Top 10 Idiots

Top 10 Idiots's Journal

August 29, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-10: Rabbit Rewards Program Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-10: Rabbit Rewards Program Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! What’s up Minneapolis??? Man I love this crowd – you guys are drunk! Yup, the booze flows pretty freely here up in the north! You guys will need to go get some Juicy Lucys to soak up all the alcohol from when this show is over! And with the Twins record’ you will definitely need something to get you through the season. I’m an Angels fan and I know I have been drinking a lot more this season, we go through pitchers as fast as a revolving door and a t-shirt gun. So do we have time for the thing or not? Good. So I love it when politicians get caught with their pants down using songs in a certain context, that the artist didn’t approve of. So at one of his most recent rallies, Trump used the Aerosmith songs “Dream On” and “Livin On The Edge”. By the way what kind of message does that send when the president is using the song “Dream On” at a campaign event? Has he not read the lyrics to that song? Oh who am I kidding? This is Trump we’re talking about here! Of course he hasn’t! Not in that way sir! But here’s the thing – Stephen Tyler himself said that it’s not necessarily about politics. Come on, Stephen, you’re from one of the most liberal cities in America – Boston. You know Trump has a grudge against your state! But I love how they’re getting this caught up in copyright infringement craziness when they could have just pulled a Bruce Springsteen and said no for political reasons. Yeah… ha ha! Thank you sound effects guy! That’s Gary, our sound effects guy for the night, ladies and gentlemen! OK enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to but first we got to play Bill Maher’s new rule from last week where he talks mergers:

Man where do we begin this week? You know last week we trashed conservatives for how poorly they reacted to the death of Aretha Franklin, so what happens when one of their own dies? Yup they react equally horribly! So in the first slot this week we’re going to talk about Conservative Reactions To The Death Of John McCain (1). At the second slot, is of course Donald J. Trump (2) and we have to talk about his reactions to the death of McCain, and they deserve their own entry! Speaking of Trump, in the third slot this week is the National Enquirer (3) and apparently they’ve got more dirt on Trump than Putin ever has or would! Fake news! In the fourth slot, wow, it’s been a while since we have done one of these, but we’re going to add Duncan Hunter to the growing list of “People Who Somehow Got Elected”, and this is a doozy! At number 5 this week, is Betsy DeVos (5). In an era when mass shootings are at an all time high, Betsy wants to use federal money to throw more guns at a gun problem. Go home, Betsy, you’re drunk. At number 6… is Rudy Giuliani (6), and he, whew, he is completely batshit crazy and needs a good dose of STFU. At number 7 is our weekly investigative piece “Top 10 Investigates” and after Trump and Tucker Carlson went full 1488 when discussing a South African farming conspiracy, we’re going to do some investigating of our own and find out what’s really going on there. At number 8 is our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” and this week our resident pastor is fuming that Liberty University has been actively silencing those who oppose the Dark One. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week we’ve got a new installment of “I Need A Drink” – it’s been too long and I really need a drink! And what’s our story that we’re going to get drunk and talk about this week? Well there was a woman on Tinder who duped a whole bunch of guys into a Hunger Games style contest, and it was quite insane! Finally this week we’ve got a new edition of Deep State Diaries. Last week we showed you the inner workings of probably one of the more controversial agencies out there – the Department of Motor Vehicles! And yes, do your best Patty & Selma impressions now! Plus we’ve got some live music for you from a great singer songwriter who just released her debut album, Bishop Briggs is here! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!
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[font size="8"]The Death Of John McCain
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OK so I’m going to remind you that it’s a long standing Top 10 policy that we never joke about tragedy here. And that said we need to remind you of that when we’re discussing the death of Arizona senator John McCain. But… compared to Trump, I’d take a million John McCains before I could take another second of Trump. You know what? Before we go any further let’s show you John McCain’s final letter and just… revel in it.

"My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,

Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.

I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else's.

I owe that satisfaction to the love of my family. No man ever had a more loving wife or children he was prouder of than I am of mine. And I owe it to America. To be connected to America's causes – liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people – brings happiness more sublime than life's fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.

'Fellow Americans' – that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world's greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.

We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.

Ten years ago, I had the privilege to concede defeat in the election for president. I want to end my farewell to you with the heartfelt faith in Americans that I felt so powerfully that evening.
I feel it powerfully still.

Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.

Farewell, fellow Americans. God bless you, and God bless America."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/27/john-mccain-in-final-message-before-death-says-do-not-despair-of-our-present-difficulties.html

That is how you do it! Now… here’s how you don’t do it. The republicans. The people who supposedly supported him back in the day, but don’t now, because, reasons. If you want to see the real conservative party in action, just look at how they treated one of their own as he left his earthly body:

Fox News has disabled comments on YouTube videos about the death of John McCain following an outpouring of nastiness on the network's own website from its commenters.

"Comments are disabled for this video,” the space under the videos reads on YouTube videos about McCain from the network. A cursory review of the Fox News YouTube channel demonstrates that this policy appears to apply to all stories about McCain released following his death.

The comments at Fox News' website were appalling in their viciousness.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-disables-comments-youtube-videos-about-john-mccains-death-its-supporters

Yes daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn indeed! Yes the comments were incredibly vicious and appalling even for Fox News! Doesn’t that say more about them then it does about us? Don’t worry, we’ll get to Trump’s own reactions in a minute. So why wouldn’t John McCain have made it in the Trump party? Well there’s a theory on that.

There's a common misconception that John McCain was a moderate. He was not.
McCain had a lifetime 81% conservative voting score with the conservative Club for Growth. True GOP moderates like Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski have CFG scores of 35% and 55% respectively. The Heritage Foundation gives McCain a 60% lifetime rating, as compared to 24% for Collins and 34% for Murkowski.

What McCain was is a senator willing to work with Democrats to get things he cared about done. Whether it was with Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform or Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy on immigration, McCain demonstrated a willingness throughout his political career to compromise in pursuit of achieving broader goals.

"The most revered members of this institution accepted the necessity of compromise in order to make incremental progress on solving America's problems and defend her from her adversaries," McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor shortly after being diagnosed with the deadly brain cancer that eventually killed him. "That principled mindset, and the service of our predecessors who possessed it, come to mind when I hear the Senate referred to as the world's greatest deliberative body. I'm not sure we can claim that distinction with a straight face today."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/john-mccain-donald-trump-politics/index.html

Yup that’s the modern GOP for you. Fuck reaching across the aisle, they’d rather have it all to themselves and fuck everybody else! And then speaking of classless reactions, there was James Inhofe – who did the classy GOP thing they do called “victim blaming”. Yeah now you can boo! We may have to profile James Inhofe next week for “People Who Somehow Got Elected”.

Republican Sen. James Inhofe told reporters Monday that Sen. John McCain was "partially to blame" for the controversy over the lowering of the White House flag.
Inhofe, a senior member of Senate Armed Services Committee, was highly complimentary of McCain but when asked about the flag flap he attributed it to the late senator's public spat with President Donald Trump in recent years. He described both men as "strong willed people."
"Well, you know, frankly, I think that John McCain is partially to blame for that because he is very outspoken. He disagreed with the President in certain areas and wasn't too courteous about it," Inhofe said.
On Saturday evening, the White House flag had been positioned at half-staff to mark the death of McCain, the former Vietnam prisoner of war and onetime Republican presidential nominee. But just after midnight on Sunday night, the flag flying above the White House was hoisted back to full staff.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/james-inhofe-john-mccain-white-house-flag/index.html

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[font size="8"]Trump Reacts To John McCain’s Death
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So we discussed how the conservative world reacted to the death of John McCain. Which went about as well as you’d come to expect from these assholes. Now we’re going to discuss specifically how the guy who we currently refer to as president, which also is about as well as you’d come to expect from this asshole. Just how poorly did Trump react to the death of McCain?

If you were somehow lucky enough to have spent your Monday in a blissful fugue state, please allow me to catch you up on what you missed.

First, the Trump administration raised the White House flag back to full-staff after briefly lowering it following the death of Senator John McCain. Then pundits started freaking the fuck out, until finally the flag was brought back back down to half-staff once again. If this sounds like an immense waste of time to you, you’re absolutely correct. It was deeply, deeply stupid.

But, if there’s one small upside to yesterday’s ridiculous exercise in performative grief, it’s this: It reportedly drove President Donald Trump bonkers.

Citing “people familiar with the situation,” the Wall Street Journal reports that not only did Trump absolutely hate the fact that McCain’s death was dominating the headlines, but he seemingly felt this sort of sort of emotive garment-rending would be better suited on a Very Important Big Boy like himself.
https://splinternews.com/trump-is-reportedly-very-jealous-of-all-the-attention-j-1828652373

Yeah Trump throws a tantrum every bit as good as Stewie does. Trump & The Death Tantrums, by the way great band, I saw them at the Troubadour last night. But here’s how stupid and stubborn this man is – he wouldn’t allow the flags to be flown at half mast in memory of McCain!

The White House reversed course Monday afternoon, and will fly the flag at half-staff until McCain’s body is buried, the president said in a proclamation, as a “mark of respect for the memory and longstanding service.” Flags will be lowered on “all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels” until sunset on the day of McCain’s burial.

The American flag atop the White House was flying on the top of its mast on Monday morning after the death of Arizona senator John McCain, putting the presidential residence at odds with many other federal buildings in the United States.

The senator died on Aug. 25, and American flags on the US Capitol Building and on other federal buildings are still flying at half-mast at time of writing. The flags in front of the US Capitol will fly at half mast until McCain “is buried,” an official in the Congressional flag office told Quartz.
https://qz.com/1370669/after-john-mccains-death-a-raised-flag-at-the-white-house/

Uh………… No we don’t. we really don’t. Trump is such a fucking man baby that something that should have been done immediately, took him five fucking days before he realized that he was not the center of attention! No wonder he isn’t going to the funeral.

WASHINGTON -- Two days after Sen. John McCain died at the age of 81, the White House has raised flags on the property. However, flags at the U.S. Capitol remain at half mast.

The decision to raise the flags at the White House has caused some controversy as President Donald Trump and McCain had a long-standing feud. Trump was extremely critical of McCain following the former Arizona senator's vote that stopped an attempt to recall Obamacare last year.

Trump tweeted a message of support to McCain's family on Saturday, but made no official proclamation to lower flags.

U.S. flag code calls for flags to be lowered "on the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress." Meaning flags could be returned to full staff Monday.

The decision not to keep flags at half staff at the White House comes as reports have surfaced that Trump nixed a statement from the White House that would have praised McCain for his service to the country and called him a "hero."
https://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2018/08/flags_raised_following_mccains.html

Here’s the thing Trump – you want to be loved? Maybe you should be the one who respects the office you’re in! And by doing that, I mean get the fuck out! Thank you! You aren’t fit to lick John McCain’s shoes, much less be invited to his funeral.

When Sen. John McCain is remembered at memorial ceremonies in Arizona and Washington, D.C., this week, and when he lies in state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, it will be a time for many of those who knew him to pay their respects. But President Trump will not attend the funeral — at the request of the Arizona Republican himself.

Though the specific request marks a departure from the norms of memorializing notable political figures, the question of Trump’s attendance is part of a long history of meaning when it comes to presidential funeral attendance. It’s relatively common for other members of an administration to attend funerals in the president’s stead, but it’s also common for those decisions to be assigned great meaning.

McCain, who died at the age of 81 a little more than a year after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, had a longtime feud with Trump, which extended to pointed remarks in his farewell letter. McCain’s family had asked that Trump not attend funeral services prior to the Arizona senator’s death, according to initial reports from the New York Times later confirmed by the Associated Press. In his requests for the funeral, McCain asked that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush deliver eulogies.

Trump, who earned rebukes on Monday after flying flags at the White House at full staff, a decision he then reversed, is not the first president to be absent at the funeral of a person with great impact on American history.
http://time.com/5379510/trump-mccain-funeral-history/

[font size="8"]The National Enquirer
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A couple of editions ago, we asked how the National Enquirer is still a thing (see: Top 10 #5-6 ), but there might be more to it this week as to why the National Enquirer is still a thing. You know since the election there’s been rampant speculation that our supreme overlord Vladimir Putin may have some dirt on Trump regarding his sexual deviancy. Well… it turns out the fake news purveyors may have more dirt on him than Putin does!

After Michael Cohen stood in court Tuesday and said that a candidate for office – Donald Trump – had directed him to broker hush payments to two women, the details of the payments and the nature of their illegality became extremely urgent questions.

It was suddenly clear that a sitting president might have committed a crime during his candidacy. As Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis put it: “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

But federal prosecutors were a step ahead, it appears. In bombshell news stories Tuesday, Vanity Fair and the Wall Street Journal reported that two witnesses – the magazine publisher David Pecker and one of his chief officers, Dylan Howard – had been granted immunity in exchange for their testimony in the matter.

The negotiations between prosecutors in the southern district of New York and Pecker and Howard had not been previously disclosed before Thursday. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/23/david-pecker-immunity-what-does-it-mean-trump-michael-cohen

You know how you’re a crook? Your lawyer and campaign manager are going to jail but a guy named Pecker has so much dirt on you that he gets immunity! And yes I’m fully aware that “pecker” is slang for “penis”. So what’s in this safe? Is it going to be something good or is it going to be another Al Capone’s Vault type of situation? For you youngsters in the crowd, go Google that one, it’s one of the biggest epic failures of all time.

The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.

The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.

Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump.

Several people familiar with the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company's CEO.
https://www.businessinsider.com/national-enquirer-david-pecker-trump-stories-immunity-2018-8

Ha ha ha…. I love Weird Al. So what does it mean that Pecker gets immunity? Well a whole lot of things, and it’s going to mean a world of hurt for Trump if any of them proves to be true.

The chairman of the company that publishes the National Enquirer was granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of an investigation into President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, NBC News reported Thursday.

The immunity deal was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.

Details of the agreement were not immediately known. But the Journal reported earlier Thursday that American Media Inc. Chairman David Pecker had given prosecutors details about the president's knowledge of payments Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump.

