland has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, including successfully pressing Germany for permission to send German-made Leopard II tanks to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s forces. “The proposed sale will improve Poland’s military goals of updating capability while further enhancing interoperability with the United States and other allies,” the Pentagon said. “Poland intends to use these defense articles and services to modernize its armed forces and expand its capability to strengthen its homeland defense and deter regional threats.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/us-to-sell-poland-10-billion-in-himars-ammunition 
You know what? This seriously feels like we’re living in that movie Don’t Look Up, except replace the meteor in that movie with a megalomaniacal dictator with his finger on the nuclear weapons trigger who’s attempting to take over the world. And if too many people don’t stop his crap, his taking over the world may be inevitable. So we must stop him with everything that we got! You know what else Poland is the home of? Windmills! That’s right, windmills - you know that thing that Trump says will decrease your property values and give you cancer. That’s right. I still cannot believe that was a thing that happened, and that people want this guy to be a leader. Poland's parliament on Wednesday passed two pieces of legislation the government hopes will unblock billions in European Union funds, but doubts remained over whether the president would sign the judicial reform bill into law.
Brussels has withheld 35.4 billion euros ($38 billion) in COVID-19 recovery funds in a row over the rule of law, and has set milestones on issues such as judicial independence and green energy which Warsaw must fulfil to get the cash. The most contentious reforms for those in Poland's ruling camp concern the judicial system. The bill would mean the Supreme Administrative Court would deal with disciplinary cases of judges instead of a contested chamber of the Supreme Court, which critics say has been used to punish judges critical of the government's judicial reforms. It would also mean judges would not face disciplinary action for questioning the independence of colleagues appointed by organs that critics say are politicised. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/polish-parliament-passes-law-changing-rules-wind-power-investments-2023-02-08/ 
Now here’s something interesting – it turns out that Poland is the home of some long lost World War II treasures. That’s right – there apparently were some underground Nazi bunkers from World War II that were being excavated in Warsaw, and they were finding treasures in, of all places – the toilets! Yes, it’s quite the disgusting tale but it has a pretty interesting outcome. So what did they find in the old toilets, you might ask? Well I answer you good sir or madam – they found a lot of interesting stuff like gild, sculptures, medallions, fragments of destroyed artwork… interesting finds! For most people, a trash-filled toilet is a headache to be dealt with, a mess to be cleaned or both. For archaeologists in Poland, however, a trash-filled toilet was a curiosity to be explored. Archaeologists in Warsaw were excavating the ruins of Saxon Palace — a 400-year-old structure destroyed by Nazi troops during World War II — when they found something in the cellars, according to a Jan. 26 news release from Science in Poland.
In the cellar, archaeologists uncovered a number of toilets and wells, most filled with trash. The structures had become less of a sewage system and more of a garbage can, explained excavations coordinator Maria Wardzyńska in the release. Shoved between the bricks of one toilet, researchers found a diamond ring made of silver and gold. The valuable item is one of nearly 46,000 artifacts unearthed from the royal rubble Archaeologists have also found coins, pottery vessels, fragments of destroyed sculptures and medallions, according to the release. Videos from Polska Agencja Prasowa, the Polish Press Agency, shows the red-brick palace ruins. The Saxon Palace was originally built in the 1660s and became a royal residence in the 1720s, according to the State Archives in Warsaw. The building was expanded as its functions shifted throughout the 1700s. Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article272219173.html#storylink=cpy 
But remember what I said about that movie Don’t Look Up? It turns out that Poland was one of the countries that first alerted the world to the dangers of what Russia and the Vladimir Putin regime are up to, and all of their evil shenanigans. And Don’t Look Up is a very prophetic movie for the times that we live in right now. Everyone wants to go about living their lives like it’s no big deal, but there’s a mad man with nuclear weapons out for global domination. He’s knocking countries and governments off one by one and is going after the big prize. We need to stop him before it’s too late! Ramzan Kadyrov, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has begun rattling off threats about attacking Poland after Ukraine.
Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, suggested Monday that Russia should “denazify and demilitarize” Poland next. “What if, after the successful completion of the NMD, Russia begins to denazify and demilitarize the next country? After all, after Ukraine, Poland is on the map! I will not hide that I personally have such an intention,” Kadyrov said on Telegram. “I personally have such an intention, and I have repeatedly stated that the fight against Satanism should continue throughout Europe and, first of all, on the territory of Poland.” Kadyrov warned Tuesday that the time has come for the West to fall to its knees before Russia, predicting that the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine, would be over by the end of 2023. https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-putin-ally-ramzan-kadyrov-says-he-will-not-hide-intention-to-invade-poland-anymore 
[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font] Tourism: B Culture: B Political Spectrum: C Liberal Appeal: C- Overall: C- Change from 2017: Poland is probably a good place to avoid right now, especially if Putin does target the country after he’s done with Ukraine. Hopefully they won’t have to use those tanks and rockets. [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] For destination #4 of 6, we’re heading back to Africa and specifically South Africa! Cue up some Toto for this one! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]The Dirty Heads [/font] 
Folks my next guest has a great new album out called Midnight Control. You can see them at the Cali Vibes festival in Long Beach on Feb. 19th. Playing their song “Island Glow”, give it up for the Dirty Heads! Thank you Philadelphia! This was fun! Go Eagles! We’re heading to Boston next week. See you next week!
Credits Host: Initech The Dirty Heads appear courtesy of: Better Noise Music Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Punchline Philly, Philadelphia, PA Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Mastodon: [email protected] Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Mastodon: [email protected] Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
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Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Feb 9, 2023, 06:00 PM (1 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-2: Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S. Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-2: Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S. Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yo!!! What’s up New York City??? So how you guys doing? You doing fucking good? Man it has been way too long since we’ve been back here and it feels good! It’s been since what… 2019 was the last time we were on the east coast? So yeah it has been a while. At least it’s good to know that LaGuardia hasn’t changed! Well I don’t know if you saw last week but I do have some bad news to report – we lost our primary source for all of the wacky clips that we bring you during our Wheel Of Corruption editions. Yes, I bid RIP to the Right Wing Watch channel on Youtube. Don’t worry though, we are currently searching for alternative methods to bring you all of our patented Clips Without Context! Oh and before we begin too, I want to preface by saying we will *NOT* cover the violent and brutal murder of Tyre Nichols. At least not yet. Because the Top 10 policy has always been that we don’t make fun of stories that are too horrifying to make fun of. So we will refrain at least for the time being. Do we have time for the thing? Well this is something that we may need to further explore in “I Need A Drink” next week. But there’s apparently a new restaurant in Connecticut that is the cause of the latest conservative freak out called “Woke”. Yup, that’s the name, and considering that things being “woke”, whatever that is, is the latest conservative outrage du jour, is totally crazy. I personally blame Fox News for this because they are the ruiner of everything that is good in this world. But come on, Woke is the perfect name for a breakfast place! But even Fox News has completely ruined that word now. Oh come on, people! It’s going to be a long 2 years isn’t it? But this just proves my point that conservatives and Fox News literally ruin everything that they touch. They’re like locusts, or maybe some kind of reverse King Midas. For which I could substitute the Spanish word for shit, Mierdas, and it would be fitting. Rupert Murdoch is King Mierdas! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice one! OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to!But first Stephen Colbert is back with the return of a long favorite Colbert Report segment – The Word is back, kids! Yay!!!!!! So far 2023 is barely a month old and there’s definitely no shortage of MAGA lunatics and conspiracy theorist nutjobs out there. It’s a melting pot of insanity! For that, the number 1 slot this week is going to go to Ron DeSantis (1) who seems hell bent on bringing you the full Fox News anti-“woke” hysteria fearmongering agenda and it’s going to tank the state and probably cost lives! Yeah we can totally thank Rupert Murdoch for this shit! In the second slot is our former vice president and guy who people wanted to publicly execute on January 6th, Mike Pence (2). So once again, Fox News, the source for most of our current misery, had this insane debate about classified documents being found at Biden’s house vs Trump’s Mar-A-Lago, and guess what? They found docs at Pence’s house too! The plot thickens! In the third slot this week is the GOP (3) and we’re going to to talk about the GOP and their increasingly hostile and grossly unconstitutional attacks on the drag community. And these are the same idiots who cry “freedom of speech”. Speaking of drag queens, in the fourth slot this week is our old buddy George Santos (4) who once again proves what a compulsive lying asshole he is and he can’t stop lying! But it’s totally on brand for MAGA! In the number 5 slot this week, we’re going to bring back our segment “Good Guys With Guns” (5) because a 6 year old in Virginia shot and almost murdered his teacher, and the more you dig into this story the weirder it gets, and just shows you how reckless and stupid America’s gun policies have become! In the number 6 slot this week is our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” (6) and this week, speaking of melting pots, our resident pastor is taking a look at the insanity coming from the ReAwaken America tour, which is a melting pot of far right conservative insanity with some insane religious fearmongering. What could go wrong? In the number 7 slot this week is our segment on relentless corporate greed, Late Stage Capitalism (7) and this week we’re taking a look at the battle between Congress and Ticketmaster over the Taylor Swift Eras tour, and Ticketmaster may have fucked with the wrong fan base here! in the number 8 slot this week is a new edition of Conspiracy Corner (8) and this week, did you know that Buffalo Bills linebacker Damar Hamlan died during that Monday Night game and was replaced with a body double? Neither did we, and the Q nuts are turning the crazy way past 11! In the number 9 (NEIN!!) slot this week we have a new edition of “I Need A Drink” (9) and this week we’re taking a look at an incredibly bizarre lawsuit between the hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas and the makers of a toy unicorn that poops. Personally we’re rooting for the Black Eyed Peas in this one! Finally this week it’s stop #2 of 6 on our 2023 World Tour and we’re heading to the land of the 2022 World Cup Champions, Argentina! Plus to close things out, we have live music from one of the hottest bands in rock right now – Bad Omens! Really, buy their new album “The Death Of Peace Of Mind” or you’re no friend of this program. Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! [div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Ron DeSantis [br] [/font] Fox News is like that spoiled toddler that you see in Target who cries at the top of his lungs for his parents to buy him a shiny new toy until they cave in and do. See, since 2020, that network is mad that they lost their plaything – in this case their direct, nightly Batphone to the Trump White House on Sean Hannity’s show, so now they’re just unleashing their inner asshole. They don’t have Trump? Fine, they’ll go to the next most senior man on the list – Ron DeSantis (Q – Florida Man). He speaks Republican and prays to whatever conservatives call “god” these days, so he can do some damage. Well he is doing just that. In fact, what’s happening in Florida is a preview of what Rupert Murdoch’s vision for the United States is – a country that’s just descended to absolute chaos. That’s why the MAGA party has no intention of leading the United States. Their goal is to destroy it from within. Well, here’s a preview of what’s to come, and it’s a mish mash of insane COVID vaccine conspiracy theories, and whatever Fox News calls “woke”. Despite facing pushback from medical professionals and businesses, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced legislation Tuesday that would make permanent a law to penalize companies that require employees to wear masks or be vaccinated for COVID-19 and added a new ban on medical boards reprimanding doctors for spreading COVID misinformation.
“This is just nuts that we’re still doing this,’’ DeSantis said to cheering supporters in Panama City Beach. “We need to be leading on this by making all of these protections permanent in Florida statute as we need to do in the upcoming legislative session.” The proposal will attempt to make permanent a series of laws passed by legislators in November 2021 after DeSantis called a special session aimed at restricting Florida businesses that were following a federal law requiring mask mandates or requiring employees to be vaccinated. If approved by Florida legislators, the measure would continue to prohibit COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements in schools and government, and prohibit COVID-19 vaccine requirements for employment or travel. This year, DeSantis wants to expand the sanctions on businesses by prohibiting employers from hiring or firing based on vaccine status or wearing a mask, and he wants to revive a failed proposal from last year’s legislative session that would make it more difficult for a medical licensing board to reprimand or sanction a doctor for views expressed by the medical professional — including on social media. Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article271286472.html#storylink=cpy 
Yes that is a good question! What could possibly go wrong? Well a hell of a lot! And let’s face it, conservatives decided that COVID was over in July of 2020. Remember when Miami partied while the rest of the world watched in horror? And then Florida was the state with the highest case count in the entire country? That happened. So what else does Ron DeSantis have in store for the people of Florida who inexplicably voted to reelect him? Well for starters he’s going nuclear on Disney’s special district in the state of Florida. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a bill that strips Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) of self-governing authority at its Orlando-area parks in retaliation for its opposition to a new law that limits the teaching of LGBTQ issues in schools.
The Republican-controlled legislature on Thursday approved the bill, which will eliminate the special governing jurisdiction that allows the company to operate Walt Disney World Resort as its own city. Within the 25,000-acre tract, it operates four theme parks, two water parks and 175 miles of roadway. Disney's special status "was really an aberration," DeSantis said at a news conference where he signed the bill into law. "No individual or no company in Florida is treated this way." Disney did not immediately comment on the bill's signing. While the financial impact on the company and the state is uncertain, the change could alter how Disney operates its sprawling Central Florida empire and sour the close relationship it has enjoyed with the state for more than 50 years. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-governor-signs-bill-stripping-disney-self-governing-authority-2022-04-22/
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! I love the South Park Mickey Mouse! But you know what? You don’t go there, Ron. I live 20 minutes from Disneyland. Disney fans are a whole different breed of animal. You don’t fuck with the mouse! It will definitely come back to haunt you! And I’m sure Fox News’ war on Disney has nothing to do with them buying the bulk of Fox Entertainment properties now does it? Yeah probably not. You know what else Ronnie is going nuclear on? Book bans. You know I never in a million years thought I’d be living in 1984, but here we are. This is some straight up Nazi shit and I fear it’s going to get worse. An advocacy group that promotes free expression reports that Florida is among the states with the most book bans.
PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released the report Monday, the start of Banned Books Week. The findings are similar to those released last week by the American Library Association, which said efforts to censor books in the US are on track to surpass last year's count. PEN America notes that Florida has book bans in 21 of the state's school districts involving 566 titles. The majority of banned books contain themes or characters involving the LGBTQ community and people of color. The report also says most of the bans have been pushed by about 50 groups, including Moms for Liberty -- a parental rights group founded in Florida -- and the Florida Citizens Alliance. In St. Lucie County Schools, a complainant submitted official reconsideration challenges for 44 titles from the FLCA’s “Porn in Schools” report. https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2022-09-20/florida-ranks-second-among-states-with-the-most-book-bans-report-finds  ?b64lines=IElUJ1MgQSBQT1JOT0dSQVBIWQogU1RPUkUuIEkgV0FTIEJVWUlORwogUE9STk9HUkFQSFku
Seriously? What’s their definition of porn? What kind of searches are these people putting into Porn Hub that that’s what they’ve come up with? But book bans and vaccine bans are one thing. It’s insane to me that the party that’s bent on banning things and killing you for disagreeing with them are the ones who are most likely to scream “FREEDOM” at the top of their lungs! Because while they’re crying for their freedoms, they secretly want the other thing – fascism and authoritarianism. But leave it to Ron and Fox News to give us their definition of freedom in the 2024 elections. 2024 is going to get very ugly very quickly. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rocketed to Republican stardom thanks to his high-profile battles with the Biden administration, the millions he raised from donors, and his policies in Florida.
Today, he's the only Republican who polls close to former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 nomination race for the White House. After handily winning reelection in November, his work in Florida isn't finished. The next few months of proposing and implementing his agenda are widely viewed in political circles as representative of the issues DeSantis plans to run on if he seeks the GOP nomination. "I think you have seen that over the last four years when we say we are going to get something done, we get it done," DeSantis said during a press conference on January 12. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-desantis-second-term-agenda-2024-presidential-run-2023-1 
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[font size="8"]Mike Pence [br] [/font] [br]
Well the whole classified document debate is the gift that keeps on giving. Yes, I’m sure most people saw the endless debate between Fox and sane, rational people who don’t watch Fox about the classified documents found at Mar-A-Shithole vs the classified documents that were found at Joe Biden’s house in Delaware. Here’s the difference MAGAs – Joe Biden has been complying with the authorities and has actually returned pretty much everything that was found there. Trump on the other hand is like “But I’m the president! Aren’t I entitled to a few souvenirs?”. Sigh… a souvenir isn’t a document that contains highly classified documentation about where America’s nuclear arsenal is. And no, Biden didn’t show his documents to Saudi nationals, either. But now the tables have turned, my friends! Because even more documents were found at the home of former vice president and guy who people wanted to publicly execute on January 6th, Mike Pence. Let’s get the latest, shall we? A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house in Indiana. The classified documents were discovered at the former vice president’s new home in Carmel, Indiana, by a lawyer for Pence in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, the sources said. The discovery comes after Pence has repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession. It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/politics/pence-classified-documents-fbi/index.html
OK, look MAGAs – if you’re going to go there, here’s the thing, just keep this in mind that Joe Biden didn’t hold a golf tournament at his estate with a bunch of foreign nationals representing a nation that’s hostile to the United States! I mean it’s totally insane and it proves once again that Fox News is the reason why we can’t have nice things. This whole debate is the stuff of insanity and the fact that they found documents at Mike Pence’s house just goes to show you that there’s some extremely dark forces out there keeping these psychopaths from getting the justice that they so greatly deserve. But it’s not over yet! The roughly 12 classified documents found at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence included materials described as background briefing memos that were prepared for Pence’s foreign trips, multiple sources told CNN.
One source said some of those classified documents were likely used to prepare Pence for foreign meetings while he was vice president and may have been overlooked during the packing process because they were tucked into old trip binders. According to another source, the classified briefing materials would not have been visible unless the packers went through the binders page by page. It is not unusual for presidents and vice presidents to be given travel briefing binders that include background memos on people they are meeting with in foreign countries. The sources who spoke to CNN said they sometimes include basic biographical information on foreign leaders, but sometimes also include more sensitive information. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/politics/pence-classified-documents-briefing-memos-foreign-trips/index.html 
Yeah so Pence may have had classified information about foreign nationals and Trump may have held secrets about America’s nuclear arsenal. That is truly insane. So of course this is going to change the narrative that you’re going to hear on Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson every night. But again this is the direct result of living in an echo chamber filled with talking heads all saying the same talking points 24 hours a day is that you get a group of people who think they’re entitled to power. And Fox News is basically just putting conspiracy theory idiots on a megaphone and letting them say the dumbest shit possible to half the country. The discovery of classified documents at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home is complicating efforts by congressional Republicans to coordinate their lines of attack on President Biden’s handling of similar materials from his time as second-in-command.
