Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Top 10 Idiots

(593 posts)
Wed Nov 7, 2018, 06:00 PM Nov 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-19: The Blue Wave Begins Edition


Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-19: The Blue Wave Begins Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! What’s up Orlando? Yes, we are finally here! I know I joke about all the crazy shit that comes out of Florida but you guys really came through for this one! So I don’t know if anyone noticed but we had an election yesterday! But… yeah we’ll get to that in a minute but first we got to do a thing, And that is that politics makes for some strange bedfellows doesn’t it? And of course by that I mean I don’t know if you’ve been following the Axl Rose vs Trump brew ha ha, but it’s magical. So Trump has been for some reason playing “Sweet Child O’Mine” at his MAGA rallies. But really I’d be willing to bet that he’s never actually read the lyrics of that song. He also got hit hard by Rhianna. So now I may have to add Appetite For Destruction and Rhianna’s “Anti” album to my playlist, and hey why not? But one of my favorite things is when politicians use campaign songs and then they get called out by the artist as being full of shit. And I mean come on who’s more full of shit than Trump is these days? However, yes, this is one of my favorite things ever -w hen candidates use music, and then the artist has a problem with the use of their music. I mean come on conservatives, if you want to use music that speaks to you, use Ted Nugent. With all of the sex crimes happening, “Jailbait” would make a great anthem! What, too soon? I’ll show myself out. OK enough of the intro, we got a lot of idiocy to get to but first Bill Maher explains how important it is to GOTV:



So did everyone vote? Good! Because for the first slot this week we’re going to devote it to The Election (1) – and we will be presenting all of the highs and lows and ups and downs for you including California’s propositions and the DEMS TOOK THE HOUSE!!!! In the second slot this week is Sean Hannity (2) and whew, that guy needs a good punch in the face after what he did on Sunday. For the third slot this week, we have got to discuss the absolutely colossal fail that was Jacob Wohl and Jack Berkman (3) and whew, this has all the makings of a great Wes Anderson flick, or a marginal Coen Bros flick. At number 4 this week is of course Donald Trump (4) and we’re going to show you his reactions to the campaign as well as dissect his unbelievably insane last minute campaign ad that attempted to blame liberals, ah, fuck it, that’s all you need to know. For the fifth slot this week, is of course our weekly investigative piece “Top 10 Investigates” and this week we’re going to Wisconsin – what’s really going on with that much ballyhooed Foxconn deal? Well, we are going to tell you the latest and it’s not good. In the sixth slot 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 show you some batshit crazy religious right reactions to the election and GAWD’s plan for America. At number 7 is one of our favorite segments “Beating A Dead Horse” (7) – so last week we covered how Trump fans love to use false flag conspiracies to describe literally every tragedy that comes along. This week we’re going to tackle their other favorite bogeyman – George Soros. Yes, somehow he folds into the false flag conspiracies. Taking the 8th slot, the WWE (8) is targeting Saudi Arabia hard for a new audience, and after a lot of controversy, we’re going to ask – “WWE’s Crown Jewel: How Is This Still A Thing?”. Taking the 9th slot this week is neither People Are Dumb, or I Need A Drink, but we’re going to instead debut a brand new segment called “Ah, It Aint So Bad!” (9) in which we attempt to find the silver lining in a bunch of random news stories. Finally this week we’ve got the next installment of our ongoing series Deep State Diaries where we are going to take a look at the Department Of Defense! Plus we’ve got a musical guest I am very excited to have on, the men, the myth, the legend – Tenacious D is here! Really buy Post Apocalypto or you’re no friend of the show. 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"]Election Coverage: The Blue Wave Begins!
[br] [/font]
[br]



The blue wave happened everybody! Well, it wasn’t a tsunami but we will gladly take what happened last night as a huge win! So the Blue Wave begins. It's going to take more than a few Blue Waves to completely wash the stink of Trump out of the room, though. Meanwhile while we didn’t win everything (fuck you Texas!), there were some huge pickups and some major wins for the dems. We won’t be able to get to everything this week, we will celebrate what we have so far. So we got to go over the plusses from last night and we won’t have time to get to all of them. But what you need to know is that, to quote Walter Sobchak from the Big Lebowski, Trump is in a world of pain. But this might be one of my favorite pieces of news last night:

The Kentucky clerk who went to jail in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples lost her bid for a second term on Tuesday.

Kim Davis, the Republican incumbent, was defeated by Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr . in the election for clerk of Rowan County in northeastern Kentucky. Caudill won with 4,210 votes, or 54 percent, to 3,566, or 46 percent, for Davis.

"I believe that as a community we must continue to work together toward a more prosperous and cohesive Rowan County," Caudill said after his win, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Davis became a national figure when she stopped issuing marriage licenses days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry. The ruling overturned same-sex marriage bans nationwide. Davis cited her religious beliefs, saying she was acting under "God's authority." She was released from jail when her staff issued licenses in her absence.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/kentucky-clerk-jailed-over-gay-marriage-licenses-loses-re-election-n933451




That was sweet. And the hits just keep on coming. But one thing I do have to talk about is my home state of California where Dana Rohrabacher (R- Moscow) got his ass handed to him. Thank you Orange County!

Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican known for his unapologetic pro-Russia stance, is projected to lose against Democrat Harley Rouda in California's 48th congressional district race.

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rohrabacher has advocated for a better relationship with Russian President Vladimir. He has voted with President Trump nearly 84 percent of the time, according to nonpartisan analysis from FiveThirtyEight. He also has been known to back Trump's stance on immigration.

Rouda, a businessman and lawyer promising to protect health care coverage and reduce gun violence, appeared to take the win Wednesday morning after midnight data showed a near tie between the two candidates. Rouda held over 91,000 votes and Rohrabacher had 89,068.

Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives as midterm election results finalized. This ends unified Republican rule of Washington and opens the possibility that Trump could be investigated when they take power in January. They could demand Trump’s tax returns, subpoena his Cabinet members and investigate alleged corruption across the executive branch.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/07/election-results-2018-dana-rohrabacher-harvey-rouda/1917374002/




I should post the 10 hour clip of that, but still… HA HA!!! Although we only have limited space here, we do have to talk about California’s propositions. To which… yeah fuck you. Californians bought into Davita’s propaganda and allowed them to basically run without being checked and will stand to gain unlimited profits from people’s suffering:

California voters said no on Tuesday to Proposition 8, the “Fair Pricing for Dialysis Act,” the ballot initiative campaign with the highest price tag in California's 2018 midterm elections.

The measure sought to cap how much profit healthcare providers can make from the kidney procedure. With more than half of precincts reporting as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, 61 percent of voters had said "no" to the measure.

Supporters and opponents of Proposition 8 contributed about $130 million during the 2018 campaign season. The state’s largest kidney dialysis providers — including industry giants Davita Dialysis, Fresenius Medical Care and U.S. Renal Care — spent some $99 million collectively to fight the proposition, while supporters, led by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), contributed in support of the measure.

Dialysis is a procedure that patients without properly functioning kidneys undergo to purify their blood of waste products. The procedure takes three or four hours. Most dialysis patients need the treatment three times per week and find it physically exhausting. Throughout California, roughly 80,000 people receive dialysis at the state’s 588 clinics each month. Although the procedure is perfomed at homes and in hospitals, most patients in need of dialysis rely on standalone specialty clinics.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/07/california-election-results-residents-reject-prop-8-dialysis-profits/1917329002/




Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I mean come on, did you not see John Oliver? We will do a deep dive on Prop 8 next week. Those commercials were infuriating. That one guy “What’s Prop 8 going to do for me?” Yeah, listen here, it will make it so that if you die or something happens to you, your family won’t get stuck paying your bills, which now is a very real possibility! Moving on though, there were many highs and lows that we won’t be able to get to this week but there is one other take away from this that we need to see – the battle lines are drawn!