Prosecutors declined CNBC's request for comment on the Journal's report. A spokesman for American Media did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

The immunity deal could hold significant consequences for Trump, as Pecker could have as much damaging information about the president as anyone in Trump's orbit.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/national-enquirer-david-pecker-told-prosecutors-trump-knew-of-cohen-payments-report.html

Put the gun away, Walter. Yeah… Trump is the one who is going to be entering a world of pain. So what’s the relationship between the supermarket tabloid and the Trump administration? Well it seems the sleazy tabloid is the one keeping his administration afloat by becoming his official MAGAzine. Ha! See what I did there? And by the way how’s that “lock her up” thing going for ya?

The scoop Friday was that the National Enquirer supported President Donald Trump as a candidate in 2016, but his rivals already knew the paper’s front page shouted critical stories about them throughout the campaign.

Ben Carson was portrayed in a “bombshell investigation” of the Republican primaries in October 2015 as a “bungling surgeon,” based on a review of malpractice lawsuits against him. Carson has since joined Trump's cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the paper “garbage” filled with “complete and utter lies” after a “tabloid smear” in March 2016 that he had five mistresses.

And Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton repeatedly made the front page of the supermarket tabloid before, during and after the campaign. The paper reported she had “six months to live!” in September 2015 and then that she was “corrupt! racist! criminal!” in November 2016. She remains alive and not in jail.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/24/president-donald-trump-rivals-say-national-enquirer-supported-him/1087658002/

[font size="8"]Duncan Hunter
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Politicians at the state, local and national levels who are so terrible, you wonder how they got elected in the first place. Or in this case reelected. This is another edition of:

Holy shit. Wow, where do I even begin to go through this one? So this week Duncan Hunter (R – Obviously) was caught with his pants down going on one of the most insane campaign funded spending sprees in human history. It’s going to take a lot to unpack all of this but it is, quite spectacular. I mean let’s just regale the insanity of this screen shot of some of the things he spent money on.

Well to be fair, Mr. Fluffy was enrolled in Southwest’s Rabbit Rewards Program. Hey o!! Thank you I’m here all week! Don’t forget to tip your waitress! OK getting back on track here. But this whole thing is fucking insane. Here’s just a short list of the things Mr. and Mrs. Hunter blew their money on.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Hunter will be removed from his committee assignments after being indicted on charges alleging he misused more than $250,000 in campaign funds.

Ryan said in a statement Tuesday the charges against Hunter, a Republican, are "deeply serious."

Federal prosecutors accused Hunter and his wife of using campaign funds to finance family trips and other expenses and then attempted to disguise the illegal spending in federal records.

Earlier this month, Hunter's lawyer wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, saying there was "politically motivated" pressure to wrap up the investigation.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the charges were evidence of a "rampant culture of corruption" among Republicans in Washington.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/duncan-hunter-and-wife-indicted-grand-jury-campaign-finance-violations/

Well yeah that’s an understatement. And $600 for a plane ticket for his fucking pet rabbit is just the tip of the iceberg! Just look at some of the things that he spent money on.

Duncan Hunter, the Republican congressman who was indicted Tuesday for illegally spending more than $250,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses—including family vacations and tickets to Irish dance show Riverdance—told an ABC affiliate station in San Diego on Wednesday that he is a victim of the “new Department of Justice” and “the Democrats’ arm of law enforcement.”

“It’s happening with [President Donald] Trump and it’s happening with me,” he told 10News before embarking on a fishing trip with a veterans group. “We’re going to fight through it and win and the people get to vote in November…I think they’ve used every dirty trick in the book, so it’ll go to court when they want it to.”

“It’s politically motivated,” he said. “It’s the last chance they could do this before the election. This is how they want to win the election. It’s easier doing this than actually running for office.”

Here are some of the wildest purchases the Hunters made with campaign funds, according to the indictment:

A plane ticket to fly a family member’s rabbit to Washington, DC, for vacation, first reported in early 2017
A $14,000 family trip to Italy for Thanksgiving in 2015. Hunter tried to arrange a tour of a naval base during the trip in an attempt to justify using campaign money. When he learned that a tour wouldn’t be possible, Hunter allegedly told his chief of staff, “Tell the Navy to go f— themselves.”
More than $26,600 in family vacation expenses between 2011 and 2015
More than $3,300 worth of fast food
Tobacco
A nearly $2,000 ticket for a Pittsburgh Steelers game
Video games, a purchase which the Hunters later reported as fraudulent to the Federal Election Commission
Tickets to the show Riverdance
School lunches for their children
Makeup
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/duncan-hunter-indictment-campaign-finance-chris-collins/

Yes… WTF lol indeed. Fast food, video games, Steelers tickets, and… tickets to see Riverdance? I mean come on let’s not get crazy here! And by the way here’s something else that’s not really mentioned in this story – apparently he talked some shit about the Navy. And you don’t do that in San Diego, that’s a Navy town, damn it!

A federal indictment alleges that House Armed Services member Duncan Hunter was not happy when he didn’t get a tour of a military base in Italy and had this to say: “Tell the Navy to go f--- themselves.”

Prosecutors also accused the California Republican of falsely claiming that personal expenditures were for “wounded warriors.”

Hunter and his wife, Margaret, were indicted Tuesday for allegedly using $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses, including dental work and trips to Italy and Hawaii.

Hunter tried to justify using campaign funds to pay for a family trip to Italy in November 2015 by visiting a Navy installation but was told that only a particular date was available, the indictment alleges. That’s when he supposedly made the offensive comment to his chief of staff.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/duncan-hunter-navy-curse

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! And in case you’re wondering – here’s where it gets weird. As if blowing campaign money on video games and fast food isn’t weird enough. Guess who Duncan Hunter is blaming on his ordeal? It’s that damn deep state!

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter of Alpine forcefully responded Wednesday to a 60-count indictment filed this week in federal court in San Diego.

In a 15-minute back and forth with reporters, Hunter invoked a “deep state” conspiracy among “partisan Democrat prosecutors” as the reason why he and his wife, Margaret Hunter, were facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsification of records and aiding and abetting in the prohibited use of campaign contributions.

Tuesday’s indictment listed 200 instances in which the Hunters allegedly made personal purchases using campaign funds, including family vacations, meals and everyday household expenses. The $250,000 of improper expenses alleged by prosecutors — from tequila to Taco Bell to “Punky Brewster items” at Target — have become fodder for a steady diet of national news stories.

But Hunter, 41, told reporters in San Diego on Wednesday, “I’ve never used my campaign for personal expenditures — ever.”
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-hunter-main-20180822-story.html

Oh and by the way – I don’t know what’s more mind boggling about this whole Duncan Hunter thing – the fact that he’s throwing his own wife under the bus or the fact that he’s 6 points ahead in the polls! Yes, the GOP cult is still going to reelect this guy!

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) on Tuesday told a reporter to “leave my wife out of it” as he discussed their recent indictment on charges of misusing campaign funds, days after he appeared to blame his wife, Margaret, for the charges.

“Leave my wife out of it. Leave my family out of it,” he said in an interview with 10News, an ABC affiliate in San Diego. “It’s me they’re after anyway. They’re not after my wife. They want to take me down. That’s what they’re up to.”

Both Duncan and Margaret Hunter were indicted last week, charged with misusing at least $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses. Hunter is accused of using the funds to pay for trips to Italy and Hawaii, his family’s dental work, his children’s tuition and travel for relatives, among other personal expenses.
Hunter said in an interview on Fox News last week that his wife was responsible for the campaign spending.

"She was also the campaign manager, so whatever she did, that'll be looked at too, I'm sure," Hunter said at the time. "But I didn't do it. I didn't spend any money illegally."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/404069-duncan-hunter-on-campaign-funds-indictment-leave-my-wife-out-ofc

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That’s GOP rep Duncan Hunter – yet another one of the:

[font size="8"] The NRA & Betsy DeVos
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When mass shootings are at an all time high, what’s a country already addicted to the raw power of the firearm going to do when people are getting killed at an alarming rate? Well, you can do one of two things. The first you can do is to throw more guns at it. The second is to blame everything but the gun the next time some nut with a gun goes off and starts murdering a whole bunch of people. Well, Betsy DeVos decided to do the former, while the NRA decided to do the latter. Let’s explain more:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is considering whether states can use federal grant money to buy guns for schools, including possibly arming teachers, after receiving queries from Texas and Oklahoma, people familiar with the matter said.

The idea drew swift criticism from Democrats, teacher unions, education groups and gun control activists, who said the response to school shootings should be fewer guns, not more. But President Donald Trump and others have argued that arming teachers would "harden" schools and make them less likely targets for mass shootings.

Texas and Oklahoma were seeking clarity on spending funds from Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, which can be used for a wide range of school expenses.

Some opponents said firearms were never considered when the grants were created in 2015. But the $1.1 billion program has few restrictions on it, and some argued DeVos may have little choice but to give states the flexibility that Congress wrote into the law.
https://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2018/08/betsy_devos_funds_to_buy_guns.html

Now don’t boo just yet. Consider this was said the week that yet *ANOTHER* mass shooting happened, and it’s quite insane. We go to Jacksonville in of course Florida. Mass shootings are so common place anymore that it’s unbelievable that this isn’t #1 this week but in an era of sheer stupidity this isn’t all that surprising.

The young men had gathered at Chicago Pizza in Jacksonville, Fla., to conduct some serious business: crushing one another at “Madden NFL 19” as their fans watched online.

The finalists in Sunday’s regional video game tournament would proceed to the Madden Classic in Las Vegas, where the top prize is $25,000. David Katz, a slender 24-year-old who nicknamed himself “Bread,” had traveled from Baltimore to compete — only to be eliminated, witnesses said.

But Katz wasn’t done. As his competitors continued to game Sunday, Katz got a handgun and opened fire in the pizzeria. Horrified fans watched the violence unfold on a livestream online.

The shooter “targeted a few people” before killing himself, according to Stephen “Steveyj” Javaruski, one of the gamers, who took shelter in a bathroom.

At the end of it, Katz and two of his competitors were dead: Elijah Clayton and Taylor Robertson — better known to their rivals and fans in the gaming world by the handles they adopted for the screen.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jacksonville-mass-shooting-20180826-story.html#

Well see it’s our policy here not to joke about tragedy so we won’t try. But the Ravens losing is hardly the worst thing about this story. You really want to add more guns to the situation? Yeah let’s get crossfire involved – that will teach the shooter a lesson! Of course if you saw the latest round of excuses coming from the NRA…. Well…

"A horrible tragedy. End gun free zones or have the security in place to keep people safe in them," Loesch tweeted as reports emerged about a shooting at Jacksonville Landing.

A gunman killed two people and injured nine others when he opened fire during a Madden NFL 19 tournament at the GLHF Game Bar. The suspect, identified as 24-year-old David Katz of Baltimore, Md., died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

The Jacksonville Landing rules of conduct bar visitors from bringing a weapon onto the property, even if it is legally owned and carried. Only law enforcement officers are exempted.

The NRA has called for an end to "gun free zones," particularly following a number of recent shootings. The organization renewed its calls for the change following a shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school in February, reasoning that schools should be "hardened" to protect against potential threats.

Opponents of the policy have called for stricter gun laws, with some Democrats supporting a ban on high-capacity weapons, and raising the minimum age requirement to purchase a firearm.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/403736-nra-spokeswoman-calls-for-end-to-gun-free-zones-after-jacksonville

OK now you can boo!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! So…. So…. So…. So let me see if I can extrapolate Ms. Loesch's logic here. The way to end shootings is to get rid of zones where guns are forbidden. What could possibly go wrong with that? Not like that, sir! Ah, yes, that’s the challenges of doing a live show! Oh and here’s my favorite excuse – the reason mass shootings happen is because of headphones! Hey wait, you know, I have an ear piece in my ear right now, yeah it’s so my director can tell me what to do. Yes, we do have a director for this show!

Grant Stinchfield, a host for the National Rifle Association’s NRATV outlet, reacted to the mass shooting at a video game tournament in Jacksonville, FL, by criticizing a survivor who shared video of the incident for supposedly not hearing the shooting over his headphones.

The August 26 shooting, which took place at a Madden 19 tournament, left two people dead and nine others wounded.

The NRA, and NRATV, frequently focus on what victims of high-profile mass casualty could have supposedly done to avoid being shot rather than focusing on how the perpetrator was able to access weapons to carry out the attack.

During the August 27 broadcast of NRATV’s current events show Stinchfield, Stinchfield played a video (warning: disturbing) from tournament participant @LaYzR96 that he said showed the survivor not reacting to the shooting because he was wearing headphones. Stinchfield said, “There’s no running for cover, there’s not even any looking around. They’re still focused on the screen in front of them as someone is firing a handgun through the crowd.”

Stinchfield apparently is mistaken about what the video shows. No one is seen wearing headphones and the only headphones seen in the shot are draped over a computer monitor, not on someone’s head. The person filming seems aware of the shooting as it happens since the camera moves around without focusing on the screen. He also later tweeted about being “in shock that I actually was witnessing this when it was live.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/08/27/nratv-host-criticizes-survivor-madden-tournament-shooting-supposedly-not-hearing-gunshots-over-his/221110

[font size="8"]Rudy Giuliani
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Go home, Rudy, you’re drunk. Not drunker than this audience! Well, Rudy has said some absolutely crazy shit lately, and we need to document it more here. This is after the week where he famously declared that the “truth is not the truth”. Yes these guys are in such deep, treasonous shit that they’re actually trying to rewrite the definition of the word “truth”. And the sad thing is that they probably will get away with it. And of course you know Trump hires the best people.

Fresh from his declaration that "truth isn't truth," President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said Thursday that Americans would "revolt" if Trump was impeached "for political reasons."

Giuliani was golfing at a Trump-owned golf course in Balmedie, Scotland, when a Sky News reporter asked him if he thought Trump's impeachment was "inevitable" after the president's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty Tuesday of eight fraud-related charges and his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies on the same day.