Pence’s team disclosed Tuesday that his attorneys conducted a search of his Indiana home out of an abundance of caution following news that classified documents were found at Biden’s home and a former Washington, D.C., office he used after leaving the White House in 2017. The revelation came just as Republicans in Congress were digging in on Biden, painting the president as careless and possibly jeopardizing sensitive information. But similarities between how Pence and Biden each handled their respective cases, with lawyers quickly notifying the Justice Department and National Archives, could blunt some of those GOP attacks against the White House. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3829022-pence-documents-complicate-gop-attack-lines-on-biden/ 
Yes, shut up Fox talking heads. Because the first rule of debate is that when you’re in a hole, you really need to stop digging! The rest of the world that doesn’t live in Fox MAGA crazy land is onto your evil shenanigans. And here’s the thing, if Trump and the MAGAs are going to weaponize the FBI to fuel their wildest conspiracy theory fantasies, then you should know that two can play at that game! So if you’re trying to nail Joe Biden for something that Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson made up out of thin air with nothing to back it, well, you’re beating the wrong dead horse here. The FBI conducted a "planned search" Wednesday of President Joe Biden's home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, according to Biden's personal lawyer amid an ongoing probe into the potential mishandling of classified documents. Biden's attorney said no documents with classified markings were found, but "DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President." The search took place for three and a half hours -- from 8:30 a.m. to noon ET. "Today, with the President's full support and cooperation, the DOJ is conducting a planned search of his home in Rehoboth, Delaware," wrote Bob Bauer, personal attorney for the president, in a statement after pool reporters spotted four vehicles there. "Under DOJ's standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate. The search today is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today's search." Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-conducting-planned-search-bidens-rehoboth-beach-home/story?id=96817125 
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[font size="8"]The GOP [br] [/font] [br]
Well the GOP is at it again, taking away those freedoms we’ve been fighting for the last 50 years. Sigh, it was a nice country we once had. But it seems that they’re going full Nazi on the LGBT community and especially the T’s. If you think it’s ending at Florida, you are wrong. Because it’s happening all across the country and it’s getting especially scary if you happen to live in a red state, like Texas, Florida, Arkansas, or Ohio. But this is another example of how dangerous echo chamber politics can get. When you live in an echo chamber and you’re fed nothing but hate, lies and bullshit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for over 40 years, these are the kind of things that are going to happen. So let’s start with Arizona who is proposing a law based on an absolutely batshit internet conspiracy theory involving drag queens and children. Look if anything these laws aren’t going to protect kids from anything. If anything these laws are going to have the opposite effect and suppress kids from expressing their true identities and will force them to go into hiding, doing further psychological damage. A pair of Arizona lawmakers have started the state’s 2023 legislative session with bills seeking to set drag shows in the same legal box as strip clubs and adult cabarets.
The bills are among the latest salvo in a nationwide glut of local Republican legislation targeting members of the LGBTQ community. But one organizer of drag shows in Arizona believes that the bills haven’t a snowball’s chance in a Phoenix summer of becoming law, owing to the state’s recently-elected Democratic governor. “The most important thing to realize, with Katie Hobbs as governor, it’s a very different situation with these bills” than if far-right GOP candidate Kari Lake had won, said David Boyles, the president and treasurer of Drag Story Hour Arizona. The organization has partnered with public libraries and businesses across Arizona doing drag story and craft events since 2019. The two drag show bills by State Sen. Anthony Kern seeks to define drag shows as "adult cabaret" performances, and would criminalize holding one in a place where it could be viewed by a minor, and would limit when and where drag shows could occur. They would also grant supervisory boards to create drag show permits and drag performer permits. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/01/14/arizona-legislature-anti-drag-show-bills-lgbtq-rights 
Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Oh if you think that law is bad, it gets worse! And this is why we say that Fox News is increasingly becoming a hostile danger to this country. Because that right wing propaganda shit is powerful stuff. Like most people I’ve lost friends and relatives to the right wing echo chamber. And now the social media conspiracy theory wormhole too. It’s doing some insanely crazy things to people. Well as I said it gets worse. Look at what they’re planning to propose in Oklahoma, and they have a mostly right wing government there too. Oklahoma Republicans are trying to pass legislation aimed at banning drag performances with kids in attendance, according to a bill authored by Republican state Representative Kevin West and introduced to the state House on Thursday.
In the bill, West claims that "drag queens or similar entertainers" are among the categories of artists who take part in "adult cabaret performances," essentially comparing drag artists to topless dancers and strippers. He generally defines drag as "a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup." He goes on to suggest passing a law banning this kind of performance from taking place in a public property or location "where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is a minor." Any person found violating this law, West writes, could be punished with imprisonment for a term no shorter than 30 days and no longer than two years, the payment of a fine of no less than $500 and no more than $20,000, or both. From there, West takes the bill one step further, proposing the approval of legislation banning drag queen story hour events—which he describes as "an event hosted by a drag queen who reads children's books and engages in other learning activities with minor children present"—from being organized or viewed in public, where a child could see them. https://www.newsweek.com/oklahoma-anti-drag-bill-outlaw-feminine-persona-1775277 
Hey MAGA republicans let me spell something out for you: The Handmaid’s Tale is a fucking fictional novel, OK? It is not a blueprint for how to run a free country! Holy shit, they might as well bring back burqas at this point. Then there’s Missouri, which is even worse than Oklahoma. It’s criminally insane how backwards the right wing is taking us, and the attacks on our freedoms seem to be increasing more at a very alarming rate. I really wonder when do we start arresting the MAGA lawmakers for crimes against humanity? Because you know that’s coming. Again, it’s the dangers of living in a country controlled by an increasingly hostile echo chamber. JEFFERSON CITY — Missourians descended Tuesday on the Capitol to speak out against a wave of Republican-backed bills aimed at transgender children and drag shows, what one advocacy group characterized as a “direct hate attack” on the state’s LGBTQ community.
GOP lawmakers placed eight LGBTQ-related bills on the agenda for a Tuesday hearing of the House General Laws Committee. In the Senate, lawmakers considered legislation to keep transgender girls out of girls sports. The timing of the hearings so early in the Legislature’s annual session reflected the priority Missouri Republicans have placed on addressing controversial culture war topics ahead of the next election. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican weighing a bid for governor in 2024, testified in favor of House legislation to ban transgender girls from girls sports, suggesting it was a matter of fairness. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-gop-bills-targeting-transgender-people-and-drag-shows-draw-fire/article_7d0d8304-5afb-5cfe-a1ed-e8c99096de9b.html 
Holy crap this is some next level evil here! The attacks on free speech are increasing, which is completely fucking ironic coming from the party that keeps trying to claim that their free speech rights are being attacked! It’s totally OK if you’re a stochastic terrorist threatening to blow up a hospital or murder doctors based on bullshit internet conspiracy theories, but it’s apparently not OK if you’re a drag performer putting on a show! Thank you audience! The good news though is that these horrifying bills being proposed seem to be backfiring on the MAGA Taliban. Just look at what happened when Arkansas proposed an anti-drag bill. But god the right wing is getting more embarrassing and horrifying by the day. Republicans in Arkansas have been trying to pass a law that would classify any event featuring drag performances as an adult event, but one legal expert thinks their proposal as currently written might not even achieve its intended purpose.
In an interview with Business Insider, UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh argued that the GOP's bill might not even apply to drag shows given how confusingly written it is. At issue, said Volokh, is a clause in the bill that tries to lump drag shows in with events that are of "prurient interest," which he says has a very specific definition that may not apply to all drag events. "It's one of the prongs essentially of the three-prong obscenity test," Volokh told the publication. "And it means a shameful or morbid interest in sex or excretion and sex in the sense of sexual activity... It has to be, essentially in some respect, erotic." https://nordot.app/993523580465414144?c=644607769890374753 
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[font size="8"]George Santos [br] [/font] [br]
Sigh… this George Santos thing is the absolute peak of conservative idiocy. It’s all downhill from here, my friends! It’s also a lesson in why you need to vet your candidates. Because this guy lies so much that it’s like playing a game of Lie-Ception – it’s a lie within a lie within a lie. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! That’s a good one! In fact when trying to come up with a title for this week’s edition, the only thing I could think of was the Phish song “Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S.”, because it would take all of the drugs being consumed at your average Phish concert and then some in order to properly figure out exactly what the fuck is going on here! In fact this is one of those stories that we’ve often said is like peeling an onion – the more layers you peel back, the more it stinks, and the more likely you are to cry as a result of it! So what’s the latest? Well apparently Mr. Santos may have forged a signature on a federal document: With a disclosure filing deadline approaching as questions swirl around his use of campaign funds, embattled Rep. George Santos' campaign appears to be left without a treasurer.
On Wednesday, several fundraising committees associated with the freshman congressman from New York filed amendments to their statements of organizations, notifying the Federal Election Commission of a new treasurer. But the newly listed treasurer, Thomas Datwyler, a veteran campaign finance treasurer who has served on multiple other political organizations, says he does not work for the Santos campaign and that the filings were signed under his name without his consent. "On Monday, we informed the Santos campaign that Mr. Datwyler would not be serving as treasurer," Datwyler's attorney Derek Ross told ABC News. "It appears that there's been a disconnect between that conversation and the filings today, which we did not authorize." https://abcnews.go.com/US/santos-lists-new-treasurer-claims-doesnt-work-congressman/story?id=96675494
Man it seems like there’s no end to the amount of lies coming out of this man. Even worse is that he lied about being a Nazi on social media. You know we’re deeply disturbed here by the rising tide of Nazism and white supremacy in this country and it does seem like it’s going to get worse before it gets better, sadly. But if there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s that a newly elected republican representative is spouting these hateful things on social media. This is fucking scary and an indication of where the GOP is heading if we don’t do something about it now. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) reportedly made “deeply offensive” comments about Adolf Hitler, Blacks and Jews in decade-old posts on social media. The lying lawmaker appears to mock critics of the Nazi leader in a comment on a friend’s 2011 Facebook post of a photo of a military leader with a caption reading “something like Hitler,” the Patch news outlet reported Thursday. “hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhiiiiiiiiiiiitlerrrrrrrrrrr (hight hitler)lolololololololololololol sombody kill her!! the jews and black mostly lolllolol!!! Dum,” Santos wrote in a barely intelligible post. The Anti-Defamation League called the post “deeply offensive,” especially because Santos also falsely claimed Jewish heritage and lied about his grandparents fleeing the Holocaust. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-santos-financial-firm-address-florida-mailbox-store-20230126-7blu7mfulzhqfhaj5qyavkebee-story.html 
Yes, BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! You don’t joke about that kind of thing. Fuck Nazis and white supremacists. But this is the kind of mind that the GOP and especially Trump and the MAGAs attract. He’s a lying asshole with a massive superiority complex and a host of other mental health issues that should probably be diagnosed by now. Because this is truly the stuff of insanity and these MAGA nutcases are like vending machines. You can’t knock them over on the first try. You have to rock it back and forth a few times, then it goes over. The former boyfriend of New York Rep. George Santos says the Long Island Republican facing growing calls to resign for extensively lying about his past will never do so, even as he faces multiple investigations, including into his finances.
“His ego is too big. He’s not gonna resign. If they don’t find out something to get him (to leave) he’s not gonna do it. That’s for sure, knowing the person that he is,” Pedro Vilarva told CNN’s Erin Burnett Thursday on “OutFront.” Vilarva said he met Santos in 2014, when he was 18 years old. Santos was 26 at the time and married to a woman. They moved in together shortly after Vilarva graduated high school. The relationship broke down, Vilarva said, as he became increasingly suspicious of Santos, who repeatedly said he was going to take Vilarva to Hawaii and propose, but never did. Vilarva believes that Santos eventually stole his phone and hawked it for cash. CNN has reached out to Santos’ lawyer for comment on the allegation. Asked if he was surprised that Santos is now a member of Congress, Vilarva said he was not. “What he always looked for was fame and power,” Vilarva said. “That’s all he cared about and he got it.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/politics/george-santos-former-boyfriend/index.html 
And by the way in case you were wondering what a lying shitbag George Santos is – and at this point you’ve probably Googled what a lying shitbag he is, well, the lies just don’t stop. He might be in a competition with Trump and DeSantis over who lies the most in this country. And it’s a lesson in why the people who actively seek out power and fame are the ones that shouldn’t have it, because it will end very badly for them. If the conservative party ever had any balls to stand up to the echo chamber and get rid of this lying shitbag, then well people might actually respect them for that. But no, we’re going to have to find another way to fire this loser. As Rep. George Santos continues to face mounting scrutiny over fabricating large swaths of his biography, multiple men have described to ABC News past relationships with the New York congressman -- some allegedly occurring when they were still teenagers -- that they said turned toxic due to a flood of lies that Santos told to try to manipulate and trap them.
The new allegations come as Santos on Tuesday informed his Republican colleagues at a closed-door conference meeting that he would be recusing himself from committee assignments. Several of the men ABC News spoke with said that they met Santos as young men, when Santos, who later ran for Congress as an openly gay Republican, was several years older than they were. Leandro Bis said he was 19 years old when he met Santos at a bar in Manhattan in 2013, when Bis was in town from Brazil. Bis told ABC News in an interview that he knew the now-embattled congressman as Anthony Zabrovski, one of a handful of aliases that Santos has reportedly used over the years. https://abcnews.go.com/US/promised-green-cards-catfishing-threats-santos-boyfriends-left/story?id=96797395 [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"]Good Guys With Guns [br] [/font] [br]
“No matter what the situation, a guy with a gun is a guy with a gun.” – Michael Weston in Burn Notice Top 10 Conservative Idiots Presents: 
You know, Wayne La Pierre, the president of that most American of institutions known as the National Rifle Association has famously said that “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. But what happens when said bad guy is 6 years old? Yes, that is the conundrum that we’re dealing with. This incident just only goes to show you how completely reckless and stupid America’s “no frills” policy towards guns is. Like 20 years ago this would have been front page news. Hell, we had a gunman shoot up an elementary school and there were extremist fuckheads out there that not only acted like it didn’t happen, they heckled and abused the poor parents out of existence. Now people are just like “eh”, whatever. We’ve become so numb to gun violence that literally you could picture any scenario happening that you could think of and it would barely be a blip on page 4. Which brings us to this bizarre story out of Virginia. You may have heard about the 6 year old who obtained his parents’ gun and nearly murdered his teacher. Well, the more you dig into this story the weirder it gets. A 6-year-old student shot and wounded a Virginia teacher Friday during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom, police and school officials in the city of Newport News said.
No students were injured in the shooting at Richneck Elementary School, police said. The teacher — a woman in her 30s — suffered life-threatening injuries. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew told reporters that her condition had improved somewhat by late afternoon. “We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew told reporters. “We have a situation in one particular location where a gunshot was fired.” He added that the shooting was not an accident. Read more: https://apnews.com/article/newport-news-virginia-88dfe91f65173cbbd198a8816a21b5be
Well you might be asking yourself – how the hell did a 6 year old get a gun? And the answer is easy – ‘Murica! What? Come on, I know what country I live in! But like I said, the more you dig into this story, the weirder it gets. And it’s also a perfect example of how the right wing echo chamber affects everyone around it. Like if the parents listen to Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson for 6 hours a day, don’t be surprised when the kids grow up to be gun toting neo Nazi incels. And of course take it out on the administrators. But you should never, ever question how easy it is to get a gun in this country, because you’d be a fool and a communist if you did. A school board voted Wednesday evening to oust its superintendent, weeks after a 6-year-old allegedly shot a teacher in one of the district’s schools and on the same day that the teacher’s lawyer said school administrators were warned that the child had a gun the day of the shooting.
The Newport News Public Schools school board voted 5-1 in favor of a separation agreement and severance with Superintendent Dr. George Parker III. The teacher’s lawyer alleged earlier Wednesday that school administrators had multiple warnings about the boy the day of the incident. “Over the course of a few hours, three different times – three times – school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at the school and was threatening people,” Diane Toscano, an attorney for the teacher, Abby Zwerner, told reporters in a news conference Wednesday. “But the administration could not be bothered.” Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/25/us/newport-news-virginia-school-board-superintendent-vote/index.html 
Yes, how can that happen? The superintendent’s not the one who brought the gun to school! Of course this will bring about the usual debate of guns vs gun safety, nothing will get done, and our Congressional representatives under the NRA’s payroll will do anything to avoid the actual problem and make things worse, while simultaneously passing laws to make it easier to get guns and enough ammo to take out a small army. So now thanks to ‘Murica’s reckless gun laws, a 6 year old is looking at a life sentence behind bars for attempted murder. Insanity. 'Virginia teacher who was shot by six-year-old tried to confiscate gun – report,' The Guardian, Jan. 9, 2023. - Abby Zwerner, 25, had life-threatening injuries but is now continuing to improve in hospital -
The Virginia school teacher shot by her six-year-old student was injured after she sought to confiscate the weapon from the child who had revealed the gun in class, a parent of another child in the class has said. Brittaney Gregory, whose son is in the same class as the shooter at Richneck elementary school in Newport News, Virginia, detailed her son’s reaction to the shocking scene to the Washington Post newspaper. Gregory said her son told her he that he felt like he couldn’t breathe when the gun was fired. Gregory said the class was reading and about to go to art class when the child pulled a handgun from their backpack and pointed it at his teacher, Abby Zwerner. “She was going to confiscate it, and that’s when he shot,” Gregory told the Post. Gregory described Zwerner as a “sweet lady” and “very attentive”. She said Zwerner was her son’s favorite teacher. Zwerner, 25, had injuries described as life-threatening but she is now continuing to improve in the hospital. She was shot in the abdomen through her hand. After she was shot, the teacher told the other students to run. The students stayed in lockdown in another teacher’s classroom. It is not known how the child came to be in possession of the handgun he used to shoot his teacher. The six-year old remains in custody and Newport News city officials have said it is not likely a child so young can be prosecuted, but his guardian or other adult could face misdemeanor charges if the gun came from the child’s home. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/09/virginia-teacher-shot-newport-news-richneck-elementary-abby-zwerner 
Yeah sure, blame the cigarettes! But ignore the actual problem: it’s the fucking guns!!! Now here’s where it gets weird. Remember what I said earlier about what the parents watching having an effect on the kids? Well guess what? It does! Because how could a 6 year old already be a violent psychopath with abusive behavior red flags? Fox News that’s what. If the GOP is so concerned about the health and well being of kids, they should stop caring less about drag shows and more caring about the violent content that’s appearing on Fox News every night. Because when you are fed hate, lies, and bullshit 24 hours a day, this is what you get. We’re really surprised this doesn’t happen more often in this country. Concerned staff warned administrators at a Virginia elementary school three times that a 6-year-old boy had a gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shot and wounded a teacher, but the administration “was paralyzed by apathy” and didn’t call police, remove the boy from class or lock down the school, the wounded teacher's lawyer said Wednesday.