WASHINGTON ― After eight unforgiving years in the minority, Democrats will once again control the House of Representatives, with a deeply divided nation handing their party a narrow advantage of around 10 seats in the House.

It wasn’t quite the wave that Democrats were hoping for. Even with a 9-point advantage in the popular vote, Republicans fended off the worst-case scenarios in the House and actually improved their majority in the Senate, as Indiana, Missouri and Florida ― states that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 ― sent their Democratic senators packing.

But both parties will still be able to claim victories Tuesday. Democrats picking up the House effectively slows Trump’s presidency to a legislative crawl, while Republicans will point to their gains in the Senate to say voters still prefer their stark vision of governance.

In fact, one of the major lessons for Republicans may be that they need to embrace Trump’s style even more. A blue wave for Democrats never really materialized because Republicans were able to energize their own voters through a campaign full of racial anxiety and culture war items.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-house-win_us_5be1fc28e4b0e84388909931




Yeah I can imagine that Trump and Pelosi will be meeting in January like that. Although I do want to briefly mention the Georgia governor race – whew, this is what some might call a “clusterfuck” and we will definitely keep an eye on the situation and report back next week, but whew, this is insane. And I don’t need to mention that the racist shitbag militia III%ers are planning a violent march in Atlanta if Stacy Abrams wins. Let’s just say that the shit is going to hit the fan either way.

The Georgia governor’s race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp is too close to call.

Georgia requires a candidate to get at least 50 percent of the vote to win outright, and although Kemp held a several-point lead as of early Wednesday morning, Abrams’ campaign said it expected the election to head to a runoff ― meaning voters would have to return to the polls on Dec. 4.

“There are tens of thousands of absentee ballots around the state, many of them we believe are Abrams voters,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ campaign manager.

Kemp also expressed confidence in his odds. “There are votes left to count, but we have a very strong lead,” he said. “Folks, make no mistake, the math is on our side to win this election.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stacey-abrams-brian-kemp-georgia-election_us_5be074fbe4b01ffb1d04c527





[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"]Sean Hannity
[br] [/font]
[br]

Is anyone really surprised that Sean Hannity pulled that movie cliché where the characters say they’re not going to do something only to do it in the next scene? No? Good. So if you need some further explanation, Sean Hannity is shockingly (not) evil. Really, if you were to use a James Bond villain metaphor, think of him as a more evil Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies, only with way less charisma. Here’s what happened.

Get ready for this story; it is so crazy, man. You are really going to laugh, okay? Ready?

On Sunday, Trump campaign Chief Operating Officer Michael Glassner announced via statement that Sean Hannity (and Rush Limbaugh) would-be special guests at a rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on Monday evening.

Then—hold on, you're totally gonna crack up—Monday at 11:02 a.m., Hannity, that smug Lego of a man, tweeted, "In spite of reports, I will be doing a live show from Cape Girardeau and interviewing Trump before the rally. To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President. I am covering final rally for my show. Something I have done in every election in the past." (The tweet is still up. Wait for it—this will pay off in a second. I can't wait to see your face.)

To The Washington Post, a Fox News spokesperson repeated that Hannity would absolutely not be appearing at the rally with the president, and how even would people have gotten that idea, and just to be safe, they had ordered Hannity return to New York. Are you hanging in with me?

And then! Monday night, (have you guessed yet?) Hannity, an anchor on Fox News, which is purportedly—but not actually— a "news network," actually did join Trump on stage, at the Cape Girardeau rally, just like we first thought!
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a24742183/sean-hannity-donald-trump-rally-fox-news/




Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I mean come on do we really need to hear these two kiss each other’s asses the day before the election? No! And we don’t need to be reminded of how much Trump watches TV either. So just how much of a colossal dick move was this? Well, a whole lot, apparently!

For a grand finale to his campaign blitz Monday night, President Trump invited his advisers, including press secretary Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway, and Trump's favorite Fox News pundits, Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine Pirro, on stage in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to sing his praises.

Fox News, however, said Tuesday it wasn't pleased with their talents' performances, calling it an "unfortunate distraction."

The Trump campaign had announced beforehand that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would join the president for his last rally as "special guests," but before the rally, Hannity denied he was appearing to campaign for the president.

"In spite of reports, I will be doing a live show from Cape Girardeau and interviewing President Trump before the rally," Hannity tweeted. "To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President. I am covering final rally for my show. Something I have done in every election in the past."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fox-news-calls-sean-hannitys-appearance-trump-rally/story?id=59002981




Oh come on! Fox News is so deep in Trump’s closet that they’re finding Christmas presents to each other, and you know that Hannity whispers sweet nothings in Trump’s ear every night! Yeah, just picture that scenario for a minute! And you can’t get that image out of your head, can you? Well, this was a colossal fuck up and a total dick move for Hannity and your racist uncle’s wife, Jeannie Pirro, but really we’re not at all that shocked. But like a good Trumper, Hannity just calls it “fake news”.

Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared on stage with President Trump at his Missouri rally late Monday to parrot his midterm campaign slogans—despite earlier insisting he would only be covering the event as a journalist. “I had no idea you were going to invite me up here,” he said, after noting that “all those people in the back are fake news.”

Trump’s campaign had released a statement Sunday billing Hannity as a “special guest” at the final rally before midterm elections. Soon after, Hannity released a statement on Twitter saying, “To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President. I am covering final rally for my show.” Fox News also released a statement stressing that Hannity would only be covering the rally. Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also appeared on stage with Trump to show their support.

On Tuesday, Fox News described Hannity’s appearance as an “unfortunate distraction,” and the primetime star tweeted that he was “surprised” by Trump’s request for him to appear on-stage. “This was NOT planned,” he emphasized, later adding that he was “not referring to my journalist colleagues at FOX
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hannity-campaigns-with-trump-at-missouri-rally-after-insisting-he-wouldnt




Seriously? You really expect us to believe that , Hannity? I mean if you believe that I’ve got Keurigs, NFL tickets and Taylor Swift merchandise to sell you. Because you guys all burned and destroyed that stuff, because, reasons. Oh and if you want to know the kinds of things they discussed at Trump’s latest rally, well, the same shit you’d come to expect by now. He actually said the Democrats losing the house would be meaningless. Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOO!! Fuck you. That would be like if the Red Sox won and then started peeing in the Dodgers fans’ mailboxes. Oh wait, that is something Red Sox fans would actually do.

Fox News host Sean Hannity took to Twitter as the final results of election night rolled in to say President Donald Trump scored a victory despite Democrats taking the House. Hannity said winning the house was “meaningless” and that the night was a big win for Trump.

Election night results showed Republicans retained control of the Senate through 2020, while it appeared all but certain Democrats would take the House.

“MOST in the media are absolutely clueless,” Hannity wrote on Twitter. “Tonight was a massive win 4 DJT & the ppl he campaigned 4- remember btwn the House & Senate Obama lost 69 seats, Clinton lost 60 seats- the democrats winning the house is meaningless.”

Trump himself dubbed the night a victory as well.