"Hardly," Giuliani replied. "I think it's inevitable that he won't."

The former New York mayor said impeachment would be "totally horrible."

"He didn't collude with the Russians, he didn't obstruct justice, everything Cohen says has been disproved," he said. "You could only impeach him for political reasons, and the American people would revolt against that."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/24/rudy-giuliani-trump-impeachment-revolt/1083706002/

Yeah no… that shit doesn’t work in real life. But Rudy is a gem, seriously. He’s become increasingly more senile in his old age. And everything he says is literally worse than the thing that came before it. You know Trump is insane, Rudy is even more so!

President Donald Trump's personal attorney delivered another doozy of a soundbite Tuesday night, telling CNN's Chris Cuomo that "nowadays" facts "are in the eye of the beholder."

Rudy Giuliani made the comment while defending Trump's harsh words for former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman. Cuomo said other presidents faced criticism and adversity without resorting to insults.

"Maybe nobody has been as honest as him," Giuliani said.

"If fact-counting is anything, we've never had anybody with the level of mendacity that he has," Cuomo replied. "Not even close."

"It's in the eye of the beholder," said a chuckling Giuliani.

"No, facts are not in the eye of the beholder," Cuomo said, shaking his finger.

"Yes, they are," Giulini said. "Nowadays they are."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/15/rudy-giuliani-president-trump-honest-facts-eye-beholder/1002853002/

It’s like a perpetual shit cycle! So to illustrate this – shit comes in one end, then instead of exiting, gets recirculated like an airplane cabin, and overtime just deteriorates. Rudy Guiliani does have a serious case of shit for brains! Thank you! But then again in order to cure the condition that Guiliani is in, maybe he needs a good solid dose of STFU! Take two STFUs twice a day or as directed by your physician. Side effects include increased irritability, Phantom Hand Syndrome, and braintooth. See our ad in Golf Digest magazine today!

Yeah definitely get a load of this guy! See this is the mind set of the typical Trump supporter – they are so paranoid about losing power that literally *ANY* negative news story means that their whole world is going to come crashing down! Thankfully Trump hires only the best people! And by the way Rudy, when you’re in a hole, stop digging!

Rudy Giuliani on Monday attempted to clarify his weekend remark that "truth isn't truth" as part of his explanation for why he doesn't believe that President Donald Trump should testify with special counsel Robert Mueller.

"My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said,she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn't," tweeted Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump in the Russia investigation.

Giuliani's tweet came less than 24 hours after he sparred with NBC's "Meet the Press" anchor Chuck Todd over the meaning of "truth."
"When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he shouldn't worry, well, that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth," Giuliani said Sunday.

"Truth is truth," Todd replied.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/politics/rudy-giuliani-truth-isnt-truth-response/index.html

[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Don’t Take My Land!
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Minneapolis, it’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates!

The 2016 election put at the forefront America’s problems with racism, and the growing popularity of white nationalism. But our current president, Donald J. Trump, has never fully embraced the side of this trend until recently. Fox News had an expose on a farming controversy in South Africa, and this week, Trump not only took the side of white nationalists, he embraced America’s love of racism with this enduring tweet.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032454567152246785

So there’s a lot to take in in this tweet, and if you are guessing that Trump has never been to South Africa and doesn’t know what he’s talking about, you are correct.

The South African government on Thursday slammed President Donald Trump’s tweet calling for the U.S. to examine South Africa’s land and “farm seizures” from white farmers.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday night that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into “South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”

The president’s missive came shortly after Fox News aired a report asserting that the South African government is “now seizing land from white farmers,” which is not true.

“South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past,” the South African government tweeted in response to Trump’s statement.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/08/23/trump-tweet-sparks-angry-response-south-african-government/1078645002/

So Trump’s tweet was so extreme that the South African government shut it down. Which begs us to answer the question “Is Trump a racist?” to which we answer: “most definitely”. How does Trump going full 1488 affect things? And you never go full 1488, never ever.

Last Wednesday, Donald Trump briefly interrupted his ongoing Twitter tirades denouncing various investigations into his shady behavior with a bizarre tweet about "the large scale killing of farmers" and "land and farm seizures and expropriations" in South Africa. It didn't take long for journalists to figure out what Trump was talking about. He was referencing a racist (and false) conspiracy theory that floats around white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites and had been elevated by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who has grown increasingly bold about mainstreaming ideas picked up from the white supremacist fringe.

That Trump often expresses racist views is neither new nor surprising information, so while news sites dutifully published pieces debunking this conspiracy theory — which implies that the South Africa government is working with vigilantes to steal land from white farmers through violence — it seems likely that both the media and the public will rapidly move on, especially since there are so many other big stories vying for attention.

But this strange interlude deserves more consideration, even amid the constant drumbeat of Trump-is-a-racist stories. By embracing this particular false narrative, the president of the United States has moved beyond garden-variety racism and is now openly pushing a white nationalist myth that has been used for decades to justify a violent ideology, one that occasionally leads to terrorism.

“'White genocide' is probably the most popular theme in the white supremacist world," Heidi Beirich, head of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Salon. The South African narrative Trump referenced "is a subset of that,” she said.
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/27/donald-trumps-white-genocide-rhetoric-a-dangerous-escalation-of-racism/

Trump’s courting of the “white genocide” conspiracy theorists should shock… well, it should shock absolutely no one. But it’s so extreme that absolutely no one wants to touch this one with a 10 foot pole, maybe even a 20 foot one.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s government said Friday it had summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country to “convey the unhappiness of the people” over President Donald Trump’s tweet about alleged white-owned farm seizures and the “large scale killing of farmers.”

In a statement, South Africa said it told U.S. Charge d’Affaires Jessye Lapenn it was “disappointed” over the failure to use available diplomatic channels.

South Africa’s government has said Trump’s tweet was based on “false information” and served “only to polarize debate on this sensitive and crucial matter.”

The country is in the middle of a racially charged debate over land reform, a lawful process that seeks to correct the legacy of decades of white-minority rule that stripped blacks of their land.

Nearly a quarter-century after the end of apartheid, white South Africans, who comprise about 8 percent of the population, own more than 70 percent of the private agricultural land.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/disappointed-south-africa-summons-us-envoy-for-trump-tweet/

And that’s about what happened with this tweet. Trump didn’t mean to say something extremely racist, but yeah, he said something racist. But see, Trump does care about Africans – the white ones, it seems like! But how does this translate to America, you might ask? Well a lot it seems!

The first time Donald Trump tweeted about Africa, he agonised over white people. After watching Fox News’ coverage of the South African land debate last week, the President of the United States instructed his secretary of state to look into the “large scale killing of farmers”. Followers of Peter Dutton’s nine months tenure at Australia’s home affairs ministry will recognise the lie, peddled by the “alt-right”, that black South Africans are targeting white farmers. As the Guardian reported in June, farmer and farmworker murders are at a 20-year low.

But for white people living in every settler state, there’s an awkward question that translates from the Americas to Australia to South Africa to Canada and beyond. How did land become private property, and is that property legitimate? Land struggles, it turns out, might be a way of teaching racists a bit of history and geography.

For as long as the modern state and corporation have existed, indigenous people have faced annihilation as they defend their land. According to Global Witness, last year saw a record 207 indigenous activists killed from India to Honduras while resisting mining and, above all, agribusiness industries. In order for the supplies of palm oil to continue uninterrupted, the indigenous people who live in suitable forest find themselves an impediment to profit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/27/trump-tweets-about-white-farmers-while-indigenous-peoples-face-annihilation

There you have it – Trump ignores the plight of the government actually taking other people’s land while tweeting about something that is really only happening in his head and fed to him by Fox News. this has been it for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters of Minneapolis! 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:

Now my fair congregation! You know all are welcome here at the Holy Church Of The Top 10. It even says so here in our Good Book – “May the LAWRD shine the light on all those who enter his holy house of worship, and they are free to think and exchange ideas!”. Yes, it actually does say that, sir! And you all know this, because that’s what JAYSUS would want! Even if you support the Dark One, whose name shall not be named! But… there are some who won’t have any of it.

A rift between the Liberty University president and an on-campus newspaper indicates that campus free speech battles are not solely an issue for liberal colleges. Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of one of the largest Christian universities in America, is a very vocal supporter of Republicans and conservatives and that support has crossed over to his college's identity. Earlier in the month, Falwell invoked his students to criticize Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not supporting President Trump enough, citing their low attendance at a 2016 event as proof that they did not back Sessions. Now World Magazine alleges that Falwell played a direct role in censoring the political views of Liberty's Champion, the on-campus paper. The alleged censorship mostly applied to criticisms of Trump.

In one allegation, Falwell reportedly directed staffers in 2016 to state the presidential candidate for which they were voting. At another point, Falwell told another editor to not run former Sports Editor Joel Schmieg's column disavowing Trump's "locker room talk" controversy. Schmieg then attempted to share his thoughts on Facebook, but later resigned when a faculty adviser communicated to him that he should refrain from repeating the action in the future. According to World Magazine, Schmieg said, "I didn't feel comfortable being told what I couldn't write about by President Falwell."
https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/21/liberty-u-paper-jerry-falwell-censorship

Well, OK Jerry, I guess even the LAWRD forgives you for this one. But apparently the censorship doesn’t end there! You know those dictator style purges that have been going on overseas in places like the Philippines and Turkey? Yeah the exact same thing is going on right here at home at Liberty University!

Officials at Liberty University fired two student editors with a history of mixed coverage from the institution’s newspaper, the second occasion in which the religious university has come under fire for press censorship.

World, a religious magazine, reported that Bruce Kirk, Liberty’s dean of the school of communication and digital content, in April told the editor in chief and news editor of The Champion that their positions were being eliminated in a “restructuring” of the newspaper.

But administrators replaced the two with a managing editor and an assistant content editor, which were similar to the roles that were cut, World reported.

The editor in chief lost his $3,000-a-semester scholarship. Four other journalists resigned from the paper.

World reported Kirk telling the new round of Champion staffers, “Your job is to keep the LU reputation and the image as it is … Don’t destroy the image of LU. Pretty simple. OK? Well, you might say, ‘Well, that’s not my job, my job is to do journalism. My job is to be First Amendment. My job is to go out and dig and investigate, and I should do anything I want to do because I’m a journalist.’ So let’s get that notion out of your head. OK?”

Liberty is led by President Jerry Falwell Jr., who was criticized in 2016 after he stopped The Champion from publishing a column that slammed then candidate Donald Trump for remarks on the notorious leaked Access Hollywood recording. Falwell, a vocal Trump supporter, said the column was “redundant,” as the newspaper had just run a piece about Trump.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/08/22/more-student-press-censorship-alleged-liberty

Holy shit indeed! And you know by the way it’s no secret that Jerry Falwell Jr unrelentingly supports the Dark One, whose name shall not be named in my church.

In another Trumpian touch, students working on the newspaper staff who receive scholarships must now sign nondisclosure agreements, which include provisions against commenting on social media “about any publication of the Liberty Champion or its affiliated communication services.”

In his Newsmax piece, Falwell claims that one of the faculty members quoted in the World article, Dean of the School of Communication and Digital Content Bruce Kirk, “spoke for himself” and not “as a spokesman for the university, nor as a spokesman for me.”

Falwell’s claim is not very convincing, given that the remarks in question (recorded by a student) were made at a meeting called by the university administration, at which Kirk referred to his role as dean and asserted that the student journalists are beholden to the university and should approach their jobs with the starting point being “What’s going to happen that is positive for Liberty?” Kirk compared the university to a family business, founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. and handed down to his son.

In his non-rebuttal rebuttal at Newsmax, Falwell touts the university’s successes and says he has approved op-ed debates on both sides of controversial issues. Says Falwell, “My only goal in the recent restructuring was to take me out of the mix and instead delegate all editorial decisions to a faculty member.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/falwell-jr-s-unconvincing-rebuttal-of-story-on-purge-at-liberty-u-newspaper/

And it did escalate quickly! Of course, just like the Dark One, Falwell has picked a news outlet that caters to his interests only. And Liberty University has always been such a bastion of free speech, but in the era of the Dark One, is it any surprise what they’re really up to?

Liberty University junior Jack Panyard rejoiced on March 16 when newspaper adviser Deborah Huff told him he would be 2018-19 editor-in-chief of the weekly Liberty Champion—circulation 16,000.

For Panyard and the 15 other undergrad students on the college newspaper staff, the Champion was a beloved part of their daily lives. They hustled to the newspaper office between classes to write, edit, or just hang out. They spent weekends there. Panyard kept textbooks in the office and extra clothes in his desk in case he had to work through the night.

Despite some tension, the Champion staff had had a good year. Many of them studied together, watched movies together, and occasionally played the keyboard in copy editor Sarah Jackson’s house. They went out to eat at Shanghai Express, a Chinese restaurant Panyard described as “cheap and fatty,” and took trips together to tour Charlottesville, Roanoke, and Washington, D.C.

In the fall of 2017, assistant news editor Erin Covey told the group she had never been to a haunted house, so they went to Scaremare, Liberty’s evangelistic version. Just before Christmas, newspaper adviser Huff hosted a staff party. Early in 2018, Covey, editor-in-chief William Young, and news editor Panyard won first place for headline writing in the Virginia Press Association’s news and editorial contest. Young placed first in column writing.
https://world.wng.org/2018/08/papered_over

There you have it! Liberty is so stubborn in their support of the Dark One that they’re actually resorting to a real life purge! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]I Need A Drink
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Hey Minneapolis, I really need a drink!

So you know the point behind this segment is that I have a few drinks and talk about *ANYTHING* in the news as long as it doesn’t involve politics. And yes I’m going to need some something even stronger than my usual Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels for this one because, whew, it’s insane. So tell me bartender, what goes well with a Tinder date? A fuzzy navel? Nah. I’m not drinking that. I’ll just take my usual. So this story is out of New York City, and it’s like an onion - the more layers you peel back, the more it stinks and the more you’re likely to cry as a result. So here’s what happened.