Diane Toscano, an attorney for Abigail Zwerner, said during a news conference that she has notified the school board in Newport News that the 25-year-old teacher at Richneck Elementary School plans to sue the school district over the Jan. 6 shooting, which left Ms. Zwerner with serious injuries. “On that day, over the course of a few hours, three different times — three times — school administration was warned by concerned teachers and employees that the boy had a gun on him at the school and was threatening people. But the administration could not be bothered,” Ms. Toscano said. She said that Ms. Zwerner first went to an administrator at around 11:15 a.m. on the day of the shooting and said the boy had threatened to beat up another child, but no action was taken. Read more: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2023/01/25/newport-news-virginia-abigail-zwerner-us-shooting-richneck-elementary/stories/202301250086 
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[font size="8"]Holy Shit: ReAwaken America 2023 Tour [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’ve talked a lot on this program the last few months about the rise of religious fascist authoritarianism in the United States. And I don’t need to tell you that if you’re not frightened by the return of Neo Nazis and white supremacists in this country, then you aren’t paying attention! These people claim to worship GAWD and JAYSUS, but they do not! Instead they worship the Unholy, Ungodly Dark One! I of course speak of a man who is so disgusting and appalling that his name dare NOT be spoken in my church! Well there’s a tour going around, you may have heard of it, it’s called the ReAwaken America tour. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s sort of a tent revival sermon that was started as a lockdown protest. Now they protest, well, just about anything and everything. Well, the 2023 edition of the ReAwaken America tour is a melting pot of far right insanity and religious anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and of course those insane idiots who call themselves “prophets”. I mean imagine the balls that it takes to call yourself a “prophet”. Well, it doesn’t take much because there’s apparently a lot of these idiots. A far-right project that has helped spread Donald Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid vaccines, is trying to expand its mission, while facing new criticism from scholars and religious leaders about its incendiary political and Christian nationalist messages.
ReAwaken America, a project of the Oklahoma-based entrepreneur Clay Clark, has hosted numerous revival-style political events across the US after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in initial funds in 2021 from millionaire Patrick Byrne, and become a key vehicle for pushing election denialism and falsehoods about Covid vaccines. ReAwaken America also boasts close ties to retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who in December 2020 met with Trump, Byrne and others at the White House to plot ways to reverse Trump’s election loss. The meeting happened shortly after Trump pardoned Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before serving briefly as Trump’s national security adviser. Clark’s project also has links to Dr Simone Gold, who served a 60-day jail sentence for illegally entering the Capitol on 6 January and founded America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccine group that has also touted bogus cures. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/far-right-project-disinformation-trump-2024-campaign 
These people should feel bad about themselves because they are spreading lies and hate and false information about conspiracy theory nonsense! That’s not what the good LAWRD JAYSUS would have in mind now would it? And now of course we have no doubts that the fiery pit of hell in Miami that is the property of the Dark One would host such an event would they? Well they are, because of course that maniac would! You know if you’re not horrified by the systematic teardown of one of the basic principles that this country was founded on – separation of church and state – as much as we are, then you’re not paying attention! A resort owned by former President Donald Trump is set to host a spring conference led by former national security adviser Michael Flynn and radio personality Clay Clark whose past speakers have echoed false claims about the 2020 election and COVID-19 as Trump launches a third bid for the White House.
The conference, known as the ReAwaken America Tour, had no official lineup of speakers for the May event at Trump's Doral hotel in Miami, but past events have featured speakers who have echoed conspiracy theories that Trump has supported, including Eric Trump, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, and former chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense Kash Patel. Also included previously in the lineups are Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), attendees of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon influencers, and some of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the country. The former president is central to QAnon and its ideology. The conspiracy theory includes the unfounded belief that a cabal of famous Democratic politicians and liberal elites run a child sex trafficking ring, and that Trump will arrange for mass arrests and military tribunals of corrupt politicians, among other outlandish ideas. The FBI has warned that conspiracy theories like QAnon pose a growing domestic terrorism threat. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-resort-in-miami-set-to-host-qanon-conference/
I will repeat this just to reiterate how serious I am about this subject – the merger of church and state is extremely dangerous and Q Anon is playing with fire here. These people are turning into a scary cult and none of this will end well for anyone involved! Phew, now that I got that off my chest, we must move on because that’s what we do. But we can’t deny that this tour is a melting pot of crazies, whackos, and conspiracy theorists. Since the Dark One was elected with the help of a certain politically oriented news network that I shall not name, the church has been hijacked by lunatics and is being driven off a cliff, and it’s truly disheartening to watch. About two hours into the ReAwaken America Tour’s stop in Batavia Friday morning, the crowd of a couple thousand under a large, white revival tent got loud.
They chanted, “now,” as in they want Donald Trump back as president — not in 2024 — but right now. They did so at the urging of Mark Burns, once called “Trump’s top pastor” by Time Magazine. Burns, speaking from the stage, then got the crowd to chant for something else to happen right now. “We need to hold Joe Biden for treason right now,” Burns exclaimed, causing the crowd to chant back “now.” More than 3,500 people from Western New York and across the U.S. heard a mix of pastors, former Trump officials, Jan. 6 participants and vaccine skeptics make false claims about everything from the 2020 election to the COVID-19 pandemic during the far-right roadshow’s two-day stop at Batavia’s Cornerstone Church this past weekend. https://www.wbfo.org/politics/2022-08-14/reawaken-america-tours-batavia-stop-calls-for-overturning-2020-election-new-york-ag-to-repent
Yeah it’s very dirty and sinful, all right! These people are the opposite of everything that is good and decent in this world. Why is that? Well for one thing they support the Unholy Dark One! He is the ruiner of all things that are good and decent in this world! It’s totally scary what the Christian right has become since the Dark One took over. It’s like the church has just unleashed its’ inner asshole and is not coming back to reality any time soon! And by the way for those of you wondering what kind of hateful rhetoric you can expect if you attend this event, well, let’s just say that today’s Christian conservatives are letting their conspiracy theory freak flag fly proudly! Maybe you remember Jim Breuer from his stint on Saturday Night Live.
The “Goat Boy” character had a run. Since then? Well, Breuer never really evolved past “Goat Boy” so he has faded from film and television. He’s still touring doing comedy, though, and there was a time there when he had a few funny jokes. Breuer had a recent standup set for the ReAwaken America Tour. And it’s that set that has gotten the 55-year-old more headlines than he has had in quite a while. How did he manage that? Well, Breuer thought it would be fun to, apparently, mock Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest on the field while making jokes about vaccine shots and boosters. As he was running through his lines, Breuer said, “Here in the NFL,” before face-flopping onto the stage. There is no evidence that a vaccination played any role in Hamlin’s near-death experience. Considering the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety is still struggling to recover and reportedly has a “long-road” ahead of him, it would seem like an odd thing for a crowd at an event that markets itself as being for conservative Christians to laugh at. https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2023/01/reprehensible-jim-breuer-makes-fun-of-damar-hamlins-cardiac-arrest-at-christian-event.html 
Sigh… it’s these people that are the reason why we can’t have nice things. You know with friends like these, who needs enemies? This is definitely going to get worse before it gets better, folks! Just sit back and watch the destruction! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]Late Stage Capitalism: Congress Vs Ticketmaster Vs Taylor Swift Fans [br] [/font] [br]
When mega corporations have nowhere to go but excessive profits and are trying to squeeze out your every last dollar, there’s extreme greed, and then there’s: 
Welcome back to our segment that explores the lifestyles of predatory mega conglomerates, Late Stage Capitalism! It’s not enough to make a $50 billion dollar quarterly profit, you have to make a $75 billion quarterly profit! Sure, layoff a few employees and charge customers more for a subpar product! Well this week, we got flooded with requests to do this one – we have to talk about the Congressional hearings on Ticketmaster for what they did during the Taylor Swift Eras tour fiasco. But before we do let’s wind back to when Pearl Jam sued Ticketmaster back in the 90s for predatory practices and got their asses handed to them. It was a good idea at the time. But now in the post-COVID 2020s, when ticket scalping and reselling is at an all time high, Ticketmaster may have just fucked with the wrong fan base, because let’s face it – hell hath no fury like a Swifty scorn! In mid-November, Swifties looking to secure tickets to the singer’s upcoming Eras Tour were foiled en masse by monopolistic incompetence of Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, which melted down amid the surge in demand. It was a poignant demonstration of monopolism run amok — and of what a mistake it had been for the Obama administration to have greenlighted the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger that effectively ended competition in the ticketing industry.
Politicians dutifully denounced the decrepit company, and Big Tech spied an opening to deflect and distract. The next day, the lobbying firm NetChoice, which represents the Big Tech conglomerates in Washington, urged Congress and antitrust policymakers to focus their attention on Ticketmaster. “Congress and progressives like Amy Klobuchar are spending all this time going after tech leaders including Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple, which are far from monopolies,” NetChoice policy counsel Jennifer Huddleston said in an email November 16 to press and Washington power brokers. “Instead, the government should use existing laws and resources to protect consumers and investigate Ticketmaster’s anti-competitive practices in the concert marketplace.” https://theintercept.com/2023/01/25/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-big-tech-lobby/ 
Come on, Swifties. Take it from PC gamers who know far too much pain since 2018 when it comes to buying a graphics card or high end gaming console – nothing sucks worse than when you have an item in your cart and then it’s gone before you click the “buy” button!. Bot selling is nothing new. It’s been around the last 10 years and it’s been a colossal pain in the ass. But here’s the thing – if Ticketmaster is getting shit for automated bot selling, then why not go after Best Buy, Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, you name it? Everything is highly suspect these days. In November, millions of Taylor Swift fans logged on to Ticketmaster hoping to scoop up tickets to arguably the most-anticipated tour of 2023. When the time came, the site crashed, rendering verified users unable to purchase admission to the singer's first slate of shows in five years. In the immediate aftermath, Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation explained that while 1.5 million people had signed up as legit customers, over 14 million hit the site when tickets went on sale — many of which were bots.
Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold told the Senate Judiciary Comittee on Tuesday that the company "learned valuable lessons" from the Swift debacle. "In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets," he said. Berchtold told Senators that Ticketmaster experienced three times more bot traffic that day than it ever had before, and that a cyberattack on the company's verified fan password servers exacerbated the problem. He explained that despite investing over $1 billion in ticketing systems since the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger, mostly to combat fraud and scalping, the company has a massive bot problem that it can't get a handle on. "We also need to recognize how industrial scalpers breaking the law using bots and cyberattacks to try to unfairly gain tickets contributes to an awful consumer experience," Berchtold said. What he called "industrialized scalping" led to the Taylor Swift fiasco, he explained, but the executive wants Congress to act to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. https://www.engadget.com/ticketmaster-live-nation-senate-judiciary-hearing-195504179.html
You know what, Congress? Here’s the thing – you can’t just go after the bot / minion seller industry, you’re going to have to go to all of them! The scalping industry has evolved far beyond the reach of just concert tickets. Bot and minion sellers are everywhere, and they’re coming for your hard earned dollars, and it’s getting to be ridiculous. Yes, the hearing did focus on the Taylor Swift Eras Tour fiasco, but that wasn’t the only tour being scrutinized in this hearing. The underlying problem is the bot sellers. It’s going to get worse as more big ticket tours are announced. Though today's hearing wasn't solely focused on Taylor Swift, few speakers missed the chance to slip in references to the pop star whose ticket sale disaster offered the catalyst for a congressional inquiry.
Klobuchar opened her remarks with a sly reference to "All Too Well," a fan favorite, at the start of the hearing. But Mike Lee quickly caught up, referencing "You Belong With Me" in his own opening. Lee might have even outnumbered his colleagues, later referring to the idea of limits on ticket transfers as a "nightmare dressed like a daydream." He also ended his closing remarks with a reference to some of Swift's newest work. "I have to throw out, in deference to my daughter Eliza, one more Taylor Swift quote," Lee said. "Karma is a relaxing thought. Aren't you envious for you it's not?" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/ticketmaster-taylor-swift-senate-committee-hearing-live-updates-rcna66687 
Probably the most ridiculous part of this whole hearing was hearing our representatives attempt to quote Taylor Swift lyrics. But Ticketmaster is a perfect example of monopolistic capitalism at its’ finest here. When you see one company holding way too much power over the populace, then it’s definitely time for a change. But the bots may be one of the bigger problems facing the ticket industry, it has a long way to go before things are cleaned up. Bot sellers are everywhere. If Ticketmaster is going to get rid of them, then so do Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Target, Wal-Mart, the list goes on. But it’s also a reason why unregulated capitalism isn’t working and needs some serious reform. It’s a small part of a much bigger picture. The pre-sale for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour imploded in November, when tens of thousands of fans waited unsuccessfully in hours-long Ticketmaster and still failed to secure tickets. Empty-handed super fans were then devastated a second time when, later that week, Ticketmaster cancelled its scheduled public sale for remaining tickets, citing “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
Fans blamed Ticketmaster. Taylor Swift blamed Ticketmaster. Congress blamed Ticketmaster. But Ticketmaster argued the pre-sale blunder was largely due to an unprecedented number of people seeking concert tickets, paired with a never-before-seen onslaught of bots that were attempting to buy up the tickets in order to scalp them. Joe Berchtold, chief financial officer of Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, doubled down on that theory during a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy. Though he expressed remorse for the negative experience fans had and promised Ticketmaster would do better, Berchtold also called on Congress to “recognize how industrial scalpers breaking the law using bots and cyberattacks to try to unfairly gain tickets contributes to an awful consumer experience.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/ticketmaster-taylor-swift-monopoly-senate-hearing/ 
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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner [br] [/font] [br]
Welcome back to our segment where we attempt to explain the unexplainable, Conspiracy Corner! In these trying times, we take a good hard look at the people who are simply too lazy to read the news articles past the sensationalist headlines. We are of course coming to you live from our underground doomsday shelter in the New Mexico badlands! Undisclosed location, of course! Let me just adjust my trust tin foil hat for maximum government interference… they are trying to read yours and my thoughts, after all! Ah, there we go! So this week, the NFL season has come to a close with the Super Bowl being set between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. And I’m sure that everyone watched that Monday Night game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinatti Bengals, right? If you didn’t see it, Damar Hamlin took a blow to the chest and collapsed on the field, and needed to be carried off in a stretcher. Well, the incident brought out the best and worst of humanity. We’re going to talk about the worst for this segment! That’s right, the MAGA conspiracy theorists wasted no time formulating bizarre, off the rails theories about Mr. Hamlin! Anti-vaccine activists who believe without evidence that a Covid vaccine caused Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest this month have pivoted to a new conspiracy theory to explain his swift recovery: that the Buffalo Bills safety has been replaced by a body double.
Though outlandish, the theory has gained enough attention to draw a response from Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who responded on a podcast this week. “That’s stupid,” he said. This most recent conspiracy theory about Hamlin underscores the lengths to which anti-vaccine activists will go to further the false narrative that Covid vaccines cause widespread injury and death, and highlights a widening audience susceptible to even the most absurd misinformation that powers the anti-vaccine movement. Hamlin’s cardiac arrest Jan. 2 following a collision during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals immediately sparked unfounded speculation that the Covid vaccine was to blame, adding to a growing narrative among anti-vaccine voices that many vaccinated people were dying unexpectedly. https://news.yahoo.com/damar-hamlin-recovery-fuels-anti-220524891.html 
You know this is a perfect example of why we need better education in this country. We all know on this program that anti-vaxxers are criminally insane. And just to clarify, we’re not saying that all insane people are anti-vaxxers… oh who am I kidding? That’s exactly what we’re saying. Oh and as you would expect, it gets weirder! Apparently there’s another theory that Mr. Hamlin was replaced with a clone which would suggest that cloning technology exists somewhere, and that’s something *THEY* don’t want you to know about! Among those spreading the rumours was Stew Peters, one of the people behind a documentary called Died Suddenly, an online hit in anti-vaccination circles that includes a number of dubious and false claims.
An account linked to the documentary was among the first to start trying to link Mr Hamlin's injury to vaccines, despite the fact that he had taken a hit to the chest just seconds before collapsing. Mr Hamlin's injury, which resulted in the unprecedented cancellation of a primetime American football matchup between two top teams, was quickly seized upon by anti-vaccination activists to further their cause. Other influential accounts spreading the most recent rumours include a former reporter for fringe right-wing news outlets and Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who once accused Bill Clinton of rape and later became a supporter of Donald Trump. In a tweet viewed more than 2.7m times, she declared: "Everyone thinks Damar Hamlin is dead... the whole thing smells." She did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Mr Peters. Conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, author of a book on the QAnon phenomenon, said some of those spreading the rumours had financial motives - promoting their websites, books, podcasts and unproven cures. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64404824
Somehow I don’t think that tin foil hat is big enough! But really, right wing conspiracy theorists are the reason why we can’t have nice things. You know this, you all know this! Though it does give us enough cannon fodder to keep this segment going! But it’s insane in this day and age that these conspiracy theories just keep getting weirder and weirder. But the thing about this story just proves what I’ve been saying from the beginning is that anti-vaxxers and internet conspiracy theorists ruin everything. The Damar Hamlin situation could have been much worse, but you got to credit the doctors who saved his life. Not everything is a conspiracy, OK? Did you do a double take when you saw Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin trending again on social media on Tuesday? After all, Hamlin, who had suffered a cardiac arrest during a January 2 Monday Night Football game, has seemed to be on the road to recovery. He’s already left the hospital and was even seen attending the Bills playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday, right? Well, there are now claims that the person who appeared at that game wasn’t even Hamlin. Instead, it was, drum roll please, a body double. Yes, a body double.