“Tremendous success tonight,” the president tweeted. “Thank you to all!”
https://www.newsweek.com/sean-hannity-says-democrats-winning-house-meaningless-agrees-trump-election-1204874





[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"]Surefire Intelligence
[br] [/font]
[br] ‘

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that there was a plot by two rabid Trump fans – Jacob Wohl and Jack Berkman – to take down Robert Mueller. And it involved using the “#MeToo” movement as a weapon. Well, it turned out to be quite the colossal fail. Which is a huge step up from the epic fail – and the more you dig into this story the weirder it gets. And I mean that’s an understatement. This story was MADE for the Top 10. Let’s dig into it.

Jacob Wohl’s introduction to Washington politics and reporting in the real world—as opposed to the Twitter universe—went sideways on Thursday during a press conference that Wohl attended with conspiracy theorist and lobbyist Jack Burkman.

The pair held their show in a Holiday Inn just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The premise of this press conference was to “present a credible witness” who would accuse Robert Mueller of sexual assault. But any credibility Burkman and Wohl had hoped for was gone before they ever walked into the Rosslyn-area hotel in Arlington, Virginia.

They were scooped on their own story by the Atlantic when the outlet reported that Burkman was behind a scheme to pay women to falsify allegations against Mueller. We even knew the dollar amount that Burkman was offering— $20,000.

Wohl was implicated when it was revealed that he was behind the company, Surefire Intelligence, that had published the official-looking documents outlining the allegations. Surefire’s LinkedIn pages also featured photos of stock models. The profile for an employee in Tel Aviv used a photo of actor Christoph Waltz. The phone numbers listed on Surefire’s website were registered to Wohl’s mother’s name.
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/jacob-wohl-surefire-intelligence-press-conference/




To which I’m sure that even Hans Landa right now is going WTF! So let’s break it down. It’s almost like a Wes Anderson movie. Yeah can we get some music? And I need a guy who kind of sounds like Alec Baldwin. So they’ve got quirky characters, a two tone color scheme, and a plot that went horribly, horribly wrong. 20 year old stock broker wunderkind Jacob Wohl – who got banned from the practice due to shady business dealings, ran an equally shady “intelligence firm” out of his mom’s basement and ran offices he didn’t have using employees he didn’t hire. Sounds legit. In the grand scheme of Trump fans I'm not sure who the bigger buffoon is - Jacob Wohl and Surefire Intelligence or Alex Jones?




No, it's definitely Alex Jones. At least it's a step up from yelling at a pile of poop! But really not that big of a step. But Wohl definitely stepped in some shit. What else could go wrong?

In the conference room of a Holiday Inn just outside Washington, D.C., Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, GOP operatives of a sort, gathered reporters for their unveiling of a spectacular and unsubstantiated claim: that Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate possible links between the Trump administration and figures tied to the Russian Federation’s interference in the 2016 election, was a sexual predator (a claim that not even Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani believes).

The claims, while flimsy at best, were used to allege a double-standard between their client and Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party when they were in high school, in order to prove that mainstream press is “doing the bidding” of Mueller.

Wohl is a 20-year-old disgraced former hedge fund manager who earned a lifetime ban on futures trading and has since turned himself into a Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist online. Wohl emerged from pro-Trump conspiracy circles online to join Burkman, a longtime conservative con-man with a show on Newsmax TV, to put forward claims to the press that Mueller “brutally raped” a woman in New York City in 2010. The claims were published by The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing clickbait website with a large online presence, where Wohl was cited as a contributor as recently as six days ago.

Mueller has referred the apparent smear scheme to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When Wohl and Burkman were asked by someone who did not identify themselves at the back of the room whether they were ready to go to prison, the pair responded, “No.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/fly-unzipped-jack-burkman-and-jacob-wohl-make-laughable-smear-claims-against-mueller/




They gave a press conference with their fly down! Holy fucking god, even the best comedy writers in the world couldn’t make this stuff up! So for the movie I’m thinking that Taron Egerton would be great for Wohl, and maybe Jonah Hill for Berkman. Call me, casting directors! So how did they get caught? Well, it turns out that they used a picture of actor Christoph Waltz for one of their employees. It gets better and better!

One of the weirdest stories to come down the pike in some time involves right-wing conspiracy theorist and radio host Jack Burkman and 20-year-old hedge fund owner and Donald Trump supporter Jacob Wohl banding together to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller with allegations of sexual assault. Linking Burkman and Wohl to one another didn’t take too long — and, Surefire Intelligence, a “private intel agency that designs and executes bespoke solutions for businesses and individuals who face complex challenges,” had everything to do with that.

The whispers that allegations would enter the mainstream turned into shouts, as Burkman posted a video teasing a Thursday press conference where he would “reveal the first of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sex assault victims.” That press conference did take place today, but no accuser came forward.

So, what part does Surefire Intelligence play in all of this? On Oct. 30, the same day the rumors started swirling, Wohl said that “several media sources” told him the story would break.

Also on the same day, the accusations were published on the right-wing fringe site Gateway Pundit and it was revealed that this private investigation firm, Surefire Intelligence, was investigating claims of sexual assault. The Surefire Intelligence Twitter account, which was created in April 2018, also had something to say on social media in response to a “flurry of press inquiries.”

But in the weeks leading up to that, Surefire Intelligence was already on the radars of various media members, it’s been reported. It didn’t take long for media members to dig deeper and out Surefire Intelligence as Wohl’s operation, despite his initial denial of involvement.

“I don’t have any involvement in any investigations of any kind. I’m not quite that cool,” he said — even thought Burkman had already admitted Wohl’s involvement elsewhere.

Not only was it discovered that an email address with Wohl’s name on it (jacob.wohl@nexmanagement.com )was linked to the domain registration of Surefire Intelligence, profiles for purported employees of the firm were transparently fictitious. Managing partner “Matthew Cohen‘s” profile featured a picture that was quickly found to be a photo of Wohl.

Most comically, reverse image searches revealed that other profiles contained photos that were just edited images of famous people, Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli and Hollywood star Christoph Waltz included.

Aric Toler wrote the most comprehensive story on how Surefire Intelligence was traced to Wohl.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-hilariously-simple-way-surefire-intelligence-was-outed-as-jacob-wohls-operation/



You tell ‘em, Master Yoda! Really, if you’re setting up a sting operation, maybe don’t use your real name or e-mail address? I’m just speculating! But really this is just a colossal fail on every level. And in case you’re wondering just how shady Surefire Intelligence is, just take a look at what they did to this woman who was looking for her stolen truck.

Julienne Adams began to suspect something was awry with Surefire Intelligence when all of its phone numbers suddenly disconnected.

Adams, a 35-year-old Washington state native, had hired the private investigations firm to recover damages for a truck she says was stolen. She had found Surefire through postings on Craigslist, where it billed its impressive roster of former Israeli intelligence agents and other experts in financial and criminal investigations. Its website appeared to be legitimate, and Adams even found a pair of glowing writeups about the company on the publishing platform Medium. She eventually ponied up $1,200 for Surefire’s services.

Adams had spoken with the firm’s ostensible managing partner, Matthew Cohen, last Friday, and he was optimistic about recovering tens of thousands of dollars from the man whom Adams accused of stealing her Hummer. They were scheduled for an in-person meeting in Portland, Oregon, near her home in southern Washington, on Tuesday.

Then the whole thing blew up. Cohen, it turns out, doesn’t actually exist. His real name is Jacob Wohl, and he’s a pro-Trump twitter troll and former teenage hedge fund manager with the dubious distinction of being the youngest person ever to earn a lifetime trading ban from the National Futures Association.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jacob-wohls-fake-pi-firm-ghosted-on-a-destitute-woman-looking-for-her-stolen-truck


?itemid=4222541


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

Yeah so Trump has been hitting the campaign trail extremely hard in the last 2 weeks, and got to be honest, he looks like he’s had no sleep in the last 4. “I get the best sleep, OK!”. So we got to talk about this extremely horrible ad that he sponsored and produced. But I’m not gonna show it. What? No! Seriously, make me! In fact fuck this ad. It may be one of the worst, most insensitive and racist ads in history. It even drew comparisons to the Willie Horton ads from the 80s on Twitter and elsewhere. And I think the networks are agreeing with me.