Getting a match on Tinder is easy: Couple your best photos along with a witty bio and you’re bound to get a few bites. However, finding love on a dating app? That’s proven to be more difficult.

Dozens of men arrived at Union Square in New York City on Sunday wearing their best first-date outfits to listen to a DJ spin a few tracks, only to find out that they were all there to go on a date with the same woman.

Natasha Aponte, whose Instagram has since been made private, says she is a self-declared resident of “New York City Baby,” emits “positive vibes,” travels the world, and is an actress, model, and singer. However, she proved that she isn’t just a triple threat in her career — she’s a threat to young men’s hearts.

One man on Twitter wrote about the ordeal, stating that Natasha initially told him that she had a big work project and that she would get back to him. Originally, he assumed it was a very polite way of saying she wasn’t interested and had no intention of talking to him again, but then she messaged him two weeks later and invited him to Union Square.
https://sports.yahoo.com/woman-tricks-dozens-men-mass-tinder-date-085703153.html

No we’re not doing the Trumper Games, but this woman got the idea to put dozens of men into a mass Tinder date with the goal being a reality show style competition to win a date with her. And I mean come on you don’t even get a rose!

The woman whose fake Tinder date with dozens of men became a group competition and later went viral says the stunt was actually a social experiment.

Natasha Aponte, the woman who lured the would-be dates to a park in New York City last week, and Rob Bliss, the creative director behind the project, told "Good Morning America" Thursday that the ruse had been in the works for two years.

"The purpose of making this video was to simply take the Tinder experience and bring it into the real world," Bliss explained.

Aponte messaged dozens of men on Tinder and eventually asked them all to meet her at Manhattan's Union Square Park on Sunday. When they arrived, she jumped out on stage, delivered a speech and asked them to compete for the date.

While many of the men went home, a few stayed to partake in the competition.
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/mystery-revealed-girl-duped-dozens-guys-tinder/story?id=57352170

Of course, because why take part in an insane competition if there’s no vodka involved? I mean this whole thing is nuts. And like I said it’s like an onion – the more layers you peel back, the more it stinks and the more you’re likely to cry as a result.

A woman has used the Tinder dating app to prank more than 100 men into showing up for a date that turned out to be a "Hunger Games"-style competition.

The New York Times reports that the woman identified as Natasha Aponte invited dozens of Tinder contacts to meet her in Manhattan's Union Square on Sunday for what they thought was a one-on-one date.

Instead, a woman who says she was Natasha told them they had to compete for a date with her.

She disqualified the men who were under 5-foot-10 (1.78 meters) and those named Jimmy, a name she dislikes. Then she asked the remaining contestants to perform pushups and footraces.

The stunt reportedly was videotaped by Rob Bliss, the man who shot a widely watched catcalling video in 2014.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/08/21/us/ap-us-tinder-prank.html

[font size="8"]Deep State Diaries Episode 10: The DMV
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It’s time for episode 10 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 Motor Vehicles[/font]

Our next foray into the Deep State centers around the one branch of the government everyone loves to hate because it’s such a bureaucracy. That’s the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV’s overall attention to bureaucratic tendencies has become a running joke on TV shows including the Simpsons and Futurama – which took the DMV’s concept to new heights with the Central Bureaucracy. So why does this organization get such a bad rap? Why do people hate it so much? Well there’s plenty of reasons for that, and none of them are really good. Especially if you’re trying to get a new license, and there happens to be some janky computer software installed.

Idaho’s county sheriffs agree: The Idaho Transportation Department’s new driver’s license software is a wreck.

On Monday, ITD announced yet another breakdown of the system had shut down driver’s license services across the state. The problem, the agency said, was on the software vendor’s side and also affected other states that vendor serves.

At 7:25 a.m. Tuesday, the state agency said on Twitter that the system was back up. But by noon, ITD reversed course and told all sheriff-run DMV offices to “close their doors while troubleshooting continues,” according to a news release.

The Ada County Sheriff’s Office had already sent its DMV staff home by 11 a.m. due to continued problems.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article217422665.html

So that’s just one state! Maybe it’s a department glitch? Maybe it’s a network glitch? Maybe it’s something with the system? Well no, try all of the above! The DMV is one of the jankier operations in our government and it definitely needs some improvement.

Some state employees have been able to skip the long lines at N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles offices this summer by going to a driver’s license office that’s open only to them.

The office, on the third floor of DMV headquarters on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh, has been used for years to test new equipment and procedures and to train workers. But starting in January, DMV invited employees at several state agencies to visit the office to get a REAL ID, a new type of driver’s license that satisfies federal identification standards that will take effect in 2020.

The existence of the state license office was first reported by WBTV in Charlotte, which referred to it as a “secret driver’s license office” used by “select state employees.” DMV Commissioner Torre Jessup bristled at that characterization, saying emails inviting people to use the office were sent to all employees of nine state departments, including Transportation, Public Safety, Agriculture and Consumer Services and Natural and Cultural Resources.

“It’s not secret. We sent out an email with the invitation,” Jessup said in an interview Tuesday. “This is just one part of the entire outreach for us to get people in to get their REAL IDs.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article217456955.html

Now here’s the real reason that people hate the DMV – the lines. Which is absolutely fucking ironic when you think about it since we live in an era where people will wait *DAYS* in line for expensive shit like phones and shoes, but they can’t be bothered to wait 2 hours in line to get their fucking drivers’ license renewed! Thank you Minneapolis!

Wait times at Southern California Department of Motor Vehicles offices have some drivers traveling hundreds of miles to avoid long lines.

The DMV in the high desert town of Needles has some of the shortest lines in the state, KABC reported. When a news crew arrived at 10:30 a.m. Monday, there were only two people waiting in line.

"It's really nice. Not like back at home in L.A. County," one customer said to KABC.

Although the DMV's long lines are infamous, the situation worsened when the DMV started processing information for California’s REAL ID. The modified license will be required for travel in some states and access to secure federal facilities after October 1, 2020.

A spokesperson for the DMV said the agency is monitoring wait times at all 172 field offices across the state.
https://www.10news.com/news/californians-willing-to-travel-for-shorter-dmv-waits

Well at least they gave Otto a shot. But really this just dumbfounds me. People will travel so they don’t have to wait in line, but will gladly give up days to get a new iPhone! The hypocrisy is completely mind boggling! In fact there’s literally people who will wait in line for you! Just…. Ahhh!!!!!

Every Californian is forced to interact with the DMV occasionally, but we all try to limit in-person visits whenever possible because wait times have become so intolerable. The DMV has always been notorious for poor customer service; however, this year wait times have reached record levels and so have the complaints.

Part of the problem is due to a new type of driver’s license that started being offered in January. Back in 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act, which established federal security standards for government-issued identification. People who want to board airline flights, visit military bases or enter federal buildings using a driver’s license after Oct. 1, 2020 must have REAL ID-compliant identification. Due to these increased security standards, REAL ID must be obtained in person at the local DMV office. The influx of people applying for a REAL ID-compliant license is making already-long wait times even worse.

At the Department’s request, last year the Legislature appropriated it an extra $70 million to minimize wait times for its customers in anticipation of the additional workload caused by REAL ID. This money was specifically allocated to open 60 DMV field offices on Saturdays starting in January. However, I was shocked to recently discover that it wasn’t until Aug. 4th that all 60 field offices were finally open on Saturdays.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20180826/committee-rejects-auditing-dmvs-excessive-wait-times

But there’s currently no plans to implement a fast lane at the DMV yet. So don’t go thinking that your time waiting in line is going to be cut short. That’s wishful thinking. There won’t be a VIP or early entry line at least any time soon.

Lines at the DMV are moving more quickly — at least according to the department’s director.

Director Jean Shiomoto says recent changes have shaved time off the average wait.

KCAL9’s Laurie Perez spoke with the director in Granada Hills Saturday while she toured the local DMV office.

Liz and Levi Deras knew spending Saturday morning at the DMV wasn’t going to be fun.

“I came here like around 8:30 and it’s 9:54, so an hour and a half,” said Liz.

Many drivers said they’ve noticed longer wait times.

“I’m beyond frustrated right now,” says Alicia Moran.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/08/25/lines-at-the-dmv-not-exactly-the-fast-lane-just-yet/

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

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

Overall: C-

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

Get out your paint brushes, polish your musical instruments, and get your scripts ready as we are going to check out the National Endowment For The Arts!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Bishop Briggs[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest is a great singer songwriter who just released her debut album “Church Of Scars”. You can see her on tour everywhere this September and October. Now playing her song called “Baby” give it up for Bishop Briggs!

Minneapolis, we love you, we had an awesome time! We will be back soon, we promise! We’re off to Seattle next. See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: Acme Comedy Club, Minneapolis, MN
Special Thanks To: Acme Comedy Club management
Also Special Thanks To: Twin Cities Podcast Festival
Holy Shit Gospel Choir: Holy Church Of The Nazarene Gospel Choir, St. Paul, MN
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
Bishop Briggs Appears Courtesy Of: Teleport 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

August 25, 2018

Preview For This Week's Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Well now to be fair, Mr. Fluffy was enrolled in Southwest's Rabbit Rewards Program! Hey o!!!!

*audience laughs, applauds wildly*

This week on the Top 10 - we are live at the Twin Cities Podcast Festival in Minneapolis! We delve into Duncan Hunter's insane spending habits, Trump goes full 1488, Betsy DeVos wants to throw guns at a gun problem, the National Enquirer has more dirt on Trump than Putin does, Rudy Giuliani needs a good dose of STFU and we're going to debut a brand new segment called "Know Your Meme". Plus in our weekly investigative piece "Top 10 Investigates", we're going to debunk Trump's claim supporting South African white nationalists - what's really going on there?. And in our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in "Holy Shit" our resident pastor is furious at Liberty University over their repeated silencing of those who oppose the Dark One. We also have a new installment of "I Need A Drink" in which we're going to get drunk and tell you about the great Tinder dating hoax of 2018! And the next installment of our ongoing series Deep State Diaries is going to take a look at the inner workings of the Department Of Motor Vehicles. Do your best Patty & Selma impressions here! Plus we've got some live music for you from Bishop Briggs!

Top 10 Conservative Idiots: Wednesdays at 2:00 PM /shameless self promotion

August 22, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-9: Space Nazis Coast To Coast Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-9: Space Nazis Coast To Coast Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! What’s up Detroit??? The Motor City! Motown! Yes, we are back!!! Had a nice little vacay last week. But let’s get back to it and show you just how stupid our conservative leaders are! You know I hope there’s a place where I can get a good chili cheese dog around here, is there? Have you seen that chili? That shit looks lethal. When it cooks it’s like a giant radioactive glob of grease. Death by chili. Hey if there’s any musicians in the audience there’s a great band name for you – Death By Chili. Do we have time for the thing? Good. So the new movie that came out this week – “Billionaire Boys Club” is officially the biggest box office bomb of all time. So the movie made… any guesses? You sir, you said $1 million? Higher or lower? Lower? Yeah how about $287. Yeah there’s no billionaires being made off of this movie. So I had to do some digging on this movie – it stars Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and Ansel Elgbort (Baby Driver). Now the movie had a budget of $15 million and grossed exactly $56 on a per screen average. Oh and did I mention that it stars Kevin Spacey? Yeah that might have been your problem right there. Yeah I know I buried the lead there, but really… it’s 2018! Who thought this was a good idea? Seriously. Oh oh…. Do you see that, my fair audience? Beep… beep… beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. That right there marks the death of Kevin Spacey’s career. 1993 – 2018. You will… not be missed. OK that’s enough of the intro. We got a lot of idiocy to get to but first John Oliver spells out our trade system in a language even our president can understand:

Holy shit, there was a lot of idiocy this week. In the first slot we have some late breaking news – Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are going to prison! Trump really does have the worst attorneys, you guys! And they’re going away for possibly a very long time and we’ve got the inside scoop! Taking the second slot, while all that was going on, Trump instead decided to hold a MAGA rally in West Virginia where he sounded even crazier than usual, probably forgot what he was talking about, and instead decided to focus on his favorite subject: clean coal! At number 3 this week we lost an icon, a legend when Aretha Franklin passed away. But that didn’t stop Trump and conservatives (3) from making total asses of themselves when it came to paying tribute to the legendary R&B singer. At number 4 this week we’re going into outer space and telling you about the latest developments happening in the new 6th branch of the military in a piece we’re calling “Space Farce & The 24th & A Half Century!”. At number 5 this week we’ve got a new installment of Profiles In #Civility, and this week we’re going to play along as we found a game of N-Word Bingo and we’re going to use it to our advantage. Taking the 6th slot is our weekly investigative piece Top 10 Investigates (6), and we’re going to take a look at the city of San Francisco, and they’ve got a massive poop problem that needs to be dealt with. At number 7 this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” (7) and this week our resident pastor is becoming increasingly alarmed that his fellow religious zealots might be turning on each other. At number 8 we’ve got a new installment of “This Fucking Guy” and we’re going to be looking at dueling Christian conspiracy theorists Lance Wallnau and Rick Wiles.They’re crazy. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week we have a new installment of People Are Dumb (9) and whew, there were some doozies this week! Finally this week we’ve got the next installment of our ongoing series Deep State Diaries and this time we’re going to take a look at the inner workings of America’s legal system as we visit the venerable Department Of Justice! Plus to end the show this week we’ve got the great California reggae rock band Rebelution stopping by! And if you kids play your cards right they might play something off their new album “Free Rein”. So don’t make me turn this show around! 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"] Michael Cohen & Paul Manafort
[br] [/font] [br]

Hey everyone guess what? There’s a lot of crooks in this administration and they’re all going to be going away for a very long time! You know anyone remember when Trump said he was only going to hire “the best people”? I only hire the best people, OK? Nobody hires anybody better than I do! So this week Mueller dropped the big one – and you might want to stock up on the popcorn because this is going to get good!

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight counts related to tax fraud, excessive campaign contributions, making false statements to a financial institution, and unlawful corporate contributions at a court hearing in New York on Tuesday. He could face more than five years in prison.