Talk about doubling down on conspiracy theories. Soon after Hamlin had collapsed on the football field, anti-vaccination accounts on social media had started asserting that the Covid-19 vaccine had somehow led to his cardiac arrest. That’s despite the fact that such accounts offered no real evidence to support such a theory, as I explained for Forbes back then. And now, the latest anti-vaccination conspiracy theory around Hamlin is that “they”—whoever “they” may be— have found a body double for Hamlin to conceal the so-called true nature of what had happened to him. As you can see, she first noted, “Oh, Damar Hamlin is trending. Maybe there’s some health update.” Then she indicated, “Oh…it’s paidchecks tweeting ab how he’s actually dead, there’s a ‘body double’ & his fam is ‘in on it.’” By “paidchecks” she was referring to the Twitter accounts that had managed to find $8 to pay Elon Musk and Twitter in order to get those no longer so-coveted blue verified check marks. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2023/01/25/new-conspiracy-theory-damar-hamlin-has-a-body-double-hiding-vaccine-injury/?sh=3d79386b6937 
Of course Elon has to ruin everything too! I mean come on, Twitter used to verify users through a huge vetting process. We here at the Top 10 know that because we had been trying for years to get a blue check mark, but we never did! Yeah suck it, Twitter! But yeah the one thing we can definitely count on in modern society is that we’ll never get rid of disinformation. The truth is…. not out there! Yes, that’s because real information is hidden behind a paywall. Bullshit is free, readily available, and there’s many forms of it available for your consumption. The Damar Hamlin controversy is just another reason why we can’t have nice things. Last week more than 23 million people tuned in to watch the Buffalo Bills play the Cincinnati Bengals and instead became witness to a terrifying, life-or-death emergency as safety Damar Hamlin collapsed suddenly on the field. His teammates knelt in prayer while medical staff fought for his life. (According to doctors, Hamlin is "doing well" and was released from a hospital in Cincinnati and returned to Buffalo on Monday, where he is now in stable condition.)
But on the internet, anti-vaccine activists filled in the silence with unfounded theories that Hamlin's collapse was brought on by COVID vaccines. "The term is a data void," said Kolina Koltai, a misinformation and social media researcher who until very recently, worked for Twitter. She too was watching the game and immediately braced herself for incoming anti-vaccine narratives. "We've seen this trope applied over and over again, not just to athletes, but any sort of celebrity malady," said Koltai. https://www.npr.org/2023/01/10/1147969504/how-damar-hamlins-collapse-fueled-anti-vaccine-conspiracy-theories
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[font size="8"]I Need A Drink [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink!
So of course you know the idea behind this segment is that we have some drinks and while we’re drinking, we talk about anything in the news as long as it doesn’t relate to politics! Because there’s a lot of dark shit in the news and we want to escape reality by cracking open a cold one or two. This week we’re going to be talking about lawsuits. Specifically, lawsuits involving pooping unicorns. Yes, that is a sentence I never thought I would have to write or say! So tell me, bartender, what goes well with a story about pooping unicorns? A unicorn daiquiri? What’s in that? No thanks. I’ll just stick to my usual Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels. I call it the Double Jack. But anyway this story concerning the hip hop collective Black Eyed Peas and the makers of a toy unicorn that poops, is quite possibly one of the more insane things to happen this decade. And like most stories that we feature here, the more you dig into it, the weirder it gets. In what’s an early frontrunner for the silliest lawsuit of 2023, music giant BMG has sued a toymaker alleging that a parody song based on the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” — titled “My Poops,” and used in the marketing for a line of slime-shitting unicorns — infringes on the copyright of the 2006 hit.
BMG Rights Management filed the lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, claiming that MGA Entertainment, the makers of the Poopsie Slime Surprise toys, displayed “willful copyright infringement” and “exploited, without authorization” when the toy company turned “My Humps” into “My Poops” to advertise their product line over two years ago. “My Humps,” as the lawsuit obtained by Rolling Stone notes, “won Best Hip Hop Video at the 2006 MTV Video Music Award,” and coupling that with its 700 million views on YouTube and hit single status, the defendants “clearly had access” to the song. Following the release of “My Humps,” BMG alleges that the toymaker “created a product line called Poopsie Slime Surprise,” which featured “a unicorn doll that excretes sparkling slime.” To promote that product, “Defendant created a song called My Poops that clearly copies from, and is substantially similar to, My Humps,” the lawsuit states while asserting comparisons between the two songs’ lyrics, bass line, and the Fergie-like inflection in which “My Poops” is delivered. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bmg-lawsuit-toymaker-black-eyed-peas-my-humps-my-poops-1234664931/
OK… OK… OK… OK. Somehow, I don’t think that bottle is going to be big enough. Come on, bartender, keep ‘em coming! I have many questions here. First of all, who the hell thinks playing with poop is even slightly funny? There’s only one place poop belongs and that’s in the toilet. It does not belong anywhere else, and the fact that this is marketed to kids to me is far more disturbing than drag queen story hour any day of the week. Just… no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Hell no. No. And come on, we’re siding with the Black Eyed Peas on this one. Singer-songwriter Anjulie claims she was never paid for singing some of Fergie's parts for the Black Eyed Peas.
Anjulie dropped the allegations in a TikTok, claiming she sang all the background vocals on 2010 track "The Time," as well as lead vocals on "XOXOXO." She claims will.i.am told her the vocals she recorded would be used as guide vocals for Fergie to "recreate," but that they used Anjulie's vocals instead on the final track, with no credit or payment. The singer alleges she was never paid or credited for any of her work with the band. In a follow-up video, Anjulie claimed she attempted to take legal action, but that it was ultimately too pricey. "I tried. I got in touch with will.i.am's lawyer. I had a bunch of e-mail exchanges with him, and then he told me it was out of his hands," Ajulie said. Read More: Singer Claims She Was Never Paid for Singing for Black Eyed Peas | https://popcrush.com/anjulie-claims-black-eyed-peas-never-paid-fergie-singing-parts/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral 
So… really? That’s the reason why this lawsuit has taken so long? Are you going to go through with it or are you going to cave in? Personally I’m not just mortified that a toy called “Poopsie Slime Surprise” exists, I’d also be terrified that they were using my property without my permission. Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… very funny, smart guy! But this is the kind of thing that is completely insane and we’re absolutely here for it! And by the way this isn’t the first time that MGA Entertainment, the makers of Poopsie Slime Surprise have been involved in a ridiculous lawsuit. They also attempted to sue Louis Vitton over a handbag design that backfired on them spectacularly. MGA Entertainment — the company behind holiday toy sensation the Poopsie Slime Surprise Unicorn — has filed a preemptive lawsuit against luxury designer Louis Vuitton.
Poopsie, a wide-eyed unicorn who slides out a pile of glittery slime at the press of a button, has a number of accessories, sold separately. Among them is a $60 poop-shaped purse, filled with additional slime-making tools, with the cheeky name “Pooey Puitton.” The Pooey Puitton handbag is white with small pastel-colored designs that resemble a recognizable colorway of Louis Vuitton’s famous Tuileries monogram pattern. Vuitton has been trying to block production of MGA’s tongue-in-cheek product since early last month, according to a post on the respected blog the Fashion Law. MGA Entertainment’s suit is an attempt to block any official claims of trademark infringement. In it, the California toymaker defends its purse as parody and says that “no reasonable customer would mistake the Pooey product for a Louis Vuitton handbag” (as Julie Zerbo of Fashion Law explains, the potential to confuse one product for another is critical in any trademark case). https://nypost.com/2019/01/02/poopsie-unicorn-is-taking-louis-vuitton-to-court/ 
So MGA Entertainment is an already shady company to begin with. I mean come on, you manufacture a pooping unicorn doll. Not reinventing the wheel. But the fact that this company has a history of doing some shady shit is definitely someone who you don’t want showing up on your radar. Especially when they don’t respond for comment. Maybe because this is way too ridiculous? I mean come on, 2023 is barely a month old and already you’ve won the dumbest lawsuit of the year. But a company that’s been accused of ripping off songs against a band that’s been accused of ripping off songs? That’s a fight where there’s not enough popcorn and beer in the world to justify watching! But one thing’s for certain - dis gonna be good! The company could argue that “My Poops” is a parody of “My Humps,” and is thus protected as “fair use.” In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music in 1994, the Supreme Court held that parody can be a form of “comment” or “criticism” on the original work, which is protected by the Copyright Act of 1976.
But that does not mean that the toymaker is automatically in the clear. Judges look at “fair use” claims on a case-by-case basis, applying a four-factor analysis. At its heart is the question of whether the new work is transformative of the original, or whether it simply copies the original and substitutes for it in the marketplace. Berman is no stranger to such analyses. A few years ago, he represented the estate of the Notorious B.I.G. in a copyright lawsuit. A poet, Abiodun Oyewole, alleged that Biggie stole a three-word phrase, “Party and Bullshit,” from a 1968 poem entitled “When the Revolution Comes.” Berman argued that it was fair use, and prevailed. https://variety.com/2023/music/news/black-eyed-peas-my-humps-poopsie-slime-surprise-1235496721/ 
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[font size="8"]World Tour 2023 Destination #2 of 6 - Argentina [br] [/font] [br]
Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:
[font size="4"]Destination #2: Argentina [/font] 
Folks we’re back in Argentina! It’s capitol is Buenos Aires. It’s president is Alberto Fernandes. The country is home to some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire world including the Andes Mountains and some real live glaciers. It’s favorite food is a caramel sauce known as dulce du leche, which they put on everything. OK maybe not everything. It’s also the home of the infamous chain of islands known as Tierra Del Fuego. We last visited Argentina back on our first World Tour in 2017 in Edition #3.14. So what’s changed since then? Well Argentina knocked France out of the World Cup in what might be one of the best games ever. Argentina is also the home of the Falkland Islands which has been at the dispute of a border war with Brazil the last 30 years and not a whole lot has really changed. Falkland Islands leaders have accused Argentina of “unprovoked and open hostility” towards the people of the remote archipelago after Buenos Aires blocked plans to resume direct weekly flights from Brazil. The Falkland Islands Government has been trying to reestablish the airlink, suspended since March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Officials had been hoping to repeat the success they had with similar weekly flights from Chile, which resumed in July 2022. Any discussions relating to connectivity between the Falkland Islands and South America require discussions with the Falkland Islands Government, the UK Government and the Government of Argentina, led by President Alberto Fernandez. Talks in relation to the Brazil flights have been ongoing since the start of last year, but despite multiple meetings being agreed upon between the various parties, all were either cancelled or postponed by Argentina. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1728660/falkland-islands-argentina-flights-from-brazil-blocked-chile Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! There really is a Simpsons clip for everything! But you know what we say about when nations like each other, they’ll help each other out, right? Well now that Brazil has given fascist Jair Bolsonaro the heave ho that he so rightfully deserves, Lulu DeSilva and Alberto Fernandez have begun work on what they say is a “universal currency”. Well, they tried that with crypto and we’re finding out now just what a colossal failure that bitcoins, especially Ehterum, has been the colossal scam that we all knew it was. If they can make it work more power to them! Argentina and Brazil, the two largest economies in South America, are in early talks to create a common currency, as part of a coordinated bid to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar.
But some analysts are highly skeptical, dismissing the proposal as “pie in the sky” because of the discrepancies between the two economies and the rapid shift of political winds in the region. “Our finance ministers, each with his own economic team, can make us a proposal for foreign trade and transactions between the two countries that is done in a common currency,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday at a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, according to Reuters. Speaking on his first international visit since taking office, Lula said that the currency would initially be designed for trade and transactions between Brazil and Argentina. It could later be adopted by fellow members of Mercosur — South America??s major trade bloc. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/24/argentina-and-brazil-are-discussing-plans-for-a-common-currency.html
So that begs the question – if Argentina’s currency is tanking so much that they need to partner with a much wealthier nation, then what do they do with the currency that’s piling up? Well that’s a good question because there’s a solution. You turn them into works of art! That’s right – one Argentinian artist has a brilliant solution to turn Argentina’s bills that are piling up into actual works of art. So yeah that’s a pretty cool idea coming from something that’s a potential crisis. But why can’t this be real money? It should be! An Argentinian artist is combating his country’s ongoing inflation crisis by selling miniature paintings on depreciated banknotes.
Sergio Guillermo Diaz, a painter and museum worker from the northern province of Salta, has been raising the value of increasingly valueless currency to support his family. From two-peso bills to 1,000-peso notes — which are now worth about $5 — Diaz renders pop culture icons and historic artworks directly on their facades, often combining bills to develop larger compositions. One of Diaz’s larger pieces stacks two 200-peso notes atop a single United States dollar to recreate the poster from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, alluding to Argentina’s dependence on the dollar. Others show popular sports scenes, such as soccer star Lionel Messi lifting the World Cup and Muhammad Ali standing over a defeated Sonny Liston, referencing competition between Global South countries. An ongoing project since 2017, Diaz’s banknote paintings cleverly intersect income inequality at home with free-market capitalism. He previously worked in black and white but says the birth of his daughter, as well as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, gave him the time and inspiration to raise more awareness in color. https://hyperallergic.com/792675/argentine-artist-sergio-guillermo-diaz-making-paintings-on-devalued-currency/
Oh and speaking of gross financial fuck ups, one thing we learned about the World Cup this year is that Argentina loves them some soccer, or as they call it there, futbol. And the stories that were coming out of Buenos Aires were wild. And come on, leave it to FIFA to literally rain on one’s parade. Because the guys at the top can ruin it for everyone else. Well, if you plan to celebrate your World Cup victory, maybe do so on a much smaller scale. But really, FIFA, here’s the thing you need to know – and it’s the same saying in dorm rooms and frat houses everywhere – is that you can retake a test, but you can’t relive a party! FIFA opened a disciplinary case against the Argentine Football Association on Friday for alleged offensive player misconduct and violations of fair play at the World Cup final.
FIFA cited its media and marketing regulations for prosecuting the case, which appears to relate to a boisterous celebration by players running through the interview zone after the game on Dec. 18. Argentina beat France in a penalty shootout after a thrilling 3-3 draw at Lusail Stadium in Qatar. About three hours later, players led by captain Lionel Messi ran and sang through the official interview area and damaged flimsy partition walls without stopping to speak to international broadcast and print media. The disciplinary charges that include “offensive behavior and violations of the principles of fair play” did not specify Emiliano Martinez, who crudely brandished the trophy he received on the field as the best goalkeeper at the World Cup. FIFA gave no timetable for the Argentina disciplinary case. https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-sports-argentina-national-soccer-team-lionel-messi-e883d73df7cec8f102f60fe95dde5e92 
[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font] Tourism: B+ Culture: B+ Political Spectrum: C Liberal Appeal: B- Overall: B Change from 2017: No change [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] Next week on stop #3 of 6 on our World Tour we’re heading to Germany’s next door neighbors, Poland! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]Bad Omens[/font] 
Folks my next guest are one of the hottest bands in rock music! Their new album is called “The Death Of Peace Of Mind”. You can see them at the Sonic Temple festival in Columbus, Ohio on May 19th. Playing their song “Concrete Jungle”, give it up for Bad Omens! Thank you New York! This was a lot of fun! It’s great to be back on the east coast! We’re off to Philadelphia, the PHL next! See you next week!