Fox News and Fox Business will no longer air the President Donald Trump-approved campaign ad that many have decried as racist, according to a network executive.

“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,” said ad sales president Marianne Gambelli in a statement to Mediaite.

NBC drew outrage after the network aired Trump’s ad during Sunday Night Football.

The 30-second spot, a version of which Trump tweeted out last week to much outrage, warned of a “7,000-migrant caravan” approaching the U.S. border with Mexico. It also featured Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant convicted of murdering two sheriff’s deputies in 2014, falsely claiming that Democrats “let him into our country.”

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-pulls-trump-caravan-ad-decried-as-racist/




Holy shit! When you’re too racist for Fox News, that’s pretty fucking racist. So Trump’s full on 1488 ad is so horrible that it’s making people uncomfortable. Is this the October surprise? Maybe! Well guess who else is pulling the ad? Facebook!

Facebook on Monday pulled down advertisements from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that sought to fire up conservative voters in two midterm battleground states with an ad deemed “racist” by major television broadcasters.

The company’s decision came after CNN, NBC, and Fox News had all pulled down the ad, which features a convicted cop-killer who was deported multiple times before he shot and killed two California sheriff’s deputies, and was released as a video by the Trump campaign last week.

Facebook soon followed suit. “This ad violates Facebook's advertising policy against sensational content so we are rejecting it. While the video is allowed to be posted on Facebook, it cannot receive paid distribution,” wrote a spokesperson for the company in an emailed statement.

The spokesperson said the ad violated the company’s policy against “sensational content” in advertisements. That policy prohibits “shocking, sensational, disrespectful or excessively violent content” in paid ads. “This includes dehumanizing or denigrating entire groups of people and using frightening and exaggerated rumors of danger.”.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-runs-racist-ad-on-facebook-targeting-arizona-and-florida




You said it, Dave! See, conservatives, this is why you’re getting kicked off social media sites. It’s not some vast conspiracy! It’s because you’re hateful dicks! How hateful is this ad? Well….

Cop-killing illegal immigrant Luis Bracamontes stars in a web video from January that President Trump tweeted Thursday. The expletive-laced courtroom footage shows a laughing Bracamontes admitting he killed two police officers and promising to break out of jail soon.

"Democrats let him into the country," the video says in all caps. As he says he wishes he had "killed more" cops, "Democrats let him stay" flashes over the screen. Neither the video nor the president cite any evidence to support the allegation that Democrats let him into the U.S. and let him stay.

Is the accusation accurate?

THE FACTS: No. This is akin to blaming Republicans for criminals who entered the country illegally under Presidents Trump or George W. Bush.

Bracamontes, who is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, came to the U.S. illegally in June 1996, during Democrat Bill Clinton's administration. He was arrested three months later on drug charges after purchasing crack cocaine from an undercover officer at a Phoenix apartment. According to The Sacramento Bee, after he served his four-month term in then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tent city jail, he was handed off to immigration agents and deported in June 1997.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-trump-campaign-video-luis-bracamontes-ad-cop-killer-immigration-fact-check-trump-tweeted/




Gee… ya think? Oh and it gets better! Yes, there are people defending this horrid atrocity of an ad! And oh yeah it’s exactly the people who you would expect. People like RNC chairman Ronna McDaniel.

In an exchange with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, the RNC chair defended President Trump's campaign ad, which suggested that Democrats were to blame for enabling an undocumented immigrant who was convicted for killing two California police officers back in 2014. The president first shared the ad to his Twitter account on Oct. 31.

In speaking with RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, Tapper pointed out that the ad contained factual inaccuracies insofar as blaming Democrats for the murders. The undocumented immigrant in the video, Luis Bracamontes, was deported from the United States twice, according to The Washington Post. Those deportations were in 1997 and 2001 — under one Democratic president, and under one Republican president.

“It’s factually inaccurate and it’s racially incendiary,” Tapper said of the ad, according to Newsweek. “You don’t have any issue with that?”

McDaniel responded that she had "an issue with our immigration system that’s not being fixed. And the Democrats won’t work with the president and we have caravans coming."
https://www.bustle.com/p/the-rnc-chair-defended-trumps-campaign-ad-that-links-undocumented-migrants-to-violent-crime-13087726




Yeah obviously! Of course Dump himself had to go throw kerosene on the fire and blow it out of proportion like in Deadpool 2. And I love that Trump is saying “he told the truth”. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….

President Donald Trump addressed an incendiary campaign video for the first time Friday, defending his move to tweet the ad as "just telling the truth."
"They gave me a hard time because I put it up on Twitter and they gave a hard time," Trump told a crowd in Huntington, West Virginia. "They said, 'you shouldn't be doing that! That's not nice!'"
"And I say, all I'm doing is just telling the truth, what can I say," he added.
The video, tweeted by Trump on Wednesday afternoon, shows a Hispanic man bragging about killing police officers during a courtroom appearance and says Democrats want to allow more people like him into the country.

Commentators have called the ad racist and likened it to the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 campaign. That ad was backed by supporters of George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign. It depicted Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis as responsible for the rape Horton, a convicted murderer, committed while out of prison while furloughed under a Massachusetts program. The ad was seen as playing into white fear and racist stereotypes of African-Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/politics/trump-reaction-racist-ad-wva-rally/index.html





[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"]Top 10 Investigates: Foxconn WTF?
[br] [/font]

[br]

Hey Orlando, it’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates!



Last year, speaker of the house Paul Ryan and president Donald Trump made a deal with the state of Wisconsin to bring the extremely controversial electronics conglomerate Foxconn to Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin. The deal that Trump was touting was not exactly met with a warm welcome, and now things seem to be getting much worse. Apparently the deal has also been about as shady as you can expect, with things like this happening .

Maybe you remember the big show at the White House after Foxconn agreed to build a new manufacturing plant in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin. Trump was there to tout the deal as a victory in his “America First” crusade. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was there trying to win back some of his state’s respect after his 2016 presidential bid took a nose-dive.

And Foxconn founder Terry Gou was there to play on these desires, hoping to get a new American factory on the cheap. The state of Wisconsin agreed to hand over a $4.1 billion subsidy to Foxconn, which will cost Wisconsinites more than a million dollars per job created. And a nonpartisan study shows the state won’t see a return on this investment until 2042.

Now two news stories are emerging that show how one of Trump’s biggest “America First” triumphs is mostly benefitting Foxconn. Just one day before the country votes in numerous Congressional elections, a New Yorker piece shed some light on the shady tactics used by the Mt. Pleasant’s Village Board of Trustees to get the needed land.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90262695/foxconns-wisconsin-factory-is-shrouded-in-questionable-dealings




People generally associate Foxconn with Apple and all the horrors coming out of their Chinese factory in Shenzhen, and you rightfully should be horrified that they want to bring that here to the US. Especially when the deal made to bring Foxconn here was done with a dirty dealer.

It was a veritable lovefest in Milwaukee in July 2017 when Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou announced their plan to create a heavily subsidized manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin. Walker gushed that Gou, who founded his Taiwan-based company in 1974, was “one of the most remarkable business leaders in the world.” Gou returned the favor by saying, “I’ve never seen this type of governor or leader yet in this world.” Effusive, yet ambiguous.