Two of the counts that Cohen pleaded guilty to appear to relate to Trump directly. Cohen admitted on Tuesday to making payments to two women at the direction of an unidentified candidate for political office who appears to be the president. Those payments, Cohen said, were made to influence the outcome of the election.

While Cohen didn't name Trump directly during the hearing, his attorney Lanny Davis said shortly afterward that "Donald Trump directed [Cohen] to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election." The Justice Department confirmed late Tuesday that Trump was the unidentified candidate.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/trumps-ex-lawyer-michael-cohen-strikes-plea-deal-nbc-news.html

Somewhere I can totally picture Trump saying that. But then… oh it gets better! So much better! So Cohen is flipping and turning on Trump. Oh can we throw that tweet up there?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032247043992023040

Yeah that might be the worst legal ad ever – rejected by your own boss! You’re fired, OK? And by the way, don’t retain your services! So here’s what happened next.

A federal jury in Virginia found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight counts of financial crimes, marking the first major prosecution won by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian meddling during the 2016 election.

Manafort was found guilty on the eight counts of the special counsel's 18-count indictment. Each count carries a hefty prison term - when combined, he is facing a maximum of 80 years behind bars, but at sentencing, the total will likely be less. The federal judge declared a mistrial in the other ten counts after jurors could not reach consensus.

Manafort showed no emotion as the judge told him to stand and face the jury, and the judge's clerk declared him guilty on a succession of counts. His wife, Kathleen Manafort, also remained stoic, displaying no response to the verdict was read.

Leaving court on Tuesday afternoon, Manafort's lead counsel, Kevin Downing, told reporters that his client was "disappointed" and "weighing his options."
https://abc11.com/manafort-found-guilty-on-8-counts-in-tax-fraud-trial-/4021375/

Damn straight! So this has been the last 24 hours. It’s going to take a lot to unpack everything that’s been going on so bear with us. But even Paul Manafort himself is realizing the dangers of this administration! I mean come on Michael, it’s taken you that long?

Paul Manafort had just been convicted on eight felony counts of tax and bank fraud. His lead defense lawyer walked up to a bouquet of microphones outside a Virginia federal courthouse and spoke with studied calm and world-class understatement: “Mr. Manafort will be evaluating all of his options at this point.”

He sure will, and quickly. Never mind the spin that Manafort was found guilty on fewer than half of the charges—Tuesday afternoon’s guilty verdicts mean that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager could be sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison. “These are all significant felony convictions,” says Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York. “It’s a big win for the special counsel.” That’s not simply because prosecutors were forced to explain complicated financial documents or overcome the admitted thievery of their star witness, former Manafort aide Rick Gates; or because Judge T.S. Ellis III seemed to delight in hectoring them. The case was the first courtroom test of Robert Mueller’s work in the ongoing Trump-Russia investigation, and it took place under extraordinary political and media pressure. “It’s important in a symbolic way, too,” Rocah says. “Some people who right now think that Trump is ruining all these institutions will get some faith back that he can’t corrupt everything.”

“I don’t want to overstate the impact, given the news cycle and the way in which the Trump administration has been very good at finding new ways of refocusing the press,” says Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. “But this verdict cuts against Trump’s narrative that there is nothing to what Mueller has been doing—that it’s all phony, a witch hunt. Rudy Giuliani recently said that Mueller needs to ‘put up or shut up.’ Well, Mueller is putting up, right? He’s going to court and getting convictions.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/conviction-for-paul-manafort-and-a-defeat-for-donald-trump-narrative-mueller

And in case you’re wondering just how corrupt Trump and his administration are – look no further than Michael Cohen! So Trump’s obviously got a few tricks up his sleeve – and one being the presidential pardon. So far he’s used it to clear Joe Arpaio of using his prisons for America’s Next Top Convict, and shitty documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. So will Manafort be joining those…. prestigious (?) ranks?

WASHINGTON – Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer and fixer, doesn't want a pardon from President Donald Trump and, rather, is hoping to open up about what he knows to investigators with the special counsel Robert Mueller, his lawyer said.

Speaking with NPR Wednesday morning, Lanny Davis, Cohen's attorney, said his client wasn't interested in being pardoned.

"Under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump," Davis said, adding that the president "not only directed a crime, he's part of a cover up."

Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts Tuesday in a surprise hearing in New York that happened within an hour of a jury dropping a guilty verdict on eight counts in the trial against Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/22/lawyer-michael-cohen-doesnt-want-pardon-president-donald-trump/1060199002/

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

You might be asking yourself “where was Trump in all of this when his attorney and campaign manager were being indicted?” Well I answer you, sir or madam, with this. He was in West Virginia, completely forgetting the fact that his corrupt administration is going down. Instead he was there stumping for a… candidate? Ah, who am I kidding! He was stumping for himself! And he’s going off the rails at quite an alarming rate. At this point, picture the lowest point on earth, and then picture the bar going even lower than that.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump made only the most passing mention of the political and legal troubles rapidly enveloping his presidency during a rally of West Virginia Tuesday night, saying there's still no proof his campaign worked with Russian agents to win the 2016 presidential election.

"Fake news. How fake are they?" he said, pointing to news cameras at the back of the Charleston Convention Center. "Fake news and the Russian witch hunt. We've got a whole, big combination. Where is the collusion? You know, they're still looking for collusion! Where is the collusion? Find some collusion. We want to find the collusion."

Trump's rally in West Virginia came scarcely three hours after nearly simultaneous legal developments that threaten his presidency: A guilty verdict against former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on tax and bank fraud charges, and a guilty plea by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen for tax evasion bank fraud and illegal campaign contributions.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/21/donald-trump-west-virginia-rally-where-collusion/1057298002/

Hey! Trumpy is back everybody! No collusion!!! So where is the collusion, sir? Um… it’s happening RIGHT IN FUCKING FRONT OF YOU!!!! Just… ahh!!!!! You know Trump is this guy:

But then of course Trump went into his favorite talking point – himself and the results of the 2016 election. Really, I don’t think Trump knows the definition of the phrase “beating a dead horse” because that’s certainly what he’s doing here.

When President Donald Trump last visited Charleston, it was as a candidate for the office he now holds.

It was May 6, four days before the primary election. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the race days before, making Trump the presumptive GOP nominee. Around 12,000 people attended a campaign rally held at the Charleston Civic Center, in which Trump touted his goal of revitalizing the coal industry.

“You will look back and you will say it was the single greatest vote you ever cast. America will be great again. We’ll be America first. We’ll start winning, winning, winning, and you are going to be very proud,” he said. “And for those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off.”

Trump will return to Charleston Tuesday for his sixth visit to West Virginia since taking office and his first to Charleston since that rally.

The night before the visit, Trump tweeted a couple of times about the two most likely topics of the rally — a new proposal to regulate coal plant emissions and the U.S. Senate candidacy of West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
http://wvmetronews.com/2018/08/21/trump-expected-to-tout-coal-morrisey-at-charleston-rally/

Clean coal!!!! Clean coal!!! When will they realize that clean coal is an oxymoron? I mean they don’t call the disease you get from coal mining “clean lung”! But then Trump of course goes even further off the deep end when describing the wonders of clean coal:

Last night, the Trump administration unveiled its replacement for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which gave states targets to reduce the greenhouse-gas pollution emitted by their power plants. The Trump policy is designed to freeze in place the rapid changes in energy of the previous eight years. Trump is promoting his new policy in a speech in West Virginia today. But the most revealing explication of his policy came in little-publicized remarks to donors a few days earlier.

In his comments, which drew appreciative laughter and applause, Trump ranted bizarrely against wind energy, which he associates with his liberal elitist enemies, and in favor of coal, which he sees as infused with MAGA-ness. The short rant reveals more about the energy agenda of the new administration, and the diseased mind of its leader, than any other manifesto.

Coal, Trump told his audience, is “a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible,” he declared. The president continued:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/trump-gives-his-craziest-climate-speech-ever.html

We got to play the video for this one because it’s truly spectacular. Yeah that happened! So when are we going to get the coal out of Trump’s head? You can’t get enough miners for that job, sir! Ah don’t you hate it when audience members are funnier than you sometimes? But this might be one of Trump’s most absurd claims yet! Guess what he said about windmills. Fucking windmills!

President Donald Trump criticized windmills as a source of energy at a New York fundraiser last week, saying they “kill so many birds,” amid escalating efforts by the Trump administration to revive the fading coal industry.

On Monday, Trump boasted that coal was an “indestructible” form of energy and ridiculed windmills at a private fundraising event in Utica. “Coal is indestructible. You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills.

“They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field. I said, ‘What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?’ ‘Well, then we have a problem.’”

Trump’s remarks came amid new plans to replace Obama-era climate policies with new regulations devised to ensure coal-burning plants run harder and operate for longer, leading to more harmful emissions.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-windmills-are-bird-killers-he-tries-revive-coal-industry-1079910

[font size="8"]Conservatives Pay Tribute To Aretha Franklin
[br] [/font] [br]

This week we lost a living legend. An icon of American arts, music and entertainment, and champion of civil rights, freedom, and diversity. I’m of course talking about Aretha Franklin. So the question arises – how do you honor a goddess among mere mortals? Well, there were lots of amazing tributes to Ms. Franklin, but that’s not what we are here to talk about. Instead we’re going to talk about the less sensitive ones coming from conservatives who don’t know how to pay R-E-S-PECT (see what I did there?) to one of the all time greats. Like our president for instance.

Trump reacted to news of the singer’s death during a Cabinet meeting the same day, offering his condolences to her family.

“She worked for me on numerous occasions,” he said. He also celebrated the “extraordinary legacy” of the soul, pop and R&B virtuoso, calling her “terrific.”

Trump’s comments proved, as ever, controversial, and not simply because her appearances at his properties hardly amounted to a sustained employment relationship. More pointedly, even if she had worked for him, some asked, what was the relevance of that fact on the day of her death?

“I find it disturbing and sad, and a reflection of his endless narcissism,” said David Ritz, who spent years with Franklin seeking to understand the guarded performer for his 2014 biography, “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin.” He also worked with Franklin on her 1999 autobiography, “Aretha: From These Roots.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/17/aretha-franklin-worked-for-me-claims-trump-did-she/?utm_term=.0c36ef25254e

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! So that happened. But let’s expand on that – only in white conservative America could a white supremacist like Trump ever claim that one of the most prolific black female singers of our time – was one of his employees!

Donald Trump isn’t particularly nice to anyone. His standard demeanor and language in disagreement or debate resemble the union of a road-rage incident and a bad game of the dozens. Even in agreement, he’s not a person for whom respect—of others or of the office he holds—is necessarily a guiding light. He does not run out of venom for opponents, and rarely has a word of unqualified praise for people who haven’t praised him first.

But if one pattern in his remarks about other people has crystallized in the past few months, it’s that the president employs a particular species of dismissive language when he’s talking about black women. After spending a good chunk of his first year in office attacking black men, his sophomore year has involved high-profile verbal attacks against high-profile black women. And, as evidenced by his recent remarks on the death of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, his need to subordinate black women, even without enmity, is a primary drive.

“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting. “She worked for me on numerous occasions. She was terrific—Aretha Franklin—on her passing. She brought joy to millions of lives and her extraordinary legacy will thrive and inspire many generations to come.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/aretha-franklin-trump/567760/

Nah, there’s no holding or waiting. Trump was a dick and he’s so senile that he actually thought that Aretha worked for him. And here’s where it gets horrible. Aretha *HATED* Trump with the fiery passion of 1,000 suns. So he definitely ain’t giving her any R-E-S-PECT. R-E-S-PECT this, Trump!

Aretha Franklin made her feelings on President Donald Trump crystal clear behind closed doors.

The Respect singer, who died on Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was reportedly invited to perform at Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January 2016 but declined the offer as she didn’t agree with his political agenda.

According to the Daily Beast, Aretha told friends privately that ‘no amount of money’ could have persuaded her to perform at the inauguration.

Another source told the website that Aretha ‘despised’ everything Trump stood for and placed her support in his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, during the presidential race.

Weeks before Trump was sworn into the White House, The Hill asked Aretha if she would provide the soundtrack, to which she replied: ‘That’s a good question. That’s a very good question. We’ll see.’
https://metro.co.uk/2018/08/17/aretha-franklin-despised-president-trump-and-rejected-invite-to-perform-at-his-inauguration-7853545/

Oh and here’s where it gets weird, because, why wouldn’t it? Apparently Trump was begging Aretha to perform at his inauguration, and well, she turned it down. Shit, Trump couldn’t even get an Aretha impersonator!

As we all have learned, Aretha Franklin wasn’t just the Queen of Soul, she also fought for justice. Ms. Franklin was close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and sang at his funeral. She offered to post bail for Angela Davis in 1979, saying, “I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people.” Franklin also sang at three inaugurations: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. However, there is reportedly one inauguration she refused to lend her voice — Trump’s. And a new report claims he was begging the Queen of Soul.

Franklin “hated” the rise of Trump. Tom Barrack, the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, was attempting to book Aretha, The Daily Beast reports, writing, ” Trump had long considered the legendary singer a friend, and wanted the offer framed as an opportunity to help bring the country back together after a brutal, bruising presidential election.”

A “source” told The Daily Beast that Franklin said “no amount of money” would persuade her to perform for him at the inauguration. Also, “Another knowledgeable source described her as ‘despising’ everything he stood for, as an avowed Hillary Clinton supporter.”

The Daily Beast said Barrack’s spokesman declined to comment on the story.

Of course this should be no shocker. Unlike Omarosa, Ms. Franklin was able to clearly see who Trump was.
https://newpittsburghcourieronline.com/2018/08/19/trump-was-begging-to-get-aretha-franklin-to-perform-at-his-inauguration-and-her-reported-reaction-was-priceless/

And just when you think it couldn’t get any more insensitive, along comes Fox News and they had an even worse tribute for Aretha than Trump did! Yeah can we show that?

Praise poured in for Aretha Franklin Thursday following the news of her death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 76. Fans and fellow artists tweeted about her lasting influence, news channels ran touching retrospectives and a makeshift memorial sprung up at her Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

Somehow Fox News got it wrong.