Credits Host: Initech Bad Omens Appear Courtesy Of: BMG Rights Management Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Grammercy Theater, New York City, NY Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Twitter at: @10Idiots Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Twitter: @churchoftop10 Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Feb 2, 2023, 06:00 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-1: Meet The Old Boss, Same As The Old Boss Edition
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots #14-1: Meet The Old Boss, Same As The Old Boss Edition Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! YOOOOOOOOO!!!! What’s up Santa Ana? We are back! We are baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! We are back! And whew, does it feel like an eternity since we last left you guys back in December, doesn’t it? And has Kevin McCarthy broken the House beyond repair yet? And has Ron DeSantis killed of most of his voters yet? No? Damn, I lost the office pool. You need to bet higher, not lower! But damn, we missed a metric fuck ton of conservative idiocy bordering on light terrorism with a side of treason. Served with a side of some garlic MAGA confit. Yeah we’re getting gourmet up in this piece! So how’s everybody doing? It’s good to be back and to be back home too! We’re heading to the East Coast next week for a brief tour before our big shindig in France in March. In case you didn’t notice, we are going to France for the 300th edition of the Top 10. Trust me we’re beyond excited for this! Plus we’ve also got the return of our popular long running Stupidest State contest! March 9th, it will be time to fill out those brackets! Do we have time for the thing? Of course we do! It’s my program! So it’s January and it’s awards season. A lot of people are wondering how the Oscars are going to handle last year’s Will Smith debacle, and you know what? Most of us have moved on from that and Mr. Smith got pretty much what he deserved from it. I’m more interested in the anti-Oscars – the Razzie Awards! Yes, the Razzie Awards were announced this week and it’s got some good or bad ones in it! No surprise that Machine Gun Kelly and Jared Leto’s Morbius both got deservedly raked over the coals for their terrible movies. Though one huge snub is that Jurassic World: Dominion should have been nominated for Worst Picture, though it did get Worst Remake / Ripoff or Sequel and that will probably take that category! Yes, I like those odds! Though my favorite nominee has to be Worst Couple and “Tom Hanks and his Latex Laden Face, Elvis”. I didn’t think the Elvis movie was bad, but that character was certainly ridiculous! Uh huh… guess you could say it’s all shook up? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to, but first Stephen Colbert is back and he talks about the latest round of Proud Boys that are going to jail: So where do we begin this week for our season premiere? Well as usual whenever the Top 10 is on an extended break, we like to play Catch Up On Stuff We Missed and holy crap did we miss a lot of stuff since we’ve been gone. So much that it’s taking up the first 3 slots this week! The first slot this week is obviously going to Kevin McCarthy (1) and his utterly epic fail attempting to unite the conservative party with the batshit MAGA wing of the GOP in his quest to become Speaker Of The House. In the second slot, just as we were going to air with our 2022 Year In Review edition, we missed Trump’s (2) epic fail of a ”BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!” which turned out to be some stupid, useless NFT trading cards with his picture on various poorly photoshopped images. In the third slot, we are playing catch up on some miscellaneous conservative shenanigans (3) and we missed a hell of a lot of crazy in the last two months! In the fourth slot this week, we got to check in with our friends in Brazil (4) because it’s really the same MAGAs but in a different country, and Trump and Steve Bannon may or may not be hiding former president Jair Bolsonaro. It’s quite the clusterfuck bordering on international incident! Taking the number 5 seed this week is a new We’re All Gonna Die (5) and the latest software update to the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the XBB1.5 subvariant, is the latest variant that could probably kill us all. Or will it? There’s only one way to find out! Taking the 6th slot this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” – and what’s the link between the January 6th participants and Jesus? Our resident pastor is going to do some investigative journalism and find out what he thinks the link might be! Taking the 7th slot this week is a new edition of “Beating A Dead Horse” (7) and has your Fox loving neighbor been going on a tirade against a new M&Ms commercial? Well we think it might be because Tucker Carlson has a crush on the green M&M. Dude, just admit that the green M&M is hot and get it over with already! In the number 8 slot this week, is a new edition of Conspiracy Corner (8)! You may have heard about Brooklyn’s newest representative George Santos (Q – Batshit) but the more you dig into who funded him, the weirder it gets! We think Putin may be behind this but we can’t quite put our finger on! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new People Are Dumb (9) because of course they are! Finally this week it’s time for the first stop of World Tour 2023 and we’re visiting the home of the Lord Of The Rings movies, New Zealand! Plus to close things out, we’ve got the legendary Greta Van Fleet joining us! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key! [div style="padding: 20px; background-color: #ffffff; border-radius: 10px; box-shadow: 0px 2px 4px 1px #aaa;"][div style="font-family: arial, helvetica; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999; padding-bottom: 8px;"]
[font size="8"]Catch Up On Stuff We Missed: The Kevin McCarthy SNAFU [br] [/font] So as usual whenever the Top 10 is off for an extended period of time, we like to play Catch Up On Stuff We Missed. And man when we ended the season last year, we had no idea that we would hit peak conservative idiocy! That’s right, kids, and adults, it’s all downhill from here! We lost a great leader with Nancy Pelosi leading, and we’re unfortunately stuck with Kevin McCarthy (Q – Batshit). And as was predicted, the inmates have been not only let out of the asylum, they’re currently manning the control tower. What could possibly go wrong? And in typical cliffhanger fashion, we’re saving that for next week’s edition! Yes, we’re leaving you hanging while we’re heading to New York! But we can’t deny what a truly spectacular and colossally epic fail his quest to become Speaker Of The House has been, and I just am totally done with these lunatics. I don’t know how much more of this shit this country can take. Fuck Fox News. Republican Kevin McCarthy is the new House speaker, but as bruising as it was for him to seize the gavel in a history-making election, it may be even more difficult for the embattled leader to do much with the powerful position — or to even keep it.
Like the two most recent Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy takes the helm of a restive, rebellious majority split in much the same way as the party itself, between what’s left of the Grand Old Party conservatives and a new generation of tea party-to-Donald Trump hard-liners preferring almost no big government at all. The chaos that erupted in four days of House voting, halting start of the new Congress, is a prelude to the highly uncertain path ahead as McCarthy tries to lead an unruly Republican majority to achieve its priorities and confront President Joe Biden’s agenda — and maybe even keep the government from shutting down. “This is the great part: Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern,” McCarthy, who was first elected in 2006, suggested as he rounded toward victory. https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-house-of-representatives-kevin-mccarthy-government-e986c620149b72030bb418bd5fadb4a2 
Yeah no, Kevin, you’re a loser, get over yourself. He’s not really the new boss, he’s more like the new old boss. He’s just the old boss. You know, in the immortal words of The Who – meet the old boss, same as the old boss! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice one! Nobody wants this group of lunatics to take over the House, they barely won as it is. And of course the usual group of MAGA insane asylum inmates – you know, Greene, Gosar, Boebert, Gaetz, Hageman, and so on are letting their conspiracy theory freak flag fly! These idiots want to run the country? I wouldn’t trust them to run a convenience store! Oh and speaking of convenience, guess who’s conveniently taking credit for McCarthy’s win? That’s right, that guy who we inexplicably used to call president. Because he always has to make everything about himself like the perverted sociopath that he is. Donald Trump previously urged House Republicans to stand behind McCarthy or risk having a far worse speaker.
After earlier appearing to back away from Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House, Donald Trump was taking credit Saturday for the California Republican’s hard-fought victory. Trump, who recently said, “let’s see what happens” as McCarthy lost vote after humiliating vote, took credit for “greatly help[ing] McCarthy attain the position of Speaker of the House.” Trump preened on Truth Social: “Thank you, I did the Country a big favor!” He even claimed the “fake news” was “very gracious” in reporting his crucial help. He posted stories from Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and far-right media noting that McCarthy thanked Trump for his support after finally pulling off a win late Friday following a record 15 votes. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-takes-bow-kevin-mccarthys-234347443.html 
Yeah no Trump, stop talking now! Nobody cares about your bullshit. But one thing we definitely can’t deny is that this latest mess in the House is all feces that was left behind from his administration. Of course that’s what happens when you court poorly educated dolts who wouldn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground they blew up yesterday. But here’s the thing – voting to “make the other side cry” not only is an absolutely terrible policy, but it’s going to backfire on you in the most hilariously spectacular ways possible. Despite his best efforts, the leopards have finally come for Kevin McCarthy’s face. For those not extremely online, I’m referring to a 2015 tweet from YA novelist Adrian Bott: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
It’s nearly eight years later and McCarthy is learning this lesson the hard way, as his quixotic quest for the Speakership, which spanned most of that time, is falling apart on C-SPAN. Rumors of an affair (which McCarthy denied) might have derailed McCarthy from taking over the gavel from John Boehner in 2015. And again, in 2018, when McCarthy was set up to be Speaker, Republicans lost the House. Now finally, Republicans have a razor-thin majority, but their party is too dysfunctional to govern. McCarthy is finding it impossible to stop a brakeless freight train driven by morons, making a mess of the 118th Congress before members are even sworn in. How Republicans in Congress unraveled isn’t a mystery. There’s a straight line from Newt Gingrich to the Tea Party to Donald Trump to a Colorado congresswoman named Lauren Boebert saying she wants a “single-member motion to vacate.” Such a motion would mean that any member of the House, at any time, could call a new Speaker election. In other words: The Speakership would be held hostage by whichever congressperson was feeling craziest that day. McCarthy has already agreed to a five-member threshold for a motion to vacate, which means that five members can get together and throw sand in the gears whenever they want. Not exactly a recipe for legislative success. On Tuesday morning, McCarthy must’ve woken up convinced that he could wear down his fellow Republicans by just holding the vote again and again to get to the 218 votes needed in a quorum of 434. McCarthy lost the first vote, and the second, and the third. Meanwhile, every Democrat voted for Hakeem Jeffries, giving the New York congressman a higher tally than McCarthy, albeit short of 218. Not only were Democrats unified, but they busted out the popcorn to enjoy watching the car crash across the aisle. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-vote-gop-trumpism
Good god these are some stupid ass people in the right wing. Of course that’s what happens when your brain is turned to mush by a constant, non stop barrage of 24 hour a day extremist propaganda. So now that this whole speaker mess is over with, what’s on the agenda for the new MAGA / America First controlled House? Why as I said earlier, the lunatic wing of the GOP is letting their conspiracy theory freak flag fly. And with Kevin McCarthy, you can bet that he’ll impose an agenda drafted by Fox, and attack everything that’s considered “woke”. Just… argh, the stupid… AHHHH!!!! Newly elected U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took the gavel of the chamber after a bruising weeklong battle within his own party, promising to carry out a conservative, America-first agenda, tackling the immigration crisis at the Mexican border, cutting back funding at the IRS and fixing “woke indoctrination in our schools.”
After 14 failed votes since Tuesday, the California Republican was able to overcome opposition after making extraordinary concessions to a small bloc of far-right holdouts who refused to support his speaker bid. McCarthy laid out an ambitious plan in addressing the 118th congressional session early Saturday morning, saying he wants to “be the check and provide some balance” to President Joe Biden’s policies. He said the first legislation he plans to tackle will repeal funding for more than 87,000 new IRS agents. He highlighted immigration reform as a top priority, saying the Republican-controlled House will hold some of its first hearings of the year at the Southern border. “No more ignoring this crisis of safety and sovereignty,” he said. “We must secure our border.” https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/07/us-house-speaker-kevin-mccarthy-pledges-to-tackle-immigration-woke-education-policies-and-irs-funding.html 
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[font size="8"]Catch Up On Stuff We Missed Pt 2: Trump’s NFT Collection   [br] [/font] [br]
We’re approaching nearly 300 editions of the Top 10 and that might be the first time I’ve ever used the Plagiarism icon. But we got to talk about it, because we got absolutely flooded with requests to talk about this topic, so we can’t ignore it! Got to give the audience what they want! So, as we were finalizing our season finale, the 2022 Year In Review Edition, Trump was breaking right wing social media with his announcement that there was a “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!” coming. Many were speculating that he was going to be naming his 2024 VP pick, for which Marjorie Greene and Kari Lake were both getting their prime ass kissing lips ready for. But nope. In fact nobody was expecting this. Trump announced his own line of collectible, randomly assigned NFT trading cards. Yes, NFTs. Which are basically everything you don’t know about art combined with everything you don’t know about finance. And it was in typical Trump fashion, truly the stuff of insanity! Former President Trump’s digital trading cards have sold out less than 24 hours after he first announced they were available.
As of Friday morning, the site selling the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) says they are sold out, and links to purchase the digital cards are no longer available. OpenSea Data, which tracks the sales and markets for NFTs, indicated there were 45,000 of the Trump cards initially made available for purchase for $99 each. The Trump digital cards were the top trending item on the site as of Friday morning. Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday that he would be making a “major announcement” without providing any details. Some had speculated the announcement would be related to the Speaker race playing out among House Republicans or Trump’s largely inactive 2024 presidential campaign. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3777969-trumps-digital-cards-sell-out-within-a-day/ 
You know, say what you want about the MAGAs, but one thing that we have learned and seen in the years that we’ve been doing this program, is that they spend a lot of money on a lot of ridiculously stupid shit! But never in a million years did I ever think they would spend $99 for a JPG image of him as an astronaut or a wild west sheriff in made up cryptocurrency money. And here’s the thing that I’ve been learning about crypto currency – the whole fucking thing was made up! So yeah they can control the value of these NFTs, and my favorite thing was that Trump included a clause that if you resold NFTs, he got a cut of the profits! You can’t make up what a cheap asshole he is! But look at the fabulous prizes you can win! According to data from NFT marketplace OpenSea, the same wallet that sold the original NFTs is minting tokens that serve as access passes to the sweepstakes prizes touted during the launch of the Trump Digital Trading Card collection in December.
The tokens feature images of Trump holding a sign resembling a ticket, listing the prizes promoted during the original mint. These include a group Zoom call, a gala dinner and a hardcover copy of his book “Our Journey Together.” The collection now has a trading volume of 35 ETH, or about $48,500, and a floor price of 0.021 ETH, or nearly $30. Where the tokens in the original mint cost $99 to mint and enter the sweepstakes, the new token prices range depending on the rarity of the experience. While the group Zoom call costs 0.03 ETH, or $40 to access, a one-on-one meeting with the 45th president is listed at 200 ETH, or about $278,000. According to the official sweepstakes rules, the average retail value of the one-on-one meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago is “$0/Priceless.” The original collection has seen a dramatic drop in trading volume since it launched, with a current floor price of 0.17 ETH (about $235) and an almost 99% drop in trading volume since its peak, according to data from CryptoSlam. https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/01/12/trump-digital-trading-card-project-mints-nfts-for-winners-of-prizes/ 
See here’s the thing MAGAs, we’re not “owned” and you’re not making us “cry”. If anything we’re laughing at how stupid and ridiculous you are. You’re the ones who bought Trump NFTs based on imaginary made up money that was proven to be a ponzi scheme and you’re the ones who got owned in this. I mean come on, Trump’s too cheap to even hold the grand prize in Mar-A-Shithole! And did you really think you were getting a 5 star gourmet meal? No! You’ll probably get Big Macs that were left under a heat lamp for 2 hours or maybe a well done steak slathered in ketchup. If you’re lucky. And you’ll also be on the hook for your own travel expenses. Some prize. Buyers of newly released NFTs featuring former President Donald Trump will be entered to win a 20-minute meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago, but winners will have to cover their own travel and lodging expenses, according to the project's website.
Trump announced the digital trading cards — which feature images of the former president as a superhero, an astronaut, and a Top Gun-style pilot, among others — on Thursday after hyping up a "major announcement" the day before. The trading cards are being sold as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, for $99 each. Although Trump in November announced his plans to run for president in 2024, money from the sale of the cards will not go to Trump's campaign, according to the website. The company behind the cards is not owned by Trump but uses his likeness and image under a paid license. Purchasers of the card will also automatically be entered into a sweepstakes for a "chance to win 1000's of incredible prizes and meet the one and only #45!" though a purchase of a card is not required to enter the contest. According to the fine print, the prizes include 2,533 NFTs, totaling an approximate value of $54,695. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nft-win-mar-a-lago-meeting-pay-travel-lodging-2022-12 
See MAGAs? You got conned and you fall for scammers and hucksters and con artists and sleazy talk show hosts every single time. While you’re losing money on stupid shit because you’ve been had with your imaginary crypto money, I’m putting my feet on the desk, drinking a beer and laughing straight the fuck at you. You bought something that’s totally worthless and Don The Con is laughing all the way to the bank! And by the way not only are the NFTs you paid $99 for completely worthless, they’ve also diminished any hope Trump has of being a serious politician ever again. Hell, even Saturday Night Live at the height of the Trump administration with Alec Baldwin playing him every week, couldn’t possibly think up something this ridiculous! Donald Trump’s first official NFT collection was the talk of the crypto world late last week, captivating Twitter and late night TV in the process. But after prices and trading volume surged over the weekend, both metrics have fallen sharply as the hype around the disgraced former U.S. president’s project is apparently fading.
Trump’s digital trading cards, which are minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, peaked on Saturday, December 17 with over $3.5 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam. Sales price rose even higher on Sunday, with the NFTsselling for an average of just over $680 apiece, although total volume fell to nearly $1.95 million for the day. On Monday, however, day-over-day trading dropped 57% to about $836,000 worth of ETH, with the average sale price falling to about $466. Today, the cheapest available Trump NFT up for sale on leading marketplace OpenSea is listed at just 0.21 ETH, or about $255. (snip) Momentum peaked over the weekend, with the floor price—or cheapest listed NFT—hitting 0.84 ETH (about $990) on Saturday. Prices rose and fell in a volatile market ahead of the NFTs being skewered on NBC’s late-night comedy show, Saturday Night Live. Just three days later, the floor price has fallen 74% when measured in USD. Read more: https://decrypt.co/117663/trump-nfts-tanking-sales-prices-fall-sharply
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[font size="8"]Catch Up On Stuff We Missed Pt. 3: Miscellaneous Shenanigans [br] [/font] [br]
Being gone from the scene for over a month means that we missed a ton of shit and wacky antics that conservatives and the MAGA conspiracy theory wing of the GOP has been up to. So this entry is going to be dedicated to some of the miscellaneous things we missed in the last month because we missed a hell of a lot of shit. How about let’s start with Florida and our old buddy Ron DeSantis (Q – Florida Man) who has fully embraced the fact that Rupert Murdoch is going full Nazi on the culture wars and is in the book banning stage – which has been identified by the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum as one of the foretelling signs a genocide is going to happen. It’s fucking insane that we have got to this point and shame on the MAGAs for banning books and whatever the fuck Critical Race Theory is from our schools right now. And fuck you too Rupert Murdoch, don’t think you are getting away from this one, but yeah they can all go straight to hell. Teachers in Manatee County, Florida, are being ordered to remove or make inaccessible libraries of books inside their classrooms or face possible felony prosecution, as the district responds to legislation Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law prohibiting any books that have not been thoroughly vetted by a credentialed librarian.
The law, which went into effect at the start of this year, “is based on the premise, promoted by right-wing advocacy groups, that teachers and librarians are using books to ‘groom’ students or indoctrinate them with leftist ideologies,” according to Judd Legum at Popular Information. He puts it simply: “classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.” “My heart is broken for Florida students today as I am forced to pack up my classroom library,” one teacher wrote on Facebook, Legum reports. Calling it a “travesty to education, the future of our children and our nation,” another teacher lamented they have spent 18 years “dedicated to providing students with quality literature,” and helping them “connect with books and develop a love of lifelong learning,” but now they will have to dismantle their classroom library. Kevin Chapman, the Chief of Staff for the Manatee County School District, “says that school principals in Manatee County were told Wednesday that any staff member violating these rules by providing materials ‘harmful to minors’ could be prosecuted for ‘a felony of the third degree.'” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/my-heart-is-broken-florida-teachers-ordered-to-remove-block-class-libraries-or-face-felony-prosecution/ar-AA16Faeo?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=6aeea1140a7a43958fe42226dd366655 
Yeah so Ron DeSantis is currently engaged in some constitutional crimes against humanity and maybe some light treason by doing the every evil deed declared by Tucker Carlson. Oh yeah even the public is getting pissed at the nonstop barrage of Tucker Carlson talking points becoming national policy. So fuck off Fox. And by the way speaking of Fox, everyone’s favorite election-denying president is preparing for a return to the White House (god forbid please!!!) and he’s asking Twitter and Facebook to reinstate his account. I take it posting on his own echo chamber isn’t working out for him? Mounting a comeback for the White House, Donald Trump is looking to regain control over his powerful social media accounts.