The details of the deal were famously written on the back of a napkin when Gou and the Republican governor first met: a $3 billion state subsidy in return for Foxconn’s $10 billion investment in a Generation 10.5 LCD manufacturing plant that would create 13,000 jobs.

The size of the subsidy was stunning. It was far and away the largest in Wisconsin history and the largest government handout to a foreign company ever given in America. Like most states, Wisconsin had given subsidies to companies in the past, but never higher than $35,000 per job. Foxconn’s subsidy was $230,000 per job.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/18027032/foxconn-wisconsin-plant-jobs-deal-subsidy-governor-scott-walker




Don’t worry, we won’t. But if you work for Foxconn you should realize that if you do the math, those jobs really don’t pay that much and they won’t really make a dent in Foxconn’s profits. Really, that’s what happens when you deal with a dirty dealer. But here’s where it could quite possibly get ugly – not that it hasn’t happened already.

Foxconn Technology Group is considering bringing in personnel from China to help staff a large facility under construction in southern Wisconsin as it struggles to find engineers and other workers in one of the tightest labor markets in the U.S.

The company 2354, +0.15% , the Taiwanese supplier to Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.11% , has been trying to tap Chinese engineers through internal transfers to supplement staffing for the Wisconsin plant, according to people familiar with the matter.

The state pledged $3 billion in tax and other “performance-based” incentives to help lure Foxconn, and local authorities added $764 million. Foxconn must meet hiring, wage and investment targets by various dates to receive most of those benefits.

The company promised the state it would invest $10 billion and build a 22-million-square-foot liquid-crystal display panel plant, hiring 13,000 employees, primarily factory workers along with some engineers and business support positions.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/foxconn-mulls-tapping-chinese-skilled-workers-for-wisconsin-plant-as-us-job-market-tightens-2018-11-06




So… $10 billion to build an LCD manufacturing facility for 13,000 employees, if you do the math, is barely a fraction of the cost of building this thing. And they might not even hire American workers. That makes both Foxconn and Trump dirty dealers. So are they or are they not hiring workers from out of the United States?

Foxconn has received roughly $4 billion in subsidies set aside by Wisconsin to build a new plant in the state, but that deal is looking worse and worse with each passing day. According to the Wall Street Journal, Foxconn is looking into transferring workers from China to staff up its plant because the company has struggled to hire enough workers in America. But Foxconn is emphatically denying the report and insists it will find enough workers in the U.S.

“We can categorically state that the assertion that we are recruiting Chinese personnel to staff our Wisconsin project is untrue,” Foxconn Technology Group told Gizmodo over email. “Our recruitment priority remains Wisconsin first and we continue to focus on hiring and training workers from throughout Wisconsin. We will supplement that recruitment from other US locations as required.”

But according to the Wall Street Journal, finding skilled labor in the U.S. is difficult today given the country’s low unemployment numbers. And it’s particularly low in Wisconsin right now, where the unemployment rate sits at just 3 percent, with the nation’s at an incredibly low 3.7 percent.
https://gizmodo.com/foxconn-denies-report-that-it-will-bring-workers-from-c-1830250003




Of course they did! They won’t flat out admit that they are going to hire Chinese workers over American or they’d risk the deal entirely. And it doesn’t take the guy who wrote “The Art Of The Deal” to tell you how bad this idea is, is it? Well…

Last month, at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Donald Trump introduced Governor Scott Walker to the stage with a boast regarding a dubious, shared accomplishment. “I got him set up with an incredible company called Foxconn,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant that had agreed to build its first U.S. plant in the Badger State. “[Foxconn] came to Wisconsin with the most incredible plan . . . It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. We toured it, and we had a ribbon-cutting a few months ago. And I handed it over to Scott . . . there’s no plant like it anywhere in the United States. One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. One of the most incredible things.”

And it’s true! There is nothing like the literally incredible Foxconn deal in the United States, because the Foxconn deal—brokered by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner—has turned out to be less of a jobs boon than an economic nuclear bomb, and not the good kind, either. To put it more elegantly, the Foxconn deal is the ultimate example of Trump promising Americans the world and then handing them a flaming bag of s--t.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/donald-trump-foxconn-scam




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]

Gather around, my fair brothers and sisters of Orlando, 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 our weekly duty to remind you why the holiest among us are also the most full of:



So my fair congregation, who did GAWD vote for in this election? Yeah I’m discussing politics in my church, got a problem with that? Because they don’t care either, so why should we? See, I’ve pointed out how supporters of the Dark One, whose name shall not be named in my church, are coming hard after the Johnson Amendment so they can preach hard right politics and not get caught. Well, I got news for ya – that shit will work both ways. See, supporters of the Dark One don’t get that the constitution of the United States applies to everybody, not just them, and they are always shocked when they find out how that works. So which side of the coin did GAWD and JAYSUS vote for? It might shock you, but not really.

Last night, right-wing “journalist” and Trump–worshiping conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin posted a get-out-the-vote video on YouTube in which she asserted that a vote cast for any Democratic candidate in the midterm elections is a vote in support of the rape, torture, and murder of children.

“Tomorrow’s election boils down to whether or not you support the rape, torture, trafficking, and murdering of children, period,” she said. “Yes, it literally is that black and white. It is literally that simple.”

“The Democratic Party is the party of child sex trafficking,” Crokin continued. “Their policies—sanctuary cities, the border wall, the caravan crisis, the refugee crisis—these are all covers, people, to traffic children. Period! Tomorrow boils down to whether you support the trafficking of children or not. Period! I cannot stress this enough.”

“The members of Congress who are Democrats are tied into child sex trafficking in one way, shape, or form,” she added. “Whether they are directly trafficking kids themselves and raping kids and torturing kids themselves, or whether they are profiting off of it, or if they’re blackmailed, it doesn’t matter. That party’s polices encourages and fosters and enables child sex trafficking and many of the Demon-crats are directly running child sex trafficking rings, period.”

“If you are finding this video and seeing this video right now and you are undecided, there is a reason for that,” Crokin said. “God is calling you to the polls. And let me tell you, if you are not okay with children being raped, tortured, and trafficked, then you need to vote red all the way down the line. Period!”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liz-crokin-voting-democrat-is-a-vote-for-the-rape-torture-and-murder-of-children/




Yes, apparently if you vote against the Dark One, you are voting for the torture and murder of children, except those things didn’t happen, Liz! But apparently the people who are about to stop that sort of thing are also the people more likely to be DAYMONS!!!! And AYVIL!!!! And LUCIFER!!! Except, well, not really.

Last week, My Faith Votes, a Religious Right voter mobilization effort, featured an interview with Phil Robertson in which the former “Duck Dynasty” star urged Christians to vote Republican in the upcoming midterm elections because, he says, the Democrats are evil and depraved God-haters.

“This particular election, this cycle, this is the most important one I’ve seen since I’ve been on the earth,” Robertson said. “Say what you will about Mr. Donald J. Trump, but I have no argument or no negative things to say about his policies. I think he’s been a wonderful president, so far.”

“I just think we ought to look at both groups,” Robertson recommended, citing a passage from the book of Romans. “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gives them over to a reprobate mind. They’re full of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They’re God-haters, slanders, gossips. They’re insolent, arrogant, boastful, senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

“Just look at both groups and say, ‘Are the Republicans more godly than the other party?'” he concluded. “I’ve looked at it and I said, ‘There’s no doubt about it.’ They’re at least not anti-God, so I would say everyone go out and vote. I would recommend Republican all the way. They’re a lot better than the other side.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/duck-dynasty-patriarchs-gotv-message-democrats-are-evil-and-depraved-god-haters/




And that is a good question, JAYSUS! And I especially ask that question in the era of the rule of the Dark One.