During a video tribute to the Queen of Soul, Fox featured a graphic with two images of singers. The primary picture on the left was definitely one of a smiling Franklin. The secondary picture on the right, with the words “Aretha Franklin Singer 1942-2018” below it, was definitely Patti LaBelle.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/16/fox-news-tribute-to-aretha-franklin-mistakenly-uses-image-of-rumored-rival-patti-labelle/

Can we show that?

https://twitter.com/BadFoxGraphics/status/1030158341883002881

Wanna get away? You know what? Let’s play some Aretha.

[font size="8"]Space Farce
[br] [/font] [br]

We need some music for this one.

Captain’s log. Stardate 2018822. America might be one step closer to creating a sixth branch of the Armed Forces that would explore (and most likely declare war on) the vast regions of outer space and beyond. But we have a megalomaniacal wannabe dictator at the helm of this country. But of course with anything new, there are obstacles and challenges when it comes to exploring the great beyond. Namely our government because why not?

Vice President Pence laid out an ambitious plan Thursday that would begin creating a military command dedicated to space and establish a “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the U.S. military as soon as 2020, the first since the Air Force was formed shortly after World War II.

Pence warned of the advancements that potential adversaries are making and issued what amounted to a call to arms to preserve the military’s dominance in space.

“Just as we’ve done in ages past, the United States will meet the emerging threats on this new battlefield,” he said in a speech at the Pentagon. “The time has come to establish the United States Space Force.”

But the monumental task of standing up a new military department, which would require approval by a Congress that shelved the idea last year, may require significant new spending and a reorganization of the largest bureaucracy in the world. And the idea has already run into fierce opposition inside and outside the Pentagon, particularly from the Air Force, which could lose some of its responsibilities.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pence-details-plan-for-creation-of-space-force-in-what-would-be-the-sixth-branch-of-the-military/2018/08/09/0b40b8d0-9bdc-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.f723d108096a

Yeah it’s going to be kind of like that. So what is the biggest challenge of setting up a brand new branch of the military when you don’t even know what it’s primary function is going to be yet?

The Senate has emerged as a major impediment to President Trump’s hopes for a new "Space Force."

While the House GOP has been largely supportive of the idea of creating a new military branch for space, skeptics in the Senate from both parties have raised concerns about its cost — and the potential for adding to bureaucratic overhead at the Pentagon.

There’s a recognition that players like China are increasingly turning to space, leaving a risk that the U.S. could be left behind. But there are also fears that it will turn into an expensive boondoggle.

“There is an absolute threat, and we need to figure out how to counter that,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). “How do we make sure we're protecting taxpayer dollars and making sure they're most efficiently used while achieving that objective?”
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/402748-senate-emerges-as-obstacle-to-trumps-space-force

So what is the mission of Space Force? And who would be at the helm? Well, Roger Stone apparently has one idea already!

Wow, what a fine, fun loving group of Nazi Space Cowboys! Somehow I don't think Tommy Lee Jones would get involved with this crew. To infinity and... something? For the record let’s call this Space Nazis Coast To Coast. It’s not that crazy, I mean could it be?

The U.S. military hasn’t added a new uniformed service in 70 years, when the Air Force was created in the aftermath of World War II.

If Congress gets its way, that will soon change.

In a bipartisan vote last month, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would direct the Defense Department to build a new “space corps” within the Air Force. Its backers blame the Pentagon for failing to prioritize space security in recent years, a lapse that has allowed rivals like Russia and China the opportunity to catch up to U.S. superiority. The proposal’s fate now rests in the Senate, but its most powerful foe is the military itself, which says Congress should simply send more resources rather than force it to undertake a bureaucratic overhaul during a time of war.

“The military has not done a good enough job looking after space with all its other distracting priorities,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who has championed the idea of a space corps along with Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of an armed-services subcommittee in the House. “It’s just not getting the attention it deserves.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/military-space-corps/536124/

That’s probably about the only thing threatening us in space right now. What, is Trump going to build a wall around Mars and make the Martians pay for it? “Mars is not sending us their best people, OK? I mean we need to build a wall and make them pay for it.” You know I just want to see the Flat Earthers’ heads explode, Kingsman style when they see that the earth is indeed round! So let’s ask an actual astrophysicist what he thinks about this. What do you think, Dr. Tyson?

Donald Trump’s proposed Space Force has been ridiculed by many well-known people including celebrities Stephen King and Mark Hamill, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and even Defense Secretary James Mattis.

But it’s getting tacit support from, of all people, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson ― sort of.

On Monday, Tyson tweeted that he’s “okay with a US Space Force” but suggested another new branch of the military might be more appropriate.

Some people pressed Tyson that his proposed “Truth Force” might cause more problems than it would solve.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-space-force-trump-twitter_us_5b7ae09ee4b05906b415fec1

https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1031556958153666561

Oh!!!! You know what? Let’s bow out of this one the only way we know how!

[font size="8"]Profiles In #Civility
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Hey Detroit, I hope that everyone got their bingo cards at the door because it’s time for some:

So I saw this version of Bingo come up on my Twitter feed and I got to thinking this would be great to play when we feature Profiles In #Civility. Now we’re flipping the rules of this Bingo game a bit – see the original premise was to figure out when it’s socially acceptable to use the N word. Now we’re going to use this same game to figure out when it’s socially acceptable for white people to call the cops on black people. Which is also never. But we’ll try. Here’s the game for those of you playing along at home. Unfortunately we can’t give you any prizes if you’re playing at home but here you’ll get our snazzy Top 10 Season 5 tour shirt! Yeah look at that! So here’s the board:

OK now that the rules have been explained here’s our first story. This one took place in Michigan where a patient had a rather unusual request.

A Black nurse is suing her employer for honoring a racist request at a Michigan hospital after a patient asked to be seen by someone of another race.

Teoka Williams claims that Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn violated her federal and state civil rights by accommodating a patient’s demand to remove the Black woman after she overhead a conversation where the patient said she “didn’t want a “Black b—-“ caring for her, Fox 2 Detroit reported. Williams said she was then subsequently barred from servicing the patient and was forbade from even entering the patient’s room.

In the federal lawsuit Williams filed on Monday, the registered nurse claims that she told human resources about the incident but said they told her in reply “patient requests are honored all the time and the next time it happens she would simply be taken off the assignment altogether.”

Beaumont Hospital released the following statement saying that its “highest priority is providing a safe environment that is free from discrimination for both our patients and staff, and delivering care with compassion, dignity and respect.”

Read more: https://thegrio.com/2018/08/20/black-nurse-sues-hospital-racism/

OK so who had… “I – I’m not a racist”? OK… you, sir, ma’am, you, you, you , and you. Next up we have this story out of Washington, DC, and if you’re riding the metro where there’s a bunch of people in public places, maybe don’t say this.

So this is a story about a white woman who thought it was a good idea to call a bus full of passengers “n-------” in Northeast D.C., during Tuesday evening rush hour ... only to find herself an unwilling participant in the time-honored tradition of catching hands.

According to Fox5DC, the woman had to be taken to the hospital after the verbal confrontation turned quickly physical, because you know, she called people niggers in Chocolate City of all places.

Emergency responders were called to a bus stop near 2nd and H streets at around 6 p.m. Apparently two women had gotten into an argument on the X2 Metrobus. It is not clear what started the argument. But it became clear what ended it.
https://www.theroot.com/feel-bold-enough-to-call-black-bus-riders-in-dc-the-n-w-1828391420

OK who had… G – “But black people use it too!!!!” I got you sir, ma’am, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you. Next up we have a pro gun activist (and probable Trump supporter) who used this word in a very unsettling manner.

A Vermont man whose gun activism got him a write-up by Fox News has been arrested for pointing a gun at a black woman while yelling racial slurs — an act that got him charged with a hate crime.

The Burlington Free Press reported that 23-year-old Sheldon Rheaume, a resident of Essex, VT, was jailed without bond early Tuesday morning after on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment and hate-motivated disorderly conduct.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/gun-activist-profiled-fox-news-gets-arrested-hate-crime-threatening-black-woman-gunpoint/

OK who had… “B- But I didn’t use the hard -er!”? OK you ma’am, you sir, you and you. For our next story – we go to Boston for this story. So a woman parking her bike on the street is a reason to call the cops, right?

A Boston woman says she found herself being accosted by an angry white man simply because she parked her motorcycle on the street where he lived.

In a video posted on her Facebook page, Boston resident NeNe Judge’Mayo can be seen getting screamed at by a white man after she parked her motorcycle in what he described as “his neighborhood” of Dorchester — despite the fact that Judge’Mayo lives in Dorchester as well.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/neighborhood-white-man-melts-seeing-black-woman-park-motorcycle-street/

OK who had “N – freedom of speech”? OK – you sir, you ma’am, you and you. Next up - why of course Florida is involved in this one! And if you’re a doctor you might want to refrain from using racial slurs, especially in a confined space like on an airplane.

A doctor showed up late at the Orlando, Fla., airport for an early morning American Airlines flight to Philadelphia this past Thursday. According to the New York Times, his flight was scheduled to take off at 6:24 a.m. He got to the gate at 6:00 a.m.

Airline employees at the gate told Dr. Jeffrey Epstein, 59, that he was too late to board the flight. Epstein became upset and began berating the employees at the gate, which resulted in police being called.

When the officers arrived, Epstein began yelling at them too, taunting them about their ability (or lack thereof) to de-escalate a situation and demanding that they either find him a flight or arrest him. The officers arrested him, and according to an arrest affidavit obtained by WESH, Epstein was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest, trespassing after a warning and disorderly conduct.
https://www.theroot.com/white-doctor-in-florida-claims-police-treated-him-like-1828446630

OK who had “I – Ambien”? OK – you, you, you, you and you. Finally this week there is some good news coming out of the state of New York! So the state legislature there is proposing making this type of thing an actual hate crime.

In the past year, numerous incidents have been caught on tape in which white people called the police on black people who were simply sitting in coffee shops, enjoying a barbecue, or eating lunch in their university building. Now, one lawmaker in New York wants to criminalize these unnecessary 911 calls as hate crimes.

This week, New York State Sen. Jesse Hamilton proposed legislation that, if passed, would categorize 911 calls on law-abiding people of color as hate crimes. His proposal came not long after a Trump supporter reportedly called the police on him while he was campaigning on a Brooklyn street corner.

"That's gonna be a hate crime," Hamilton told Patch. "This pattern of calling the police on black people going about their business and participating in the life of our country has to stop."
https://www.bustle.com/p/calling-the-cops-on-black-people-unnecessarily-could-become-a-hate-crime-in-new-york-10148783

OK who had “O – not all white people”? BINGO!!!!! Come on up here sir! What’s your name? Robert? Where are you from? Dearborn? Great town I’ve been there! Awesome. Robert from Dearborn is our winner tonight! Round of applause! This has been:

[font size="8"] Top 10 Investigates: San Francisco Poop
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Detroit it’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates!

The city of San Francisco has been through a lot in the last few years. It’s the wealthiest city in the entire country. And with being the wealthiest city in the country comes a lot of responsibilities other cities just plain don’t have. The city is in fact dealing with a problem that’s not seen anywhere else in the entire country. San Francisco is dealing with a homeless problem that’s astronomical and only getting worse each year. But with the homeless problem comes a very stinky and smelly situation.

It’s an empirical fact: San Francisco is a crappier place to live these days. Sightings of human feces on the sidewalks are now a regular occurrence; over the past 10 years, complaints about human waste have increased 400%. People now call the city 65 times a day to report poop, and there have been 14,597 calls in 2018 alone. Last year, software engineer Jenn Wong even created a poop map of San Francisco, showing the concentration of incidents across the city. New mayor London Breed said: “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.” In a revolting recent incident, a 20lb bag of fecal waste showed up on a street in the city’s Tenderloin district.

A city covered in poop is so disgusting it has to be almost comical. But the uptick in street defecation is the symbol of a human tragedy. People aren’t pooping on the streets because they have suddenly forgotten what a bathroom is, or unlearned basic hygiene. The incidents are part of a broader failure of the city to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, and show the catastrophic, socially destructive effects of unchecked inequality.

It’s impossible to talk about street feces without talking about homelessness and housing. While there aren’t actually more homeless people than there have been in the past, the gentrification of San Francisco has had a severe effect on the homeless. Development has pushed homeless residents out of secluded spaces, and there is less and less space for them to inhabit as “places where homeless people used to sleep becoming offices and housing”, in the words of a city official. The city routinely clears away encampments, causing people to wander around the city in search of a new temporary space.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/san-francisco-poop-problem-inequality-homelessness

Unfortunately that’s not how it works in real life. But those are some pretty disturbing numbers, and what is the city of San Francisco doing about it? Well, numerous attempts to work out the city’s poop problem have been, well, fecal at best.

San Francisco is launching a “Poop Patrol” in an effort to clean up city streets as it struggles with the persistent issue of homelessness and a lack of public restrooms.

A team of staffers from the Department of Public Works will begin patrolling certain areas of the city to target waste with a steam cleaner, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday. The initiative comes after the city received more than 14,500 calls reporting feces on sidewalks between Jan. 1 and Aug. 13, according to the Chronicle. While a lot of the waste comes from dogs, an analysis by NBC Bay Area in February found that reports of human waste on San Francisco streets had increased in recent years.

San Francisco — one of the nation’s wealthiest metropolitan areas, where housing costs have skyrocketed — has one of the largest homeless populations in the country.
http://time.com/5368610/san-francisco-poop-patrol-problem/

But a mere poop patrol may not be enough to clean up the city’s massive and growing waste problem, which is compromising of more than just the human kind of waste. There’s other dangers to worry about if you’re wandering about the bay area.

San Francisco's streets are so filthy that at least one infectious disease expert has compared the city to some of the dirtiest slums in the world.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of the city in February, finding giant mounds of trash and food on the majority of streets. At least 100 discarded needles and more than 300 piles of human feces were also found in downtown San Francisco, according to the report.