With access to his Twitter account back, Trump's campaign is formally petitioning Facebook’s parent company to unblock his account there after it was locked in response to the U.S. Capitol riot two years ago. “We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s campaign wrote in its letter to Meta on Tuesday, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News. Trump’s campaign didn’t threaten a lawsuit, as some sources close to Trump thought he would. It instead talked about the importance of free speech and petitioned Meta for a “meeting to discuss President Trump’s prompt reinstatement to the platform.” Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donald-trump-prepares-return-facebook-twitter-rcna65809 Yup, we’ll soon add Trump Social Media to the long, long, long list of failed products associated with the Trump brand name. We also missed the Greta Thunberg – Andrew Tate controversy. Yes, this human shitstain who apparently has a fleet of high end supercars and regularly flaunts his wealth tweeted at Greta Thunberg who issued a “clap back” on Twitter right at him, and nearly broke Twitter. Yes, for once Twitter was broken and it wasn’t Elon’s fault! Hey o!!! Thank you I’m here all week! Don’t forget to tip your servers! OK I had to do that one. But in case you were wondering how that whole thing is going, well, why don’t we check in on Tate who’s currently in a Romanian prison on rape charges! I did not think that’s how that was going to end! Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan will remain in custody until Feb. 27 after a Romanian court extended their detention on Friday.
The British-American kickboxing champion-turned-sexist influencer and his brother are being investigated over allegations of rape and human trafficking. A judge at the Bucharest Court determined that the pair should remain in police custody for another 30 days while authorities carry out their inquiries. The Tate brothers and two Romanian women were arrested last month over allegations of being part of an organized crime group that local authorities say exploited women by coercing them into making pornography. Prosecutors say Tate would pretend to want romantic relationships with the alleged victims before forcing them into creating the explicit content. All four suspects deny the allegations. Before the hearing Friday, lawyers for the Tate brothers argued that prosecutors had failed to produce any new evidence against the defendants and that they were “optimistic” the detention extension would be denied, the BBC reports. https://www.thedailybeast.com/andrew-tate-will-be-locked-up-for-another-30-days-romanian-court-rules The final thing I want to talk about that we missed on our long break was the Damar Hamlin saga from the Buffalo Bills. Yes, we all watched that Monday Night game in horror as he collapsed on the field and was carried off on a stretcher and they were forced to cancel the game. That saga showed both the best and the worst of humanity. The best was that his charity called Chasing M’s. But then the worst of humanity had to make things just that much worse. Yes, I’m talking about the batshit crazy conspiracy theory wing of humanity. Did you know that Mr. Hamlin actually died while in the ER and he’s been secretly replaced with a body double? Yes, that is a sentence that was written. Fuck you conspiracy theory lunatics. We may have to expand on this in Conspiracy Corner next week because we’re just barely scratching the surface here! Did you do a double take when you saw Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin trending again on social media on Tuesady? After all, Hamlin, who had suffered a cardiac arrest during a January 2 Monday Night Football game, has seemed to be on the road to recovery. He’s already left the hospital and was even seen attending the Bills playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday, right? Well, there are now claims that the person who appeared at that game wasn’t even Hamlin. Instead, it was, drum roll please, a body double. Yes, a body double.
Talk about doubling down on conspiracy theories. Soon after Hamlin had collapsed on the football field, anti-vaccination accounts on social media had started asserting that the Covid-19 vaccine had somehow led to his cardiac arrest. That’s despite the fact that such accounts offered no real evidence to support such a theory, as I explained for Forbes back then. And now, the latest anti-vaccination conspiracy theory around Hamlin is that “they”—whoever “they” may be— have found a body double for Hamlin to conceal the so-called true nature of what had happened to him. As you can see, she first noted, “Oh, Damar Hamlin is trending. Maybe there’s some health update.” Then she indicated, “Oh…it’s paidchecks tweeting ab how he’s actually dead, there’s a ‘body double; & his fam is ‘in on it.’” By “paidchecks” she was referring to the Twitter accounts that had managed to find $8 to pay Elon Musk and Twitter in order to get those no longer so-coveted blue verified check marks. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2023/01/25/new-conspiracy-theory-damar-hamlin-has-a-body-double-hiding-vaccine-injury/?sh=63aad65e6937 
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[font size="8"]Brazillian Coup: Same MAGAs, Different Country [br] [/font] [br]
So it’s been two years since the January 6th attempted coup and possible mass murder of half of the United States Congress. Things should have got back to normal by now, right? WRONG! Because our friends in South America in Brazil are learning the hard way that Christian white nationalist MAGA authoritarianism isn’t just a uniquely American problem. In fact, some of the American MAGA shitheads we all know and loathe, like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, may have been helping their MAGA counterparts in Brazil – the same people who helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected the first time – in a big way. Yeah you know I’ve been totally fascinated with what’s going on in Brazil because Brazil’s politics right now are almost like looking into a mirror of what we’re going through in the US. You might even say that Brazil is almost like looking into a parallel universe. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has taken a carrot-and-stick approach to asserting authority over Brazil's armed forces and containing sympathies in the barracks for his predecessor after violent unrest in the capital this month.
On Saturday, Lula fired the army commander for not following his government's orders to dismantle a tent city of Bolsonaro supporters who clamored for a military coup and stormed government buildings on Jan. 8, a government source said. Lula replaced the commander with another army general who days earlier was seen in a video on social media haranguing his troops on the need to respect the result of the October election in which the leftist Lula narrowly defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. In a televised interview last week, Lula said he was convinced that parts of the armed forces were complicit in the storming of Brasilia, the worst attack on Brazil's seats of power since the end of a 21-year military dictatorship in 1985. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/lula-confronts-brazil-militarys-pro-bolsonaro-lean-with-carrot-stick-2023-01-23/
Oh come on people, stop your rabbling! Look, Brazil in the last 100 years, has been through a hell of a lot, and they’re no strangers when it comes to political violence. And the last thing they need is help from our far right shitheads about how to overthrow the government. Come on, leave the far right shit in America. It doesn’t need to be exported! And here’s what I don’t get – if you saw that Brazil was about to experience it’s own version of what we experienced at January 6th, why don’t we arrest and prosecute the people responsible? I’m looking at you, Steve Bannon and Rupert Murdoch! Horrifying images careening out of Brazil are reminding Americans — and the world — of the high cost that election disinformation brings with it as mobs of people, fueled by conspiracy theories, stormed the South American country’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential offices in a violent outburst of chaos that overwhelmed authorities over the weekend.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here. The scenes that played out on January 8 shared a striking commonality with those that played out in the US on television screens almost two years to the day earlier. And, like in the US, the warning signs were apparent for some time, with election deniers mobilizing on social media ahead of the attack. “We did see this coming,” Wendy Via, the president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Associated Press. “This doesn’t just happen in Brazil, or the United States. This is a global problem. Should we compare what happened in Brazil to Jan. 6? I say 100%, because it’s the same playbook.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/media/brazil-government-reliable-sources/index.html 
So seriously, if you saw it coming – then arrest these fuckers already! I mean come on, it’s no secret that Jair Bolsonaro was hanging out at Mar-A-Shithole in Florida and attempting to resonate with the common man. I mean could you imagine browsing the aisles at the store and seeing Jair attempting to pick out a box of Rice Krispies? Yeah that’s a great indication of how the mighty have once fallen. But it’s apparently true that Bolsonaro was seen at a local grocery store in Miami and he’s attempting to backslide on what he did in Brasilla. Come on already Brazil! Let’s extradite him, Bannon and Trump for harboring a wanted international criminal! Outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro landed in Florida on Friday, after delivering a teary message to his supporters less than two days before his fierce leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to take office.
An official Brazilian plane landed in Orlando, Florida late on Friday, flight tracking website FlightAware showed. Although Bolsonaro's destination has not been officially confirmed, his security staff were already in place in Florida. Bolsonaro's exit from Brazil came after he repeatedly said he would not hand over the presidential sash to Lula at Sunday's inauguration, breaking with Brazil's democratic tradition. He may also face legal risks from remaining in Brazil as his presidential immunity expires when Lula takes office. His departure followed an emotional final address on social media earlier on Friday, in which he ran through the highlights of his time in office, sought to defend his legacy, and tried to inspire his followers into keeping up the fight against Lula. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-bolsonaro-says-no-justification-attempted-terrorist-act-capital-2022-12-30/ 
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Come on, we kid! We love Florida! Except for Ron DeSantis and Trump – they can both go eat a bag of shit, and we’ll cover that next week. But what we can’t deny is that the same election denying idiots here are also the same election denying, flag waving, Murdoch watching idiots in Brazil. Yes, Brazil has a Fox affiliate, who knew? But come on, can we please keep right wing, uber-patriotic conspiracy theory garbage limited to the United States? There’s no reason why we should be exporting that shit. But then again my producer is reminding me that Facebook and other social media sites exist. Rows of cars, some of them rentals, line the shoulder of a highway, outside the security office of a gated community in this Orlando suburb.
Lutty Sutton is among the dozens of people who have shown up at the gated community on a Tuesday afternoon in the hopes of seeing Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right former president of Brazil, who is staying in a vacation home there owned by Brazilian mixed martial artist José Aldo. "I want to see him. I'm going to cry," says Sutton. "I want to say to him. 'Don't give up.' I have so much hope in him. I want him to come back to Brazil." Bolsonaro came to Florida on Dec. 30, two days before he was supposed to hand over the presidential sash signifying the peaceful transition of power to the rival who had recently defeated him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "He really just doesn't like Lula and did not want to hand the presidential sash over to him at the inauguration." says Bryan Pitt, assistant director at UCLA's Latin American Institute. https://www.wbur.org/npr/1149984117/bolsonaro-backers-in-florida-decry-what-they-see-as-a-stolen-election-in-brazil 
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[font size="8"]We’re All Gonna Die: The XBB1.5 Variant [br] [/font] [br]
Hey everyone, guess what? We’re all gonna die! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! WOOOOOOO. WOOO. WOO. So unless you’ve been living under a bubble you know that our entire way of living has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic that’s been plaguing the world for the last 3 years. It’s looking more and more like the Omicron variant is the definitive variant of this virus and it hasn’t produced any new offspring. But… like Windows 10 or your mobile phone, it’s getting software updates. But the question on everyone’s minds is that is this going to do the kind of damage that the original Omicron Variant did when it first hit at the end of 2021? Well, we have an answer to that. And the answer is – it’s complicated. This latest software update, you’re not likely to die from it, but you are likely to get a more contagious version of it. Is it something that we should be concerned about? Again, the answer is – it’s complicated. But unlike the first three waves of COVID, we’re less likely to die from it, and it’s not going to lead to lockdowns or the end of society in any way like it has before. The latest COVID variant is XBB1.5. Where did this thing come from? The family tree started with Omicron in January 2022, which spawned BA4 and BA5 in the summer of 2022.
Those two gave way to BQ1 and BQ1.1 in the fall of 2022. Our local health experts call XBB1.5 the great, great-granddaughter of Omicron and made a point of mentioning it is a recombinant virus. Here's why that is important. “When two viruses, a Messenger and RNA pop a bottle of wine and light some candles and exchange their information and you get messenger RNA that's half of one virus and half of the other and it creates a whole new virus that's what XBB1.5 is,” said Dr. Christopher Ohl, Atrium Wake Forest Baptist. Why are COVID variants all a mishmash of Greek letters and numbers? The World Health Organization designed it that way to avoid confusion with scientific names and to prevent discrimination that can come with naming variants after locations where they begin. But it's still confusing, right? So, let's get to some plain talk. https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/2-wants-to-know/xbb15-is-the-latest-covid-variant-what-it-is-why-its-more-infectious-dr-christopher-ohl-atrium-wake-forest-baptist-omicron-recombinant-infectious/83-5e0cbd71-760f-44ee-805b-78ac0f296417
All right everyone calm down! We’re not all gonna die! Yet. Give the GOP and the MAGAs a couple more election cycles, they’ll eventually find a way to kill us all. But wait, you might be asking “don’t we have things like mathematical modeling and statistics that prove that the world is experiencing its’ lowest case counts since the start of the pandemic? Right?” WRONG! Yes, you are wrong! Because once again the exponential math shows that it will become dominant in the EU in the forthcoming weeks! And again like previous statistical data, this is all projection. It could work, or it could not. In a Threat Assessment Brief released today, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) assesses the overall level of risk to the EU/EEA associated with the spread of the Omicron XBB.1.5 SARS-CoV-2 sub-lineage as low for the general population. The risk is moderate to high for vulnerable individuals such as the elderly and non-vaccinated and immunocompromised people, depending on their immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Several knowledge gaps exist with XBB.1.5 and this assessment may change in the coming weeks as more evidence becomes available.
Mathematical modelling by ECDC indicates that XBB1.5 could become dominant in the EU/EEA after one to two months, given the current low proportions reported in the EU/EEA and its estimated growth rate. There are currently no signals that the infection severity of XBB.1.5 is different to that of previously circulating omicron sub-lineages. The proportion of XBB.1.5 in the EU/EEA was lower than 2.5% for the final two weeks of 2022 (the most recent period where variant proportions at this low level can be accurately estimated). In the United States (US), XBB.1.5 is currently spreading 12% faster than other circulating variants. The XBB1.5 sub-lineage is currently present only at very low levels in the EU/EEA but may become dominant in the EU/EEA in the next few months,” said Andrea Ammon, ECDC Director. “In light of this, ECDC recommends carrying out appropriate testing and sequencing, increasing COVID-19 vaccination uptake, and reinforcing infection prevention and control measures. Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as staying home when ill, teleworking, good ventilation of indoor spaces and appropriate use of face masks should also be considered. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/covid-19-implications-spread-omicron-xbb15 
Yeah no we’re not all gonna die yet. Come on, this modeling is like saying that there’s a hurricane projected to hit the US east coast, and it’s going to hit somewhere between Key West, Florida and Portland, Maine. You don’t know! You don’t know! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah that’s about as accurate as a Trump hurricane prediction! But what’s to stop Omicron XBB1.5 from infecting and killing us all? Why guess what, MAGAs? It’s those vaccines you all labeled a government conspiracy to control us all! Yes, the current vaccines work and it’s no reason to get your underwear in a wad over the latest media fearmongering. Take a chill pill. XBB.1.5 and XBB.1 are the omicron subvariants with the greatest immune-evasive properties. Therefore, one of the most contentious issues surrounding XBB.1.5 relates to the degree of protection afforded by currently available mRNA vaccines, including the latest bivalent booster formulations.
Researchers from the University of Texas determined that first-generation and bivalent mRNA booster vaccines containing BA.5 result in lackluster neutralizing antibody responses against XBB.1.5. A report (yet to be peer reviewed) from investigators at the Cleveland Clinic found that bivalent vaccines demonstrate only modest (30 per cent) effectiveness in otherwise healthy non-elderly people when the variants in the vaccine match those circulating in the community. Furthermore, some experts believe the administration of bivalent boosters for the prevention of COVID-19 illness in otherwise healthy young individuals is not medically justified nor cost-effective. In contrast, public health experts from Atlanta, Ga. and Stanford, Calif. reported that although the neutralizing antibody activity of bivalent booster vaccines against XBB.1.5 is 12 to 26 times less than antibody activity against the wild-type (original) SARS-CoV-2 virus, bivalent vaccines still perform better than monovalent vaccines against XBB.1.5. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/what-to-know-about-xbb-1-5-a-new-and-highly-transmissible-covid-19-subvariant 
No we’re not going to die. This is 2020, not 2023. So why are virus researchers calling this new variant the “Kraken Variant”? Well for one thing, Kraken sounds more human than “XBB1.5” does. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Yes, I would love to see that on a hockey jersey! But like the last 1,000 variants, does the latest Omicron software update warrant a “we’re all going to die” type of response from the WHO and the CDC? No. And also probably yes. But there is one thing we do know, even though China’s response to the latest surge was the stuff of nightmares, see if you can guess which country is number one? That’s right – the good ol’ US Of A! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! We’re number one! While accounting for just 2% of all Covid cases at the start of December, the latest estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that it surged to become the second-most dominant strain in the first week of January, responsible for about 28% of all national infections. In the northeast, that figure has jumped above 70%.
XBB.1.5 is “the most transmissible sub-variant which has been detected yet,” said the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, during a press conference on Jan. 4. Health authorities are warning it could be much more widespread than current data show, thanks to its undetected proliferation tied to a drop-off in testing. The US has accounted for the bulk of sequenced variant cases — around eight in 10 — reported across the world since October 2022, followed by the UK. The proportion of infections caused by XBB.1.5 is lower in other countries, although the picture may rapidly change. Estimates from the Wellcome Sanger Institute found that the variant made up around 4% of Covid infections in England as of mid-December, while Canada has found a handful of such cases. In Europe, XBB.1.5 may drive an increase in the number of cases, though it’s unlikely to happen in January since it’s present in such low levels currently, according to a Jan. 9 statement from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-05/what-is-the-kraken-covid-variant-xbb-1-5-and-why-it-s-causing-concern 
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[font size="8"]Holy Shit: God & The Insurrection   [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! We are back everybody! We are back! And boy does it feel good to be back, doesn’t it? How is everybody? I trust that your Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were good? Great? Poor? Doesn’t matter, because now that we’ve had our break, it’s time to get back to fighting fascism in all of its’ forms! Because I don’t know if you remember, but two years ago, supporters of the unholy, ungodly Dark One attempted to take over Congress and murder half of the representatives that they didn’t agree with! And of course who know who the Dark One is. I of course speak of a man so foul, so depraved and disgusting that his name dare *NOT* be spoken in my church! I know you know who that is! Of course, he attempts to disguise himself as a “creature of light”. You know in our Good Book, which you can buy a copy of, says that the “Dark One Shall Pose As A Creature Of Light”. JAYSUS said it, and so did his disciples! We know these facts to actually be true because we read the Bible! But we can’t deny that the Dark One attracts people who are just like him. And new information has come to light! In one of RNS’ latest pieces, published in December, grantees Bob Smietana and Emily McFarlan Miller delved into Christian nationalist homeschooling. The trend has stoked the rise of homeschool curriculum industries that some say spread racism and political intolerance. One popular textbook teaches children that “since the 1960s, decisions of the Supreme Court and other judges have contributed to the moral decline of our country.”