[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"]Beating A Dead Horse
[br] [/font]
[br]

Hey everybody! It’s time for another edition of:



If there’s one thing conservatives love it’s a good boogeyman. Last week we talked about how they have beaten to death the false flag conspiracy. This week, we’re going to talk about their other favorite boogeyman – 90 year old Jewish holocaust survivor philanthropist billionaire George Soros. Think of him as the conservative conspiracy theorist equivalent of Kevin Bacon. They can literally tie him to just about anything. Let’s see, there’s a migrant caravan at the Mexico – Guatemalan border that is making its’ way to the US to seek asylum and a new way of life. I know! They must be getting their funding from George Soros! Democrats are winning elections? It must be George Soros’ fault! Hey, McDonalds didn’t have any chicken nuggets! Oh no, it’s because George Soros is cutting off chicken supplies! That didn’t even take one degree did it? Because it’s all his fault, damn it! Here’s more.

Hours after he was informed last week that an explosive device had been delivered to his suburban New York home, George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor, got on a call with colleagues to discuss yet another threat: the authoritarian Hungarian government’s crackdown on a university he had founded.

The attempted attack in New York — subsequently determined to have been part of a wave of pipe bombs targeting prominent critics of President Trump — did not come up. But it was no coincidence that Mr. Soros would be facing intense opposition and threats at the same moment in two countries thousands of miles apart.

On both sides of the Atlantic, a loose network of activists and political figures on the right have spent years seeking to cast Mr. Soros not just as a well-heeled political opponent but also as the personification of all they detest. Employing barely coded anti-Semitism, they have built a warped portrayal of him as the mastermind of a “globalist” movement, a left-wing radical who would undermine the established order and a proponent of diluting the white, Christian nature of their societies through immigration.

In the process, they have pushed their version of Mr. Soros, 88, from the dark corners of the internet and talk radio to the very center of the political debate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/us/politics/george-soros-bombs-trump.html




Yeah probably! So how did Mr. Soros get to be conservative public enemy number one? Well, like all extremely horrible things, see if you can take a guess as to where these conspiracy theories first originated from? If you guessed that they originated from Russia, you guessed correctly!

It was in Russia that the orchestrated anti-Soros campaign first surfaced, where his foundations first suffered expulsion. Soros used his fortune to save pro-Western anti-Kremlin civil society across the Eastern Bloc from Tbilisi to the Baltic. For which, naturally, the Kremlin owed him massive payback. But here's the rub: Soros's mission never aimed at weakening national identities, rather the reverse. His foundations encouraged national figures to reconsolidate cultural memory before and after Russian domination. Remember that Sovietism was the first globalist, 'internationalist', movement. Soros opposed its lingering epiphenomena. What he does support is a strong Europe, the penetration of European values into the former Iron Curtain countries - which also incites the Kremlin's hostility.

If you look closely at how Kremlin disinformation works, you'll notice a recurring theme. Attack your enemy's strong points. Invert them, use them against him through nebulous smear-campaigns. And, sadly, their methods have bled over into American discourse via the extreme right. Hence the Jewish Soros is a hidden Nazi. The Soros that helped salvage Eastern European cultures and customs presents a threat to the same. The Soros whose foundations pushed transparency and anti-corruption everywhere (thus thwarting the Kremlin) gets smeared as a sinister ubiquitous operator, shadowy puppetmaster sans frontier. There's an added vileness implicit here in that the archetype being invoked carries more than a whiff of the Nazi stereotype of Jewry. Preposterously, also, the anti-Western nationalism now burgeoning from the Kremlin southwards paints Soros as the arrowhead of nefarious American power, while America Firsters reject him.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2018/03/01/why-populists-hate-george-soros-and-how-it-started/#21421cee13d0




Yeah probably. But if you want to look at conservative misinformation at its’ finest, look no further than just about any conspiracy theory involving Soros. I mean if you want to see a conservative talking point grow and multiply and have wings, this is the perfect story for that. It really shows how the conservative disinformation machine at work, look at the migrant story I mentioned earlier.

This is the life of a lie.

Three weeks ago, a caravan of Hondurans began walking nearly 2,000 miles to the United States. Their ranks grew as they inched north and, along with them, falsehoods grew, too. But one stands out: a conspiracy theory that liberal billionaire George Soros, a Jewish immigrant, is paying the migrants to make the journey – or even orchestrating it.

Members of Congress and the president’s son both repeated it. Conservative celebrities, too.

It also may have resonated in darker places. Cesar Sayoc, the man charged with mailing pipe bombs to Soros and other prominent critics of President Donald Trump, dwelled at length online about conspiracy theories involving the Hungarian-American philanthropist. Robert Bowers, charged with killing 11 people worshiping in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, used his social media accounts to post extensively about the caravan, including circulating an image of refugees in Guatemala purportedly climbing into a truck with a Star of David on the side.

But it began with a handful of posts in the caravan’s early days.

<snip>

The Soros theory was not new – it had made the rounds during previous caravans in the spring and again in August. In fact, one Facebook user posting in October provided as evidence a video of Glenn Beck discussing the spring caravan’s alleged connections to Soros.
https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/nation-now/how-a-lie-about-george-soros-and-the-migrant-caravan-multiplied-online/465-7559e63d-9f03-4ed9-bfbb-efebbb959317




And by the way if you’re wondering where this is leading – there’s more of a conspiracy against Soros than you might realize. In fact Fox News recently rejected a request from a Soros aide to come on one of their programs and got denied. Dude, it’s Fox News, what did you expect?

Fox News talks about billionaire philanthropist George Soros a lot. He is a favorite bogeyman of the right, so Fox's conservative talk shows blame him for all sorts of ills, sometimes even pushing into conspiracy theory territory.

But the head of Soros's philanthropic group said the conservative network won't let him on air to rebut the wild accusations.

Patrick Gaspard, president of Soros's Open Society Foundations, told CNN's Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" Sunday that Fox News producers "refuse to have us on."
Fox News did not respond to CNN Business' request for comment about Gaspard's claim.

Conspiracy theories about Soros have spread for years among the far right.
President Donald Trump and his supporters have circulated accusations that Soros, who is Jewish, is assisting a caravan of migrants bound for the United States, which the foundation denies.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/04/media/george-soros-patrick-gaspard-fox-news/index.html





[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"]WWE
[br] [/font]
[br]

It’s time once again to ask:



This week – the WWE’s Crown Jewel. How is this still a thing? So the WWE has been expanding into a new audience and it has tapped, for reasons still unclear, Saudi Arabia. Yes, the country where women can be killed for driving and gay people jailed for simply existing, somehow allows sweaty, homo erotic rasslin’ in its’ borders. A lot of it has to do with this man – Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salome, who looks like a WWE wrestler.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is one of the most powerful men in the Middle East. Some say he's a progressive reformer; others see him as a brutal hardliner who silences his opponents.

The crown prince's rapid rise to power has opened doors for him to meet with some of the world's most prominent political and business leaders.

But now, the world's attention is directed squarely at the crown prince, known as MBS, and his inner circle for their alleged involvement in the presumed death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and a critic of the Saudi government, disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/18/meet-saudi-arabias-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman.html




Yes, despite the constant cries to not go into a Saudi Arabian market, the WWE continues to do it anyways. Why? Because they don’t care, and that’s why. So why are they doing this? Why are they continuing to go through such a controversial market? Well here’s more.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, the reaction in the business community was swift: Several American businesses received pressure to stop doing business with the kingdom, and many pulled out of the country, at least for the time being. But others have stuck with Saudi Arabia, including the one whose enmeshment with the royal family has probably received the most attention in recent weeks: World Wrestling Entertainment, the largest purveyor of professional wrestling on the planet.