San Francisco's new mayor, London Breed, had proposed adding nearly $13 million to the city's $65 million street cleaning budget over the next two years, according to NBC Bay Area.

"I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here," Breed told NBC Bay Area last month. "We have to make sure people who live here, [and] sadly, people who are homeless here, that they are also held accountable for taking care of our streets. This is our home."
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squalor-city-streets-strewn-with-trash-needles-and-human-feces

So how does the newly elected mayor of San Francisco to clean up this stinky mess? Well there’s if course been numerous proposals. But they instead may be looking at enacting a similar campaign proposed in India.

While the populist voice in San Francisco is to root out the "homeless migrants", a section of the civil society has called it a "flawed and impractical" solution. The latter have, instead, pitched for construction of mass toilets by the state to eradicate the menace.

In India, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 ensured that 80 million household toilets were built in the nation in the past four years. The construction cost was majorly borne by the government, and partly by the beneficiary.

The success of the scheme could be gauged by the fact that major Indian cities, including Mumbai - which has a population of over 22 million residents - have been declared "open-defecation free".

The success of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan could be a case study for the administration in San Francisco, which is struggling to handle the city's sanitation woes despite a population of 8,70,000.
https://www.latestly.com/world/human-feces-on-rise-in-san-francisco-this-us-city-needs-a-campaign-akin-to-swachh-bharat-abhiyan-332500.html

So the new mayor of San Francisco realizes that there is a truly massive poop problem that needs to be dealt with in a timely manner. And numerous attempts to come up with a simple solution to a complicated problem, have again, been fecal.

San Francisco's new mayor London Breed has lived in the city by the Bay for most of her life — and in all that time, she told a local NBC affiliate that she's never seen as much human feces piled on the sidewalks as she did during a recent stroll through the city.

"I will say there is more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here," Breed told NBC in a recent interview. "That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans."

Breed's findings are a part of a broader issue affecting San Francisco in which 7,499 homeless individuals live on the city's streets without access to public restrooms and other necessary resources. Due to a variety of factors, including a lack of affordable housing and shortcomings in the mental healthcare system, the homelessness crisis in the city has resulted in drug needles, human feces and garbage riddling the streets to a degree comparable to that in some of the world's dirtiest slums.
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-more-feces-in-streets-than-ever-2018-7

So there you have it. A problem so stinky that it cannot be corrected overnight. This has been Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters of Detroit! 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! While we were off last week there were certain atrocities being committed at the discretion of our fellow religious zealots. So apparently I’m being told by members of my congregation that the good LAWRD’s supposedly unrelenting support of the Dark One, whose name shall not be named in my church, has us divided! Well mainly more them. But a divided church CANNOT STAND!

Leigh Valentine and Chris McDonald, who regularly host the “Faith & Freedom” program on the YourVoice America network on Sundays, appeared instead on McDonald’s own “Mc Files” program last weekend, where they declared that God will destroy former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman for betraying President Trump.

McDonald claimed that the family of the late actor Michael Clarke Duncan, to whom Manigault Newman was engaged before his death in 2012, “have opened an investigation into her for misusing his money,” which he said is retribution from God for her betrayal of “God’s anointed.”

“When you go out and you try to destroy someone that God has anointed and you go out and destroy God’s appointed person, you better make sure that you know what you’re doing,” McDonald said, “because God has a way, Leigh, of putting the spotlight back on you and you bearing the cost of your own deception.”

“She has sought to destroy President Trump and now she’s going to wind up being destroyed herself,” McDonald declared. “And that should warn every one of us, we better be careful how we talk about people that God has his hand on.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/touch-not-my-anointed-chris-mcdonald-leigh-valentine-say-god-will-destroy-omarosa-for-betraying-trump/

Now really, you know what you did there. You invoked the good LAWRD’s name in vein when discussing his support of the Dark One! Now the LAWRD loves all people, this is true, this is true. You should all know this, it’s in the book! But apparently GAWD works in mysterious ways! And he also moves in mysterious ways. I know that song, sir!

Last week, Rodney Howard-Browne, a right-wing pastor and radical conspiracy theorist who laid hands on and prayed over President Trump in the Oval Office last year, released a “documentary” ostensibly about the need for a Christian awakening in America that was essentially an extended infomercial for his River Church in Tampa Bay, Florida.

In between segments promoting his church, Howard-Browne sought to terrify viewers with nightmarish scenarios about what will happen to this nation if the people do not turn back to God.

“If we have don’t have a great awakening, people are going to have a rude awakening,” he said, warning that this nation is on the verge of total economic collapse and/or at great risk of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that will destroy the nation’s electronic infrastructure and wipe out half the population.

“I’ve been inside the Congress, I’ve spoken to high-level congresspeople on the Finance Committee and they confirm what I am saying, so I’m not making this up,” Howard-Brown insisted.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/emp-attack-economic-collapse-await-u-s-absent-a-great-awakening-warns-rodney-howard-browne/

By the way how great is our visiting house worship band? Let’s give it up for them! Yes we like to change it up here a bit at the Holy Church Of The Top 10. But apparently even GAWD showed up to tell people that the Dark One wouldn’t be elected! Yes, this was a thing that happened apparently!

Televangelist Billye Brim appeared on “The Jim Bakker Show” today, where she claimed that Jesus had told a former-Muslim friend of hers weeks before the 2016 election that Donald Trump would become president.

Brim said that her friend “Max,” who had been born a Muslim but converted to Christianity after receiving multiple visitations from Christ, called her in September 2016 to tell her that he had been visited by Jesus “who told him that Donald Trump was going to be president.”

“In September, he called me and he said, ‘Jesus appeared to me and he told me that Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States and that He has been preparing him, that he wasn’t ready in 2012, but He had him prepared and he’s ready now,'” Brim said. “And Jesus said to him, ‘He’s closer to me than you know.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘I want him to be president for these reasons: To bless America, to bless Israel, and to bless Jerusalem, but he must have prayer like never before.'”

Brim said that she had been asked to participate in the election night broadcast that was produced by Kenneth Copeland Ministries and so she called Max before her appearance to get some insights into what Jesus was saying about the election.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jesus-told-billye-brims-ex-muslim-friend-that-trump-would-become-president/

That is a good question, JAYSUS!!! I mean while on the subject of division, do we really need to be reminded that those who don’t support the Dark One need an exorcism? I mean that’s especially cruel to those being exorcised!

Religious Right activist and former Colorado state legislator Gordon Klingenschmitt said on a recent episode of his “Pray In Jesus Name” program that liberals who are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” are in need of an exorcism.

As Klingenschmitt sees it, since President Trump is being used by God, those who oppose him must be controlled by demons.

“I’m sure those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome look at the president and say, ‘He must be demonized because he makes me feel so anxious inside,'” Klingenschmitt explained. “But, again, these are people who are deranged, so are they properly discerning the evil spirit inside of President Trump? No. Because of their derangement, because of the demons inside them, they project their anxiety on to someone else who might be causing their anxiety. But it’s not inside the president—if anything, he might be influenced by the spirit of God sometimes—the demon is inside of those who welcome this fear and this anxiety.”

“So if God didn’t give you a spirit of fear and anxiety and derangement, but you’re feeling this spirit of fear and anxiety and derangement inside of you, is that coming from God?” he asked. “No, it’s coming from the devil and the demonic spirit of fear inside of these people who have Trump Derangement Syndrome may require an exorcism.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gordon-klingenschmit-liberals-who-have-trump-derangement-syndrome-may-require-an-exorcism/

There you have it folks! I mean why attempt to bridge the gap when you can simply exorcise their DAYMONS away? Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]This Fucking Guy: Lance Wallnau & Rick Wiles
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It’s time for:

So ultra far right insane propaganda and conspiracy theories have been creeping up and popping up in literally every aspect of our lives now. That’s just the culture we live in. But there’s not one but two guys who are smoking the bad Covfefe 24 hours a day. I’ll start with this fucking guy – Lance Wallnau. And this fucking guy is certifiably batshit crazy, he cooks up more insane right wing theories than Alex Jones ever would or could! Like here’s a perfect example:

Right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau streamed a video on Periscope last night in which he asserted that millions of Americans are too afraid to admit that they support President Trump, which he likened directly to the Jews in the Bible who “all knew” that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and were too afraid to admit it.

“I’m just fed up with the fact that believers have to operate like the Jewish people did,” he said. “They all knew Jesus was the Messiah but nobody actually identified with him for fear of being put out of the synagogue. I mean, Donald Trump is that for me; you’ve got 50 million people that voted for him and you wouldn’t know where they are.”

Wallnau lamented that too many people are afraid of upsetting the “moronic elites who are progressively antagonistic to Donald Trump” to admit that they support the president, but predicted that millions of these voters will turn out in the midterms to support Republicans, resulting in “the first election where the 30 or so seats that are supposed to be lost don’t get lost.”

“In Hollywood and in the entertainment circles, conservatives and Christians cannot openly acknowledge their values and beliefs for fear of being put out of the synagogue,” Wallnau said. “How is this not like Israel at the time when Jesus was here? It’s exactly like that.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/lance-wallnau-people-afraid-to-support-trump-are-exactly-like-jews-afraid-to-admit-jesus-was-the-messiah/

There you have it – he literally just compared Trump supporters to Jews in the holocaust. And hey when racist shitbags start getting executed in the streets, then you can have a reason to complain. Until then, shut the fuck up! Thank you Detroit! Lance is so off the wall batshit crazy that he actually thought that Unite The Right II – the neo Nazi rally in DC last week – was a false flag!

Right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau posted a video on his Facebook page on Saturday, warning that the planned Unite The Right 2 rally in Washington, D.C., was really a left-wing front operation designed to demonize conservatives because “you can’t find white supremacists” in America today.

“These are paid actors,” Wallnau said. “The gift that the left wants is white supremacists and to link it with conservatives because there are no conservative white supremacists. That’s all a fiction.”

“If you really want to take down Donald Trump, to destroy what God’s doing in America, keep dividing people with hate, divide them with race, try to get Trump painted as a racist when he’s not,” Wallnau added, “they’re gonna come back at him with racism.”

Wallnau insisted that Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Unite The Right rallies, is really “a socialist/Marxist tool of the Obama administration to organize opposition” to Trump.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/lance-wallnau-unite-the-right-was-a-left-wing-false-flag/

Really? The Nazis were paid actors? So who’s paying them? Oh wait, don’t tell me! It was that dirty George Soros! I hear he has deep pockets. And his insurance benefits are pretty good too. As if fucking with people like Lance Wallnau wasn’t enough, there’s this fucking guy, Rick Wiles. Maybe Lance and Rick can cohost a show together – Batshit Crazy and Batshit Crazier! Oh wait, he doesn’t like conspiracy theorists. Except when he is one.

Rick Wiles is an End Times broadcaster and a truly unhinged right-wing conspiracy theorist who believes, among other things, that the Las Vegas massacre was carried out a top secret death squad that answers to the secret “a gay/lesbian Nazi regime” that controls America.

One would think that someone holding such views would be a fan of another equally unhinged right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, but apparently that is not the case, as Wiles used his “TruNews” television program on Tuesday to insist that “every Christian should disavow Alex Jones” because he is “mentally unstable” and/or demon-possessed.

Wiles was alarmed by a video of Jones going off on a snarling rant against CNN’s Brian Stelter earlier this year and warned that Jones is either demon-possessed or else a deep state “plant” designed to give the government justification to strip conservatives of their First and Second Amendment rights by making them all look insane.

“You need to be shocked by what this guy is saying and doing,” Wiles said. “Every Christian should disavow Alex Jones. You should disavow him until he repents and, quite frankly, until he is delivered.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rick-wiles-every-christian-should-disavow-alex-jones/

Yeah probably. So Rick Wiles is a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t like conspiracy theorists. Is that the 2018 version of Dadaism? Just crazy against crazy? But apparently it’s all a big lie according to Rick. It’s all the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep state folks!

To say that End Times broadcaster Rick Wiles is a right-wing conspiracy theorist would be a massive understatement, considering that he believes, among other things, that:

Rachel Maddow recently delivered a secret signal to leftist activists to storm the White House and decapitate President Trump and his family;
Liberal activists will begin killing Republicans before the midterm elections in preparation for civil war;
The government is creating soulless super soldiers and flesh-eating robots;
The Las Vegas massacre was carried out by a gay/lesbian Nazi regime;
A secret government goon squad is beating up politicians, murdered the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and is carrying out mass shootings in order to justify implementing gun control.

Wiles also repeatedly asserted that Barack Obama was literally a demon (and likely the Antichrist) who intended to seize the homes of conservatives and give them to immigrants, intentionally unleash the Ebola virus on the nation in order to round up conservatives, and would permanently seize power in 2016.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/its-a-big-lie-rick-wiles-says-qanon-is-a-deep-state-misinformation-campaign/

There you have it, that’s Lance Wallnau and Rick Wiles. This week’s:

[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
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Detroit let’s hit it!

We were originally going to do “I Need A Drink” but holy crap we had some unbelievable ones this week and we got to showcase them for you. I want to start with this story out of Iowa, where if you’re going to rob a convenience store, maybe you might want to do that thing that planes encourage you to do and that is check all your surroundings to make sure you have all your personal belongings.

Rodney A. Harderman, 53, of 333 W. 17th St., No. 24, was arrested at 1:20 a.m. today at his residence on a warrant charging second-degree robbery and charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He is scheduled to make an appearance this morning in Iowa District Court of Dubuque County.

According to court documents, Dubuque police responded to a robbery at Beecher's Beverage, 1691 Asbury Road. The clerk, Anne Mohammed, said a man came into the store with a green bag at about 4 p.m. Thursday and asked about the prices for Grey Goose vodka.

Mohammed told the man to leave the bag at the counter while he shopped, documents said. The man grabbed two bottles of Grey Goose, worth $87.98 total, and walked out without paying. Mohammed told police that he chased the man and grabbed his shirt, then the man brandished a 10-inch knife and said, "I don't want to go to jail."