An earlier piece by grantee Jack Jenkins reported that the January 6 attack further spread Christian nationalism and that “intermingling patriotism and piety” is common among violent nationalist groups. An extremism expert told RNS that mainstream religious leaders can unintentionally contribute to radicalization by condemning violence, as one leader did, while lamenting that America has lost its foundational ??story” rooted in a “biblical worldview.” Another RNS report on far-right digital platforms found them flourishing post-January 6. Platforms bristle with posts that are “heavily pro-gun, anti-vaccine, anti-Biden, vociferously pro-Trump and frequently laden with rhetoric that connects adherence to Christianity with American identity.” A pandemic-related story about anti-vaccine “theology” showed how pastors mix “assertions the United States was founded as a Christian nation with conspiracy theories derived from the QAnon movement and a conviction that government efforts to curb COVID-19 are oppressive.” https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/religion-and-extremism-us-two-years-after-insurrection 
Yeah… think about it! It’s no secret that the conservative party and supporters of the Dark One are getting way more evil and savage because they live in an echo chamber. It’s like the angel and the devil on your shoulder. But the devil killed the angel and replaced it with a devil clone, so now you’ve got two devils on your shoulders! The GOP is getting weirder and scarier and it’s truly frightening the direction that they are heading in. When they have their annual convention in a nation that embraces their true inner selves, you know something is wrong! But religion and right wing politics go way back. Much of the media coverage of last year’s siege on the US Capitol focused on the political beliefs of the rioters. Cameras zoomed in on their cherry red MAGA hats, oversized Trump banners, and handwritten Qanon posters. What went largely ignored was the role of religion. Yet images from that day tell a different story—one that is at risk of being whitewashed from history.
On January 6, significant religious imagery, symbolism, and sounds accompanied the mob that stormed the Capitol building. Rioters waved flags glorifying Jesus and Trump, shouted prayers and sung hymns through megaphones, and wore “Armor of God” patches on their tactical gear. During a recent event, the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program gathered religious scholars to discuss how the rise of Christian nationalism drove the insurrection. Religious rhetoric encouraged and justified the attack. “It gave permission to rioters and created a psychological safety net to make their cause seem righteous,” said Peter Manseau, the Lilly Endowment Curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian who moderated the panel. According to Maneasu, the religious context was not accidental, and it points to an increase in Christian nationalism that threatens the country’s pursuit of equality and true democracy. Christian nationalism protects––and promotes––the Manifest Destiny belief that Anglo-Saxon Protestants are God’s sacred people and the only ones with citizen rights in the United States. “It serves as a theological and ideological legitimation for a white supremacist narrative in this country,” said Dean Kelly Brown Douglas, who holds leadership positions at Union Theological Seminary, Washington National Cathedral, and Trinity Church Wall Street. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/we-cant-ignore-the-role-of-religion-in-the-us-capitol-siege/ 
But attempting to overthrow the government is OK? Look, we’ve spoken a lot about the coming dangers of the rise in white supremacist Christian nationalism in this country, and nationalism is EVIL on every single level! There’s no denying that there’s a percentage of American pastors who are in favor of the devil himself, the unholy Dark One! And it’s this imposter version of Christianity that seems to be taking over what sanity the Christian church has left. If the church keeps sliding down an authoritarian path because of a certain alliance with a certain news network, who’s to say how far they will go in achieving their ultimate goal? Three men, eyes closed and heads bowed, pray before a rough-hewn wooden cross. Another man wraps his arms around a massive Bible pressed against his chest like a shield. All throughout the crowd, people wave “Jesus Saves” banners and pump their fists toward the sky.
At first glance, these snapshots look like scenes from an outdoor church rally. But this event wasn’t a revival; it was what some call a Christian revolt. These were photos of people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, during an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The insurrection marked the first time many Americans realized the US is facing a burgeoning White Christian nationalist movement. This movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America. A report from a team of clergy, scholars and advocates — sponsored by two groups that advocate for the separation of church and state — concluded that this ideology was used to “bolster, justify and intensify” the attack on the US Capitol. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/24/us/white-christian-nationalism-blake-cec/index.html 
Yes, the devil does walk among us! And you know what makes this problem even worse? The fact that Christian nationalist ideologies aren’t just uniquely American! In fact the Christian nationalist supremacist worldview is spreading to other countries! You know there was a coup in Brazil a couple of weeks ago? And it nearly mirrored the coup we almost experienced in every way possible! In fact, some of the EVIL forces who are at work in the US were at work in Brazil! It’s got wings people, and we may never defeat SAYTAN himself, but we can make a dent in his underlings’ and their evil ways, can we do that my fair congregation? We certainly can! The images were eerily similar: Insurrectionists were storming the halls of Congress, beating police officers who tried to fend them off, wreaking havoc in the offices of legislators, desecrating the very symbol of democracy itself—all in the name of an allegedly stolen election. The Big Lie hasn’t only taken hold of the Right in the US, but in Brazil as well. And so two days after the second anniversary of January 6th, the storming of the U.S. Capitol, supporters of the defeated Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro attempted their own coup—after he’d told them, again and again, that the election had been stolen by his progressive rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
It is, however, no coincidence that the two insurrections are so strikingly similar. The reason for that, according to political scientist Brian Klaas, is “authoritarian learning,” or the process of authoritarian systems feeding off each other, exchanging tactics and strategy (even those that fail). In his newsletter Klaas warns of dismissing the similarities between the two failed coup attempts: Indeed, while we don’t know enough about those who planned the Brazilian insurrection yet, the close ties between the American and Brazilian Right stand out. Bolsonaro and his allies have received ample support by the American right-wing in spreading their version of the Big Lie. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor who has received a pardon from the former president, has spent months on his “War Room” podcast claiming the Brazilian election was stolen. Bannon, who called the Brazilian insurrectionists “freedom fighters” as the attack was underway, wrote on the right-wing platform Gettr: “The Criminal Atheistic Marxist Lula stole the Election and the Brazilians know this… now see Lula crackdown like all Communist dictators.” https://religiondispatches.org/coups-of-a-feather-the-striking-similarities-between-brazils-insurrection-and-jan-6-may-be-due-to-authoritarian-learning/ 
It might be! Especially if these lunatics manage to regain power! Oh man it’s good to be back, everybody! That’s it for our first sermon of 2023! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:
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[font size="8"]Beating A Dead Horse:: Tucker Vs M&Ms [br] [/font] [br]
Once again, the right wing has their collective underwear in a wad over a commercial. And here’s the thing that we’ve been emphasizing from the beginning since we’ve been doing this thing. The right wing uses Fox News to keep us fighting over bullshit culture war issues while the Republican party consolidates all the wealth and power in this country. So why are they so bent out of shape over a stupid M&Ms commercial? Any Google search will tell you that the green M&M has been presented as female since the 90s – way before Fox News and 20 years before the word “woke” was a thing. But come on, conservatives, just admit that the green M&M is hot and get it over with already. This infighting over this stupid advertisement is getting way out of hand. Of course if you watch the Tucker Carlson show, you would know that the green M&M is a threat to the very existence of humanity because it makes the most manly of alpha males feel insecure! I mean really, dude bros, if your masculinity is threatened by a commercial for chocolate candy, you should probably take a step back and rethink your life choices. Early last year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson warned Americans of one of the greatest threats the nation had ever faced: “Woke M&M’s.” Driven into a no-doubt-completely-legitimate fury over a chocolate mascot redesign that saw the green M&M become less sexy, Carlson ranted that “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous—until the moment you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them.”
We laughed at the time, not taking his warning that we would no longer want to bang sentient cocoa spheres seriously. And, left unchecked, the M&M’s advertising team pushed even further into realms of political and moral decay we could never have imagined. M&M’s have now, god help us all, become even more woke. The above clip, tweeted by @leash_kid_ earlier this week, sees Carlson take up the mantle of the battle-hardened freedom fighters of generations before him when faced with an all-women M&M’s package, furrow his brow in trademark puzzlement over the sugary complexities of this modern world of ours, and announce: “Woke M&Ms have returned.” “The green M&M got her boots back, but apparently is now a lesbian maybe, and there’s also a plus-sized, obese purple M&M,” he states, before concluding, “So, we’re going to cover that. Of course. Because that’s what we do.” https://www.avclub.com/m-ms-tucker-carlson-fox-news-outnumbered-ben-shapiro-1849985704 https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1613556569580490752 That’s a real clip by the way! We did not alter this in any way, shape or form! Damn, a bunch of easily amused second graders running Fox. Come on, conservatives, just admit that you want to sleep with the green M&M and get it over with already! By the way I love that our old buddy Nick Adams proposed that Mars manufacture an “all male” M&Ms packaging because I think he might be into that sort of thing. Fine if you are! But really of all the issues facing this country right now, shouldn’t we have more important things to focus on instead of fawning over which M&M is hot? Oh who am I kidding? It’s Fox News, of course they will attempt to distract us with shiny things! Fox News host Tucker Carlson is infamous for his unusual pop culture rants, which often focus on inclusive marketing campaigns, framing corporate “wokeness” as a symbol of societal decline.
Carlson has tackled important issues such as Elmo’s opinions on BLM, and the supposed cancellation of Dr. Seuss, whose books continue to be massively popular. Recently, Carlson was triggered by a redesign of the M&M cartoon characters used to market the candy. The M&Ms are set to shift their focus, for some reason, reflecting a new era of diversity and inclusiveness, in a move that amused many Twitter users; the focus on Orange M&Ms “anxiety” proved a particularly popular joke. Carlson, however, didn’t see the funny side; the Fox News host seemed particularly upset by the change seen in the two female M&Ms, as the green M&M has traded her knee-high boots for comfy trainers, while the brown M&M has shortened the height of her heels. In one of the Fox News host’s most unhinged rants yet, Carlson condemned the chocolate-coated characters as “less sexy.” Carlson went on to make some odd assumptions regarding the motive of M&M’s marketing team, passionately stating: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2022/01/22/tucker-carlson-widely-mocked-after-criticizing-less-sexy-mms/?sh=1b6259172b62 Again, conservatives – let me spell it out for you. It’s a fucking commercial. For chocolate candy. It’s not something to waste time thinking about! But of course, you know how the conspiracy theorists tend to ruin everything they talk about. Well, guess what? The M&Ms commercial is no exception. Because it was, wait for it, a Chinese psy-op! Which we must ask the question – are you fucking kidding me? Do you even know what a psy-op is? Well,. I don’t, and I know enough not to make ridiculously stupid claims like this. Seriously, MAGA conspiracy theorists, stop talking. Now. An event of cataclysmic proportions has captured the attention of Fox News. Something so egregious, horror-inducing, and shocking that it has even prompted the network to deprioritize coverage of an attempted coup in Brazil. Sensitive readers please close this article now: The girl M&M’s got their own publicity campaign.
I know. Absurd. Mars Wrigley is featuring their delectable chocolate mamasitas on new limited-edition “Flipping the Status Quo” packages. The company even introduced a new purple M&M (she’s really cute). A portion of proceeds from the campaign will benefit two nonprofits dedicated to supporting women in the music industry: She Is the Music and We Are Moving the Needle. Fox News is apoplectic.First, they de-slut the green M&M. Now, they want to shove candy-coated femininity down our throats? What if China is behind this sinister attempt to convince viewers that the gender of a candy mascot has real-world implications? No ma’am, it must be stopped. “When you look at the package, the women are upside down,” said Harris Faulkner on Outnumbered, a show whose literal premise is having female commentators outnumber a male guest. “And I understand ‘flipped’ but thank you very much we stand on our own, we don’t need to be shown upside-down on a package looking crazy.” Note to readers: you will not transform into an upside down anthropomorphic M&M if you consume the new purple M&M. Or maybe you will. We don’t know, we’re not doctors. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fox-news-melts-down-feminist-mms-campaign-1234658005/ 
You know what? Just take a step back and imagine what life would be like if Fox News didn’t exist for a minute. Wouldn’t society be so much better without their nonsense and bullshit polluting the airwaves on a nightly basis? But come on really, imagine masculinity so toxic that you feel threatened because Mars decided to out their most popular character. Dude, it’s a 30 second commercial. You know what to do with it? Just watch it and move on. But there’s no need to really get your underwear in a wad over this nonsense. Really it’s time to end the culture wars, this crap is getting more ridiculous every week and it’s hard to keep up with all the plot twists! Yes, M&M’s are in the news again. Yes, it’s once again because conservatives are freaking out. You may remember when, in an effort to promote diversity and inclusion, M&M’s parent company, Mars, updated the look and backstory of their infamous M&M’s characters. The green M&M lost her boots in favor of sneakers, which made Tucker Carlson steaming mad. Now, Mars announced its first ever all-female package (brown, purple, and green) and faux alpha-male conservatives are once again furious.
"Man-hating!" they yell. "Woke mob!" they whine. At this point it shouldn’t be surprising that these people will take any opportunity to rant and rave toward a camera with wild-eyed zealotry, but it shocks me every time. Let me take this opportunity to be crystal clear: I support the green M&M’s possible budding sapphic love! I support the brown M&M’s choice of chunky heel! I support the purple M&M’s girlbossery! I’m giving the new all-female M&M’s packaging a delicious, candy-coated, 4.8/5 delicious. —Sam Stone, staff writer https://www.bonappetit.com/story/m-and-m-all-female-character-packages 
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[font size="8"]Conspiracy Corner: Who’s Funding George Santos? [br] [/font] [br]
Welcome back to our segment where we attempt to explain the unexplainable – Conspiracy Corner! In these times, real journalism exists behind a paywall, while bullshit is free and readily available! We’re of course coming to you live from our underground doomsday shelter deep in the New Mexico badlands, undisclosed location of course! Let me just adjust my tin foil hat for maximum government interference – they are trying to read yours and my thoughts after all! Ah, there we go! So this week, I don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the latest MAGA lunatic to hit the airwaves, Brooklyn representative George Santos (Q – Batshit) is clinically insane. And he literally cannot stop lying about his past. But we know where you were last summer, Mr. Santos! And several summers before that. But the sheer amount of lying that this guy does on an almost daily basis is totally mind blowing. You could say that the GOP is better than this slime bag, but no they really aren’t. In fact considering the likes of who the GOP is currently attracting, it’s totally on brand for them. Since the New York Times revealed that George Santos was not quite the man he sold himself as to voters, it’s been hard to track down exactly what is true about the incoming representative’s life story. Is he broke or rich? Is he Jewish or Catholic? Did his family members really die in the Holocaust or September 11? Most often, it’s best to assume what the Republican from Long Island has said about his life is bogus, but in case you need to double-check, here is the guide to everything he has made up about himself — and the few things that actually appear to be true.
He lied about where he went to high school … Santos, whose parents emigrated from Brazil, says he attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx during his first years of high school but had to leave the prestigious private academy in his senior year because “my parents fell on hard times, which was something that would later become known as the depression of 2008.” But a spokesperson for the school told CNN in December that there was no evidence he attended Horace Mann. Later, he obtained a high-school equivalency diploma. … and college. Santos claims he graduated with a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in 2010, which suggests he would have made it through a four-year program in just two years if he actually graduated from Horace Mann in 2008. But a Baruch representative told the Times there was no record of Santos being in the class of 2010. (Nor is there a record of Santos being a “star” on the Baruch volleyball team, as he claimed to Nassau County GOP chair Joseph Cairo.) A biography of Santos on the National Republican Congressional Committee states Santos also spent time at New York University, a claim NYU could not corroborate. Later, he told the New York Post that he “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html 
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! So yeah lying his ass off is definitely the main objective here, which makes him perfectly suited to be the lates t MAGA shithead we can’t get rid of! And of course when you’re caught lying your ass off, there’s only one thing to do – deny the whole thing ever happened, which is par for the course for the MAGA party these days. Don’t worry – Hannity and Tucker are in full blown “move along, nothing to see here, please disperse” mode since the news broke that George Santos is a lying weasel con artist. George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.
Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry. The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year. Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/16/george-santos-andrew-intrater-columbus-nova/ 
Yeah probably! In fact George Santos lies so much that if you ask Google the question of whether or not he’s lying or not stretches out well beyond 100 pages! It’s absolute insanity. In fact Mr. Santos has lied about where his mom was on 9/11, whether or not he was the first COVID survivor, where he went to college, and even whether or not he stole Go Fund Me money from a service dog. But the latest in the long list of insane lies? He may have been a Brazilian drag queen who was auditioning for a spot on RuPauls’ Drag Race. George Santos has positioned himself as a proud, unabashed conservative—on social issues and all. He has expressed support for Florida’s regressive “Don’t Say Gay” law that bars teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in school. Accusing Democrats of wanting to “groom our kids,” Santos peddled right-wing talking points that equate discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with children with sexual abuse. Such talking points often go further, holding that drag shows, or even LGBTQ people generally, groom and abuse children.