This Friday, exactly one month after Khashoggi was killed, WWE will produce their second show in a partnership with the Saudis, WWE Crown Jewel in Riyadh. The first show, April’s Greatest Royal Rumble in Jeddah, is basically Exhibit A for the backlash against WWE: The event was almost entirely a lengthy propaganda infomercial for the kingdom, pushing local tourism, the claimed social progress of the country under Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, and hostility towards Iran.

WWE is on the verge of bringing in significantly higher profits than ever before when they start their new domestic TV contracts next year, so the Saudi deal wasn’t an existential necessity for the company. So while it’s fairly simple to understand why WWE made a deal with Saudi Arabia—since they were far from the only ones to do so—it’s a little more complicated to understand why the WWE brass would agree to this deal, and all of the geopolitical ramifications that come along with it.
https://www.thenation.com/article/wwe-saudi-arabia-wrestling-propaganda/




So it’s more about the quest for profit than it is about the quest for human rights. What country in the world doesn’t want to see sweaty muscular men pounding each other into submission? After all, we’re only a few elections away from Rage In The Cage style grudge matches in Congress.

There's a term that is often used to justify difficult or morally questionable decisions in the face of large economic gain. One can hear it anywhere from a corporate setting to the famous scene involving organized crime in the 1972 film "The Godfather."

"It's not personal; it's strictly business."

Historically, the world of combat sports promotion hasn't been any different.

When the UFC rewarded Jon Jones and Brock Lesnar with immediate title shots fresh off of failed drug tests and suspensions? It's strictly business.

When the state of Nevada allowed Floyd Mayweather to delay his impending 2012 jail sentence for felony domestic assault by one month in order for the city of Las Vegas to reap the financial benefits of his pay-per-view bout against Miguel Cotto? Again, it's just business.

WWE, which often straddles the line between combat sports and a scripted television drama thanks to its hybrid "sports entertainment" product, is no different. The worldwide pro wrestling leader has been steadily criticized of late for decisions linked to a 10-year "strategic multi-platform partnership" it signed with Saudi Arabia in February that left the company looking anywhere from tone deaf to transparently greedy.
https://www.cbssports.com/wwe/news/by-choosing-to-stay-quiet-on-saudi-arabia-wwe-speaks-volumes-about-its-true-intentions/


When you think about this as a human rights matter, just remember that that guy is our president, and that Vince McMahon is a huge Trump supporter. Remember the infamous orb?



Maybe that’s what the orb was prophesizing – a relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia brought together through body slamming. Because that’s what the whole world wants, apparently. But even in the Trump era, actions do have consequences, as their continued relationship with Saudi Arabia could put the company’s PPV hopes in jeopardy.

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is on the verge of being drawn into the rising political and diplomatic tensions with Saudi Arabia, putting its multimillion-dollar deal for live events in jeopardy.

The Arab state is currently embroiled in an international crisis over the disappearance of Saudi national and United States resident Jamal Khashoggi.

A journalist for the Washington Post, Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have claimed he was murdered by Saudi agents, while Riyadh has denied killing Khashoggi and the kingdom have insisted he left the consulate shortly after he arrived.

WWE is due to return to Saudi Arabia on November 2 for its "Crown Jewel" night of wrestling, but now it is unclear if the event at the King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh will go ahead.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/12/multi-million-dollar-wwe-pay-per-view-deal-in-jeopardy-due-to-saudi-arabia-tensions.html




Yeah so Saudi Arabia could keep the WWE and they will subject themselves to things like that. That’s enough to make you ask – the WWE’s Crown Jewel:




[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"]Ah, It’s Not So Bad
[br] [/font]
[br]

So you will notice this week we’re doing neither People Are Dumb nor are we doing I Need A Drink. Ah, don’t be sad! It’s time for our new segment:



So here’s how this is going to work, I’m going to post a few news stories and it doesn’t matter what they are or where they are going and we are going to find the silver lining in all of them. Where do we start this segment? OK remember batshit crazy Minnesota politician Michelle Bachmann? Yes she’s back in the news because, reasons. And well, her latest reason is so fucking crazy that it is truly beyond description.

Former Minnesota congresswoman and current Religious Right “pastor to the United Nations” Michele Bachmann appeared on Jan Markell’s “Understanding The Times” radio program yesterday, where she blamed the outbreak of a polio-like virus in the United States on undocumented immigrants.

Dozens of children in several states have been diagnosed this year with acute flaccid myelitis, a virus that can leave children with muscle weakness or paralysis, and Bachmann declared that it is happening “because literally millions of people are coming into the United State illegally.” For good measure, she also predicted that members of the Central American caravan that is heading toward the United States may stage an incident involving injured or dead children in order to generate sympathy by demonizing President Trump and the Republicans.

“I think, just like in Europe, when that little 3-year-old boy tragically washed up on the shores, he was used as an icon to allow millions of migrants into Europe,” Bachmann said. “I believe that we should be prepared that some tragic incident could occur—it could very well be staged—and they’ll use that to try to hang it around President Trump’s neck and around the neck of the Republicans to say, ‘Look how cruel these people are, we’ve got to open our doors to these people.’ I think that could be very well be what they mean to do.”

“Today, we’re dealing with this issue of the strange polio virus that’s impacting little children,” she added. “We have all of these strange diseases that were cured in the United States and they’re here. Why? Because literally millions of people are coming into the United State illegally, they aren’t vetted, they’re aren’t checked. The American people are paying the price for that lawlessness.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/michele-bachmann-blames-undocumented-immigrants-for-polio-like-virus-outbreak/




Ah it’s not so bad, at least it will deflect blame from anti vaccination crusaders when a real polio like vaccine shows up! Yeah let’s blow off getting vaccines for polio, what could possibly go wrong? A polio like super virus will show up! Next up travelers from Orlando – hey that’s the city we’re in! - to London on British Airways had to endure a grueling 77 hour flight because of mechanical failures and weather problems.

What should have been an eight-hour flight from Orlando to London on British Airways turned into a three-day travel nightmare for 250 passengers last week.

Flight 2036 was scheduled to take off from Orlando International Airport on Thursday evening to Gatwick Airport but was grounded until Friday because of mechanical issues, the airline said.

When it finally got off the ground Friday evening, it was soon diverted to John F. Kennedy International Airport early Saturday morning in New York “as a precaution” because of a minor technical issue, airline spokeswoman Michele Kropf said Monday in an email.

“We appreciate that this was an exhausting and frustrating experience for our customers, and we have apologized for the long delay to their flight,” Kropf said.

The airline sent a relief aircraft to JFK Airport, and the weary passengers eventually made it to London on Sunday.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/transportation/os-ne-british-airways-flight-orlando-london-20181105-story.html




Ah it’s not so bad, where else can you watch such quality flicks as Billionaire Boys Club, Gotti, and Death Of A Nation? Oh wait, that would make me hate travel even more! Well speaking of hating travel, you’re going to be doing a lot more driving if you happen to live near a Lowe’s home improvement store! Since they’re getting ready to close a whole bunch of stores.

In another sign of the times for retail, Lowe's is closing 51 North American stores.
Lowe's said Monday that those locations are underperforming and the decision will help the hardware chain focus on its most profitable stores.