It now appears Santos has participated in drag himself. A 2008 photo from Brazil depicts Santos, known at the time as Anthony, in a drag costume under the moniker Kitara Ravache. The photo comes from Santos’s old friend Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who spoke with journalist Marisa Kabas. According to their conversation, Rochard met Santos when he was a teenager, and they bonded over both being gay and enjoying drag. After Rochard had seen a news story about Santos, Rochard shared the photo to her social media to prove the old connection. “Me with the American Republican deputy at the Niterói parade, as I had said he wouldn’t leave my house, there’s the proof for those who called me a liar,” Rochard wrote on Instagram (in rough translation from Portuguese). https://newrepublic.com/post/170070/george-santos-drag-queen-kitara-brazil 
Yeah so that’s a thing that has happened. The GOP – which famously is against the LGBT people of the world and especially lately the T’s, has elected a guy who once posed as a Brazilian drag queen. That is some next level insanity. Of course they’ll deny it and they’ll keep denying it, because all that matters to them is that precious vote. Oh and also money. Don’t forget the money. Eventually when Mr. Santos gets kicked out of office like he rightfully deserves to be and resorts to being a Fox News content generator, he’ll keep the grifts and the Go Fund Mes active, because that’s all the GOPs do anymore – lie and grift. Lather, rinse, repeat. A member of George Santos’ political team had a plan to raise money for the Republican congressman’s campaign: Impersonate the chief of staff of now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Wealthy donors received calls and emails from a man who said he was Dan Meyer, McCarthy’s chief of staff, during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, according to people familiar with the matter. His name was actually Sam Miele, and he worked for Santos raising money for his campaign, according to one GOP donor who contributed to Santos’ campaign. This financier and some others in this story declined to be named in order to speak freely about private discussions. The impersonation of the top House Republican’s chief of staff adds to an emerging picture of a winning congressional campaign propelled by fabrications and questionable tactics. Santos now finds himself in the sights of investigators and in danger of losing his political career even after he’s been sworn into office. In raising money for his campaign, Santos fed donors the same falsehoods he gave voters, campaign fundraisers and others say. At private events with GOP donors and political leaders, Santos would flaunt or hint at key parts of his resume that have turned out to be false, according to records and people familiar with the matter. The Republican would also tout his business record that’s now in question, including claims that he worked on Wall Street, as a way to encourage donors to contribute to his campaign, according to financiers and party operatives familiar with the matter. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/09/george-santos-raised-money-from-wealthy-gop-donors-while-lying-about-his-resume.html
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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb [br] [/font] [br]
Hit it! Of course you know by now that people are people, and people are dumb. Before we go any further, I always have to clarify what makes a People Are Dumb story. You know a guy gets murdered? That’s not a People Are Dumb story. But a guy gets murdered and the primary suspect leaves behind a search engine history full of searches like “how long does a body decompose” and “where to buy inexpensive lawn darts?”, that’s a People Are Dumb story. I want to start with this story out of Warwick, England where a jury was caught in perhaps the dumbest way possible of attempting to rig a trial through a series of bribes and got caught. Yeah if there’s one thing you don’t want to do is get caught attempting to rig a jury. Unless of course you have Mr. Burns’ money. And even if you do have Mr. Burns’ level of money, really, just don’t do it. And of course you also know that the first rule of jury duty is that you never speak of the case outside of court. Like how is that possible not to know that? Four people have been found guilty of trying to fix the trial of a drugs kingpin.
Leslie Allen was jailed for 13 years at Warwick Crown Court in 2018. A fresh trial at the Old Bailey heard how the 66-year-old had recruited a juror and witnesses in a failed bid to secure a not guilty verdict. Allen, Damien Drackley, Mark Walker and Laurence Hayden were convicted of perverting the course of justice on Thursday. The Old Bailey heard Drackley had been promised £5,000, via middleman Walker, to influence fellow jurors back in 2018. During the latest trial, the 37-year-old from Nuneaton admitted speaking to his mother Lorraine Frisby about the case on a daily basis. The court also heard incriminating communications between the two was recorded on Drackley's mobile phone via an app. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-63904253?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark 
Next up – we go to India for this insane story that might be the plot of the next hit Bollywood movie. I mean come on, if this isn’t a Bollywood movie in development by now then I will have lost all faith in the internet. So here’s the thing – you need money, right? Well 3 guys attempted to get money by kidnapping a dog. Which if I remember was the plot of a Christopher Walken movie. But then your dog napping plot goes completely awry. So what do you do? Kidnap the dog owner’s brother and *THEN* demand the ransom money! Which of course backfired on the schemers big time! Come on, Bollywood producers! Green light that shit! On December 15, the suspects released Rahul under police pressure. However, they are on the run at the moment. Police teams are working to nab them,’ said the SHO.
Three men entered a Greater Noida house to steal a dog of an exotic breed, but when their attempt was thwarted by a man living there, they abducted him and demanded the dog as ransom from his next of kin. According to Shubham Pratap Singh, a resident of Unitech Horizon in Greater Noida, who is the complainant in the case, the incident took place on December 14 in Alpha-2, Greater Noida. “I have two dogs, a Rottweiler and Dogo Argentino. I had purchased the latter breed just six months ago for ₹1.5lakh. My brother Rahul (30), who resides in Alpha-2, helps in taking care of the dogs and often takes them to his residence,” said Singh (26). On December 14, Vishal Kumar, an acquaintance of Rahul, came to meet him along with two others -- Lalit and Monty -- said Singh. “Vishal tried to forcibly take the Dogo Argentino with him, but Rahul intervened after which the three men took away my brother in their car, while the dog was left behind. They later called me and asked me to bring them the dog if I want my brother back,” said Singh. https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/noida-news/unable-to-steal-pet-dog-3-men-kidnap-man-s-brother-and-demand-dog-as-ransom-101671213073960.html
Next up – look, we don’t mean to pick on Florida all the time, but they kind of do this to themselves on a near daily basis. We go to the city of Miami for this one, where a guy attending the Spurs – Heat game at the Miami Arena (I hear they are looking for a new sponsor) got arrested for bringing his dog to the game. Why was the man arrested, you might ask? Well he was charged with 1 count of animal cruelty because he spray painted his dog to look like Pikachu. That’s right – you read that correctly. The dog looks like the Pokemon character Pikachu. A Florida man was cited by Miami-Dade Animal Services after photos of a dog with its fur died to look like the Pokémon character “Pikachu” went viral this week.
The Pomeranian was spotted sitting courtside at a Miami Heat game on Monday, according to NBC Miami, but the dog was already on animal officials’ radar. Animal services noticed its bright yellow fur during an inspection at the World Famous Puppies store in Doral on Dec. 21. “Pikachu was in the store,” Kathleen Labrada, Assistant Director of Miami-Dade Animal Services, told NBC Miami. “There was a staff member holding the dog in her lap.” Labrada said it is “unlawful for any person to possess, sell or otherwise transfer within the County any dyed or artificially colored rabbit or other animal.” One week after the inspection, animal services informed shop owner Eric Torres they are issuing a $200 citation. It was the 16th citation filed against World Famous Puppies since they were licensed in March 2021, according to NBC Miami. Many of the citations came from customer complaints alleging the store sold them sick dogs. https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/florida-man-cited-after-dog-dyed-to-look-like-pikachu-spotted-courtside-at-nba-game/ 
Finally this week – we have to talk about one of the stupidest criminals of all time. And certainly one of the stupidest since we’ve been covering this show. And this goes back to what we said in the beginning of this segment. Look, if you’re going to commit a murder, the last thing you want to do is leave a Google search history trial of highly suspect phrases. Like for instance “how to murder someone” probably is not a phrase that anyone should have in their search history. But this guy did, and the more you dig into this the weirder it gets! I mean come on, have you not seen Dateline? They literally tell you all the things you shouldn’t be doing if you’re going to commit the perfect crime! Brian Walshe dismembered the body of his wife, Ana Walshe, before discarding it, prosecutors alleged during Walshe's arraignment Wednesday morning as he faces a murder charge.
Walshe, who was led into the courtroom in handcuffs and had a blank stare painted on his face throughout the proceeding, was held without bail. Wednesday was his second arraignment in the case of his wife's disappearance. Prosecutors laid out an intricate timeline of the days following Ana Walshe's New Year's Day disappearance, saying that DNA testing of items discarded in a Swampscott dumpster link back to the Walshe couple, including slippers, tissues and a Tyvek suit. Walshe allegedly made a number of Google searches on his son's iPad that dealt with discarding a dead body in the days following the last time his wife was seen, including "How long before a body starts to smell?" and "Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body." "It might have been a crime of passion or an accident, especially given the frantic search nature after the fact," said Dr. Kellie Wallace, a professor of criminal justice at Lasell University in Newton. "These are very compelling pieces of evidence and there's a lot of them and they all point in the same direction. All of them align to tell a very clear story." https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/brian-walshe-to-appear-in-court-wednesday-as-he-faces-murder-charge/2947964/ 
That’s it this week for: [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"]World Tour 2023 Destination #1 – New Zealand [br] [/font] [br]
Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:
So folks we’ve got 6 more stops on our World Tour 2022 / 2023 before we pack it all in, and it’s been fun, what can I say? Here’s where we’re going to round this out: 
This week we’re heading to New Zealand! That’s right New Zealand is Australia’s neighbor. The country consists of two giant islands, and has a population of about 5,000,000. It’s most famous for being the filming locations of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and the country is known for its’ scenic beauty. New Zealand, believe it or not, was also the first country in the world to give women the right to vote! That’s right, ladies, you can thank New Zealand for your rights! New Zealand is also the country that had the best response to the pandemic when it first hit. And its’ prime minister, Jacinda Ardern was commended very handily for it. But last week the world was shocked when she announced that she was going to resign from the PM’s position. And it’s not because of the threats that she was getting from internet COVID conspiracy theorists. But that’s beside the point. Jacinda Ardern made her final public appearance as New Zealand’s prime minister Tuesday, saying the thing she would miss most was the people, because they had been the “joy of the job.”
Ardern, who has been a global icon of the left, shocked the nation Thursday when she said she was resigning as leader after more than five years because she had nothing left in the tank. Labour Party lawmakers voted unanimously Sunday for Chris Hipkins to take over as prime minister, and he will be sworn in Wednesday. Ardern’s final act as leader was to join Hipkins and other lawmakers attending celebrations at the Rātana meeting grounds, the home of an Indigenous Māori religious movement. Ardern told reporters she’d been friends with Hipkins for nearly 20 years and spent two hours with him on the drive to the meeting grounds. She said the only real advice she could offer was, “You do you.” “This is for him now. It’s for him to carve out his own space to be his own kind of leader,” Ardern said. “Actually, there’s no advice I can really impart. I can share information, I can share experiences, but this is now for him.” https://apnews.com/article/politics-jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-c3129930cdea2161330ed31ce44c69d3 Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! No, her resignment wasn’t anything like that. And of course her resignation has ignited once again the absolute worst in humanity. That’s right – the usual group of far right internet shitheads are of course celebrating her resignation. God damn it. Do we have to put up with these assholes all the time? Why must they ruin everything? And they do ruin everything they touch, like some kind of fucked up reverse King Midas. But really these assholes are the reason why we can’t have nice things. Far-right networks around the world reacted jubilantly to Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation as New Zealand’s prime minister Thursday, in the continuation of a global hate campaign that experts say likely played a role in her departure.
Ardern, who gained an unprecedented global profile for a New Zealand politician since becoming the country’s youngest-ever prime minister at the age of 37 in 2017, held back tears as she announced she was standing down next month as she no longer felt able to meet the demands of the job. “I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice,” she said. "I know there will be much discussion in the aftermath of this decision as to what the so-called 'real' reason was ... The only interesting angle you will find is that after going on six years of some big challenges, that I am human," she said. "Politicians are human. We give all that we can, for as long as we can, and then it's time. And for me, it’s time." https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zpgz/jacinda-ardern-resignation-new-zealand-far-right 
That’s kind of how I feel. Fuck those assholes. Let’s talk about something else for a minute. But you know what else New Zealand has a problem with? Parrots! That’s right – pet parrots are a thing in New Zealand and they’ve become such a problem that they’re threatening the country’s natural wildlife inhabitants. So what do we do? Just flat out ban them? Of course not. If New Zealand had their own version of Fox News, they would be complaining incessantly about how the government is trampling on your right to own a parrot. The reason why we can’t have nice things, people! Birds sold in the pet trade are often colorful and charismatic creatures. Some can even be taught to talk, and they often provide owners with much-needed companionship.
But there are negative aspects of the pet trade that warrant a closer look. Concerns about the billion-dollar global pet industry have usually focused on issues associated with the trade in endangered species, but the industry also plays a critical role in moving invasive species around the globe. For birds, it is the primary source of invasive species. Our new study highlights how many pet birds, particularly parrot species, are reported as lost by their owners. They are contributing to a consistently large pool of escapees in our suburbs, with the potential to breed and spread. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-pet-parrots-threaten-zealand-vulnerable.html 
Damn it, now I have that song stuck in my head! And by the way while Fox wants to take away voting rights in the US, New Zealand is actually close to increasing the number of people who can vote. Yes that’s right, people younger than 18 could potentially have the right to vote in New Zealand. I can just imagine how Tucker’s head would explode if such a bill were to be proposed in the United States. Fox would be on TV every night complaining about how Spongebob Squarepants was influencing your kids’ right to vote. But this could be a very interesting experiment. New Zealand's Supreme Court has ruled that the country's current voting age of 18 is discriminatory, meaning parliament must discuss whether it should be lowered.
The case was brought by campaign group Make It 16, which wants the voting age reduced to include 16 and 17 year olds. "This is history," Make It 16 co-director Caeden Tipler said. The group argued that young people should be able to vote on matters affecting them, such as climate change. The issue must now be brought to parliament, after the court ruled that New Zealand's minimum voting age of 18 was inconsistent with the country's Bill of Rights - which gives people who are 16 years and over the right to be free from age discrimination. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63699786 
[font size="4"]Scorecard: [/font] Tourism: A Culture: B+ Political Spectrum: B+ Liberal Appeal: A+ Overall: A- Change from 2017: Internet conspiracy theory assholes got to the New Zealand PM, but we can’t let them stop us from visiting the country. Still a safe place to visit! [font size="4"]Next Week: [/font] We’re hanging out in the home of the 2022 World Cup champions, Argentina! [font size="4"]And Now This: [/font] [font size="4"]Greta Van Fleet[/font] 
Folks my first guest of this season is an amazing prog rock band out of Michigan. Their latest album is called “The Battle At Garden’s Gate”. You can see them at Honda Center on March 24th and the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento on March 26th! Playing their song “Heat Above”, give it up for Greta Van Fleet! Thank you Santa Ana! So great to be back! We’re off to New York City next week with live music from one of the hottest bands in music, Bad Omens! See you next week!
Credits Host: Initech Greta Van Fleet Appears Courtesy Of: UMG Recordings Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Constellation Room At Observatory OC, Santa Ana, CA Images: All images copyright belongs to respective copyright holders. Videos: All videos copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Articles: All article content copyright belongs to respective copyright holders Writing: Top 10 Writing Department Graphics: Top 10 Graphics Department Research: Top 10 Research Department Lighting & Stage Props: Top 10 Lighting Department Legal: Top 10 Legal Department Advertising: Top 10 Advertising Department HR: Top 10 Human Resources Department Initech’s Wardrobe Provided By: JAB Inc. Wheel Of Corruption By: Studio 1 Stage Props, Burbank, CA Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management Follow The Top 10 On Mastodon at: [email protected] Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 On Mastodon: [email protected] Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: [email protected]
Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo |
Posted by Top 10 Idiots | Thu Jan 26, 2023, 06:00 PM (0 replies)
Top 10 Conservative Idiots: The Complete 14th Season
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Top 10 Conservative Idiots: The Complete 14th Season Season 13 (Jun 2022 - Dec 2022): https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216941147 Season 12 (Jan 2022 - Jun 2022) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216216353 Season 11 (Jun 2021 - Dec 2021) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215586273 Season 10 (Jan 2021 - May 2021) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214798830 Season 9 (May 2020 - Dec 2020) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213570012 Season 8 (Jan 2020 - May 2020) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212831883 Season 7 (Jul 2019 - Dec 2019) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212164633 Season 6 (Jan 2019 - May 2019) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211623942 Season 5 (Jun 2018 - Dec 2018) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210720590 Season 4 (Jan 2018 - May 2018) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210083764 Season 3 (Jun 2017 - Dec 2017) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210008235 Season 2 (Nov 2016 - May 2017) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029078791 Season 1 (Dec 2015 - Nov 2016) : https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016169212 Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Wow, can you believe that it's been 14 seasons already? We're entering our now 7th year of existence and it's unbelievable that we've lasted this long. But needless to say that we've got some fun and exciting things planned for this season including the Top 10 Conservative Idiots 300th Edition spectacular live from Paris, France! That's right, we're heading to France to do another one of our famous themed editions. Plus we've also got a stop planned in Vancouver later this year as we're going to hang out in the Great White North! You can expect all of your favorite segments like Holy Shit, Conspiracy Corner, Late Stage Capitalism, I Need A Drink, People Are Dumb, and We're All Gonna Die are going to return, as well as People Who Somehow Got Elected, How Is This Still A Thing, and This Fucking Guy. And we've also been cooking up ideas at the home office in Santa Ana for some new segment ideas which we will definitely be bringing you throughout the year! It's also the first half of the year, which means that we've got the 6th edition of our popular and long running Stupidest State contest! That's right, you can bet that the NFFSA is back for another year and we're going to shake things up a bit! We've also got our new home on social media through the burgeoning platform known as Mastodon, so don't forget to follow us at [email protected] and the official Holy Shit Mastodon account at [email protected] We have a lot of exciting stuff planned! This guide will serve as a handy way to link all of the forthcoming season 14 editions together. Enjoy! And as always don't forget the key! Edition #14-1: Meet The Old Boss, Same As The Old Boss Edition (1/26/23) https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217592662 Live from Santa Ana! As usual whenever the Top 10 is off for an extended period of time, we like to play catch up on stuff we missed which includes one of the most insane and unintentionally hilarious things we've seen with the Trump NFT collection which was basically a bunch of poorly photo shopped images of him. We also missed the insane fight to elect a Speaker Of The House, which ended with Kevin McCarthy, and he's ultimately going to enact the Fox News / Infowars agenda for the new House. Plus we also catch up on some other random insanity that we've missed in the last month or so. Meanwhile, in Brazil, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro attempt to storm the capital of Brazil to stop the election from being certified... holy crap, sound familiar? Yes it really does! In a new edition of our segment "We're All Gonna Die", the XBB1.5 variant of COVID that has emerged is the most contagious yet, but it sounds like a software update. This will be a good test for anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. Or maybe not. In our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in "Holy Shit", what does the Capitol Riot have to do with Jesus? Our resident pastor is going to turn on his tin foil hat and let the conspiracy theories fly! In a new edition of our pop culture segment, "Beating A Dead Horse", why do conservatives suddenly hate M&Ms? We have our theories, and it may have something to do with Tucker Carlson having the hots for the green M&M or not. In a new edition of Conspiracy Corner, newly elected Congressional rep George Santos has some ridiculously shady ties to Russian oligarchs, or does he? We suspect Vlad's tentacles are heavily interspersed throughout Congress. We also have a new People Are Dumb, because of course they are! Finally this week it's time for World Tour 2023 and we are heading to Australia's next door neighbors and the home of the Lord Of The Rings movies, New Zealand! Live Musical Guest: Greta Van Fleet Edition #14-2: Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S. Edition (2/2/23) https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217610825 Live from New York City! Now that he survived reelection, Ron DeSantis seems hell bent on bringing you the full Fox News anti-"wok |