"The store closures are a necessary step in our strategic reassessment as we focus on building a stronger business," said CEO Marvin Ellison, in a statement.

Retail stores are struggling to adjust to the rapid rise of online shopping, particularly from Amazon (AMZN). Many successful retailers with big stores have adjusted their business strategies to make better use of their physical spaces. Others, including Sears, Kmart and Toys "R" Us, failed.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/business/lowes-closures/index.html




Ah it’s not so bad, think of it this way – we’re one step closer to having a giant Costco the size of the state of Kansas. Hey does that mean we can get handys at Starbucks? Oh come on, you know I’m asking for a friend! Finally, this week, if you’ve ever seen the show “Better Call Saul”, you might be familiar with actor Todd Latourette. But if you’re not, you will definitely know him after seeing this story!

A New Mexico-based actor who has appeared in AMC's "Better Call Saul," the western TV drama "Longmire" and the 2009 movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats" says he cut off his own arm and pretended to be a wounded veteran in hopes of furthering his acting career.

In a video interview with Albuquerque's KOB-4 TV, Todd Lawson Latourette, who is bipolar, said he was off his medications and in the midst of a psychotic episode 17 years ago when he cut off his right forearm with a Skilsaw and cauterized it himself.

"I don't want to say the word 'insanity' because the mentally ill – we're so far from insane," he said tearfully of his mental state at the time. "We are your brothers, your mothers, your sisters. And we hurt."

Latourette later fashioned his own prosthetic forearm and hand. He also began lying about the cause of his disability, saying he sustained the wound in combat. It worked, he insisted. Casting directors started booking him for roles.
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/1844593002




Ah, it’s not so bad! Think of it this way – if they ever reboot “The Fugitive”, they know who to call to play the one armed man! And that is 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"]Deep State Diaries Episode 19: The Department Of Defense
[br] [/font]
[br]



It’s time for episode 19 of Deep State Diaries. Yes we’re touring the 24 branches and services that make up the United States government. Everything from the FBI to the IRS to the Pentagon to the CIA to the DPW to the DVA to parks and recreation and all branches and services in between. Of course if you’re here you probably already know more about our government and how it works than your average Fox News loving Trump supporter does. So that’s what this segment is going to address. We are going to do a deep dive into all that makes the United States the United States. Because we here at the Top 10 love to educate as well as entertain. Because we care.

[font size="6"]The Department Of Defense[/font]


So this week there has been much talk of Trump sending a whopping 5,200 troops to the US – Mexico border to defend the US against a migrant caravan heading through Mexico seeking legal asylum in the US, because, reasons. And there’s one department that could either stop him or continue to aid his insane quest for domination. And that department is the Department Of Defense, the entity that’s in charge of the US military. They oversee things like troop deployment. How does this factor into Trump’s insane quest? Well here’s more.

Russia and China are near-peer competitors and the United States must benchmark military capabilities against these possible threats, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said at Duke University here last night.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a standing room only audience that the two-plus-three strategy gives civilian and military leaders the framework they need to prioritize personnel and resources.

The rise of China and Russia represent the return of great power competition and the American military must respond to this challenge. But the United States still is concerned about North Korea, Iran and violent extremism, he said.

This does not limit officials, he said. The best guess is that these threats are most likely, but there could be other threats that rise and must be addressed.
https://dod.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1683762/us-benchmarking-capabilities-against-china-russia-dunford-says/




Yeah let’s just hope that guy isn’t in charge at the DOD. Although the DOD is actively at work defending this country from threats, let’s say that their cyber department needs a massive upgrade. Cyber security is definitely nothing to joke about, especially when this happens.

The data was accessed via a system that maintained travel records. That system was not operated by the Department itself but an unnamed third party contractor.

Spokesperson Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino downplayed the incident saying that only "a very small percentage of the total population" of employees were impacted.

The DoD is a massive organization, however. It's the nation's largest employer with 1.3 million enlisted men and women and another 742,000 civilian employees. The "small percentage" in this case equates to at least 30,000 Americans.

The exact number is not yet known. An anonymous source who spoke to the Associated Press said that the investigation is ongoing and the final figure could climb significantly.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2018/10/14/department-of-defense-data-breach-exposes-30000-employees/#5325a0f41a6b




Ah, I love Zapp Branagin. But really, let’s hope that he’s not in charge. I can’t stress that enough! So how is the DOD fighting back against data breaches? Well they’re encouraging people to hack them. Sure, get a bunch of hackers in a room and they’ll eventually hack NORAD, right? I mean what’s the worst that could happen?

The Department of Defense is expanding its "Hack the Pentagon" program by awarding contracts to Silicon Valley firms BugCrowd, HackerOne, and Synack to run ongoing bug bounty contests in search of vulnerabilities.

First launched as a pilot program in 2016 under Secretary Ash Carter, Hack the Pentagon allowed outside cybersecurity professionals to legally attempt to break into its public-facing systems — something that the DoD's enemies are trying to do pretty much every day. The trial run was a success, which led to thousands of security vulnerabilities being identified and remedied, according to a DoD press release.

"Finding innovative ways to identify vulnerabilities and strengthen security has never been more important," Chris Lynch, Director of the Defense Digital Service, said in a statement.

"When our adversaries carry out malicious attacks, they don't hold back and aren't afraid to be creative. Expanding our crowdsourced security work allows us to build a deeper bench of tech talent and bring more diverse perspectives to protect and defend our assets. We're excited to see the program continue to grow and deliver value across the department."
https://www.businessinsider.com/department-defense-wants-people-hack-pentagon-2018-10




Hey maybe Zapp Brannagin is in charge! But he’s definitely not the person who we need sending to the border to defend our country from… migrants fleeing violence because, reasons. Yeah the last thing we need is for Fox News to order Trump to fire on them. But we’ll save that for another edition.

At least 5,200 troops will be deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico by the end of the week, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense officials confirmed Monday afternoon.

The troops are in addition to the 2,000 National Guard members who have been in place since April. They are being sent days before the midterm elections in response to the caravan of Central American migrants that are slowly making their way to the United States after crossing Mexico's southern border earlier this month.

“Make no mistakes, as we sit right here today, we have 800 soldiers that are on their way to Texas right now,” said Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, the chief of U.S. Northern Command, during a news conference.

O’Shaughnessy said that new number could change, depending on whether the situation dictates a change in strategy. O’Shaughnessy foretold of an operation that is likely to be very different from the current National Guard activity, which mainly happens behind the scenes and assists federal Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents.
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/29/department-defense-says-its-sending-5200-troops-us-mexico-border/




[font size="6"]Score Card [/font]

Overall importance: A
How Things Are Going: B
Likely hood To Survive: B+

Overall: A-

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

Next week we’re going to the airports as we explore how our air traffic gets monitored as we visit the FAA!



[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Tenacious D[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen I am extremely excited to have this next guest on, you know them better as Jack Black and Kyle Gass, their latest album is called “Post Apocalypto”, you can see them on tour and at the Hollywood Palladium on 12/21! Playing their song called “Colors”, give it up for the one, the only Tenacious D!




Thank you Orlando! This was a great destination to have my post-election edition! We are off to Denver next!! See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: Orlando Improv, Orlando, FL
Special Thanks To: Improv Group
Holy Shit Gospel Choir: University of Florida Choir Club, Gainesville, FL
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
Tenacious D Appears Courtesy Of: Columbia Records
Management: Initech Productions, CCC Management
Follow The Top 10 On Twitter at: @10Idiots
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hate mail? E-mail The Top 10 at: Top10ConIdiots@gmail.com


Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Top 10 Conservative Idiot...