Documents said the man gave Mohammed one of the bottles back and fled the area. Authorities searching the store found a prescription bottle with Harderman's name on it in the green bag he left behind. Police confirmed with a photo of Harderman that he was the one who robbed the store.
http://www.telegraphherald.com/news/tri-state/article_09d277cb-0fa5-52f1-b3b5-4dc23cd40c84.html

Next up – we’re going to the state of Maryland. I really bet you thought I was going to say Florida didn’t you? Ha! And you think you’re so smart! Well you know the old saying, as our former president George W. Bush once put it, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me, well, you won’t get fooled again.” And yeah if you’re going out on a bender you might want to keep those words in mind!

The same Maryland woman was arrested twice on the same day by the same state trooper on the same charge: driving under the influence, the Maryland state police said.

In fact, the state police said both arrests were made within 20 minutes on Saturday morning.

Matters began shortly after midnight, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the state police, as the trooper was on patrol in the area of Route 40 in Rosedale, Md. The area is just east of Baltimore City. The trooper saw a vehicle exceeding the speed limit and passing on a shoulder, the police said.

The vehicle was stopped. Its driver was taken into custody, and brought to a Baltimore County police station, the police said. After processing, the police said, she was released to another driver.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/driver-arrested-twice-on-same-day-on-dui-charge-md-state-police-say/2018/08/15/1198547c-a04b-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0e0e31146114&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

Yeah maybe don’t do that! Next up yes we are going to America’s most penis shaped state of Florida for this next batch! Yeah you know we’re doing a show in Orlando in November so we might want to watch what we say, but apparently Florida loves Florida Man. But this story in this case is a woman who is channeling her inner Ricky Bobby:

A Florida woman was arrested after she allegedly streaked through a public park earlier this week. When cops managed to chase her down, she had quite the excuse, saying she was running away from a “giant spider” that she thought was on her. Oh, she also allegedly admitted to doing a whole bunch of drugs.

Police said in an arrest report that Danielle Teeples was “acting erratically and rubbing her hair and breasts while screaming and running between two trees,” at approximately 2:15 Sunday afternoon. When they apprehended her, she wouldn’t put her clothes back on right away, cops said, according to local station WFTS.

Cops didn’t mention seeing any spiders or other bugs of abnormal size, but they did say that Teeples admitted to recently partaking in crack cocaine, spice, and crystal meth. Use of spice, also known as synthetic marijuana, has been known to result in bizarre reactions, ranging from “zombie-like” behavior to paranoia and hallucinations.

They arrested her for exposure of sexual organs, a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. Teeples, who is 40 years old, was booked at the Pinnelas County Jail. According to Pinnelas County court records, she has an extensive criminal record going back to 2001, including arrests on drug and alcohol-related charges.

https://lawandcrime.com/crazy/florida-woman-runs-naked-because-of-giant-spider-then-admits-to-crystal-meth-use-cops-say/

Next up – sticking with the Sunshine State or America’s penis, we go to the city of Clearwater, Florida for this story. Kobe Japanese Steakhouse is known for fine Japanese steak and seafood, but one thing they’re not particularly known for is pole dancing.

Meet James Dylan Jordan.

A married couple was enjoying a Sunday evening out at a Japanese steakhouse when a tipsy Jordan, 24, “began to undress and dance erotically in front of” the female half of the duo, Florida police report.

Distressed by Jordan’s impromptu striptease, Jami Carpenter (who was accompanied by her husband Christopher) advised Jordan to leave the Kobe Japanese Steakhouse in Clearwater. In response, Jordan “became belligerent and began calling her fat” and threatened to fight her spouse.

Jordan was subsequently arrested by a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office deputy for disorderly conduct in an establishment, a misdemeanor. He was freed from the local jail after posting $150 bond. Jordan’s rap sheet includes multiple convictions for possession, sale, and trafficking of narcotics (cocaine and Oxycodone).
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/clearwater/kobe-steakhouse-discon-837501

Finally this week for People Are Dumb – we go to my home state of California for this one. Apparently this uber religious crook doesn’t quite get the concept of “Thou Shalt Not Steal”:

WICHITA FALLS, TX -- A California man accused of trying to steal several items from a local Walmart reportedly returned to the scene to retrieve his Bible.

Joshua Jeroma Wilhoit, 27, of Dana Point, Calif., was arrested and charged with theft of property valued at more than $100 but less than $750 – a Class B misdemeanor.

-snip-

The reporting party said a male suspect left the store wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and black shorts.

The man returned while police were en route and was trying to grab an item from a bag of items he allegedly had attempted to steal.

He was able to get by the reporting party to retrieve his Bible and left toward Panda Express.

Read more: https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/09/california-man-accused-stealing-wichita-falls-walmart-goes-back-his-bible/947698002/

This has been this week for People Are Dumb!

[font size="8"]Deep State Diaries Episode 9: The Department Of Justice
[br] [/font] [br]

It’s time for episode 9 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 Justice[/font]

So our journey through the many branches and services that make up the Deep State, we of course have to have to talk about how our criminal justice system is handled. Of course over the years you’ve probably heard of some of the more horrifying aspects of the system, like our for profit prisons that have treated its’ members like free slave labor. Or you might have heard about how elected corrupt local justices are in bringing about good old fashioned fire and brimstone punishments to the masses to your city! But what does the Department Of Justice actually do? We’re going to explore that angle. Yes this is the branch of the government that is currently being led by our Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. As if you couldn’t get a more pretentious name than that.

During my 25 years as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice, I wore my work as a badge of pride.

I felt privileged to be entrusted with some of the most significant criminal investigations and prosecutions that came out of DOJ during my tenure with the federal government.

I also felt honored that DOJ recognized and appreciated my commitment to public service. On two separate occasions I was flown to Washington and personally handed an award by the then-attorney general for my work in the prosecution of international drug organizations, violent criminals, and organized crime. There are three cases on the DOJ special operations division website that represent shining examples of the department’s best efforts at stemming complex criminal activities in the United States. To this day, a case of mine is first on that list.
It was a privilege

The other assistant U.S. attorneys and federal law enforcement agents I worked with were not only my colleagues, but many became my friends. My daily motivation was simple: The work I did took bad people off the streets and made the lives of good people safer and more secure.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-doj-jeff-sessions-doj-embarrassment-lock-her-up-chant-0729-story.html#

Yes so Sessions has turned the once smooth running machine into a giant clusterfuck of a cesspool. Whatever that means, I don’t know. But one thing we do know – this is one branch of the government that conservatives have been fucking with for a very long time. And don’t question their integrity.

As a former longtime federal prosecutor, Steve Dettelbach said he's befuddled by the recent incessant conservative criticism of Justice Department leaders.

"We used to joke that whenever you got in an FBI car, as a young prosecutor, that every car came automatically pre-programmed with the radio set to Rush Limbaugh," said Dettelbach, who resigned in 2016 as the U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio, and who's now running for Ohio attorney general as a Democrat. "These are not left-wing people."

Take Rod Rosenstein, the current deputy U.S. Attorney General, he said. Dettelbach started out as a young prosecutor working with Rostenstein, whom Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and other House conservatives recently filed articles of impeachment against as an outgrowth of Rosenstein's role overseeing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
https://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/08/steve_dettelbach_attacking_the.html

So the thing is don’t attack the people who are trying to defend you. That’s not cool. But that’s what Trump and his anti government form of government are doing – they’re attacking the very foundations that built this country. And look at what happened to guys like Rod Rosenstein. They’re just doing their jobs. But of course even they can’t police Trump.

It isn’t every day that the Department of Justice acknowledges formally that the president of the United States lied in a speech to Congress. But that’s how I read a letter I received a few days ago from the department’s Office of Information Policy in connection with one of my Freedom of Information Act suits against the department.

No, the Justice Department letter does not come out and say what it clearly means: that President Trump, early in his tenure, was untruthful both about the role of foreigners in terrorism and terrorism-related crimes and about Justice Department data on the subject.

But that is what the letter says if you read between the lines.

To understand the significance of this letter, let’s go back to Trump’s first address to Congress, in February 2017. The new president made the striking claim quoted above: “According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/justice-department-finds-no-responsive-records-support-trump-speech

Thankfully there aren’t too many Lionel Hutz’ and Barry Zuckercorn’s of the world at least as far as we know here at the Top 10. So what’s the DOJ’s involvement in the Trump administration? Well at least in all the madness about deportations they got one right!

WASHINGTON (Circa) — The deportation of 95-year-old Nazi camp guard Jakiw Palij Monday was a significant development in the ongoing effort to rectify the errors that may have let thousands of war criminals flood into the United States. in the wake of World War II, according to the former director of the Department of Justice office designated with handling those cases.

“The Holocaust was the greatest crime in history and there’s no point at which we can say, ‘Okay, let’s just forget about it,’” said Allan Ryan, who served as the first director of the Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations from 1980 to 1983 and is now an attorney at Harvard University.

This is the first deportation of a suspected Nazi since John Demjanjuk was sent back to Germany in 2009. He was prosecuted there for being an accessory to 28,000 murders, but he died while appealing his conviction.
https://kval.com/news/nation-world/doj-official-nazi-deportation-sends-message-of-deterrence-on-human-rights-crimes

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

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

Overall: B-

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

This is going to be a fun one – we are going to explore how our motor vehicles are monitored as we look at the DMV! Someone call Patty & Selma!

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

Ladies and gentlemen we’re getting some reggae up in this piece! Yeah cue the reggaeton horn. My next guest is a great reggae band from California, their latest album is called “Free Rein”. You can see them August 31st at the Dry Diggings Festival in Placerville, California and October 5th in Maui. Playing their song “Celebrate” give it up for Rebelution!

Detroit, love you guys! We had a great time this week! We are off to Minneapolis next! See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: Renton Theater, Detroit, MI
Special Thanks To: Renton Theater Management
Holy Shit Gospel Choir: Bethel Church Band, Sterling Heights, MI
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
Rebelution Appear Courtesy Of:
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

August 18, 2018

Preview For This Week's Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Wow, what a fine, fun loving group of Nazi Space Cowboys! Somehow I don't think Tommy Lee Jones would get involved with this crew. To infinity and... something?

*audience laughs and applauds*

This week - the Top 10 is coming at you live from Detroit Rock City and it is going to be action packed! We talk about Trump's malignant ego, explore the vast regions of Space Farce, Alex Jones loses his war against info, Unite The Right II was an epic failure, we're going to play a game of "Is Trump Racist?" (spoiler alert: probably!), and we're going to ask how the Green Party is still a thing! Plus we're going to profile Lance Wallnau and Rick Wiles in "This Fucking Guy". And we've got a new installment of Top 10 Investigates and we're going to investigate exactly how much poop is in the streets of San Francisco. Also in our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in "Holy Shit", our resident pastor is becoming increasingly alarmed that his fellow religious zealots are turning on each other. And we've got a new installment of "I Need A Drink" in which we're going to get drunk and show you how conservatives paid their respects to the late, great Aretha Franklin. We've also got the next installment of our ongoing series Deep State Diaries and this week we're going to take a trip through our legal system and explore the DOJ! And we've got some live music for you from Rebelution!

Top 10 Conservative Idiots: Wednesdays at 2:00 PM /shameless self promotion

August 13, 2018

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots Is On Hiatus This Week.

We'll be back on August 22nd with a new edition live from Detroit, the Motor City! But in the meantime here's some stuff that you may have missed from previous editions:

Edition #5-6:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210924111

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is urging consumers to stay away from a popular Kellogg’s cereal that has been linked to a massive salmonella outbreak affecting 100 people in 33 states.

“Do not eat this cereal,” the CDC tweeted Thursday along with a photo of Honey Smacks cereal. The agency revealed that 27 more people from 19 states had been infected from the outbreak since the last update on June 14.

In a statement released Thursday, the agency said, “Do not eat any Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, regardless of package size or best-by date. Check your home for it and throw it away, or return it to the place of purchase for a refund.”

According to CBS News, the Kellogg Co. announced in June that it was investigating the third-party manufacturer that produces the cereal after being contacted by the FDA and CDC about the salmonella outbreak. Kellogg's recalled the cereal on June 14.

At least 30 people were hospitalized due to the outbreak, the CDC said. No deaths have been reported. The agency said that illnesses that occurred after June 19 might not yet have been reported. On average, it takes two to four weeks between when a person becomes sick and when his or her illness is reported.
https://www.newsweek.com/cdc-warns-dont-eat-cereal-after-honey-smacks-linked-salmonella-outbreak-33-1022914

So that explains why you might get salmonella while eating Honey Smacks – they’re endorsed by what appears to be a frog on smack.

*audience laughs and applauds*

Edition #5-7:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210950860

Gun-safety activist Fred Guttenberg arrived in Washington to address the Democratic caucus on Monday, furious that Congress had failed to prevent the potential spread of 3-D-printed guns.

After a multiyear legal battle, the federal government last month entered into a settlement with Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson, permitting him to publish his arsenal of firearm blueprints online. He intends to do so on Aug. 1. Lawmakers’ 11th-hour efforts have done nothing to halt his plans, and on Friday a federal judge denied a motion for an emergency injunction brought forward by a trio of gun-control groups.

Guttenberg, who has become a powerful voice against gun violence since his 14-year-old daughter was killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., told The Washington Post he was dismayed by his visit to the Hill. Five weeks have passed since the settlement was signed, yet only a handful of senators were aware of it, he said, adding that not a single House member knew either.

“I don’t know how we got to this place and no one was paying attention,” he lamented. “This is the safety of this country and its citizens who are now at risk in their offices, in courthouses and on airplanes.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/27/lawmakers-are-attempting-to-prevent-the-spread-of-3-d-printed-guns-it-may-be-too-late/?utm_term=.fae6a38bd0ad

You know things are fucked up when we have the most advanced technology in the history of mankind and our first thought is “how can we make things that kill people with it?”.

*audience applauds wildly*

Edition #5-8:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210979540

While appearing on Greg Hunter’s “USA Watchdog” YouTube program on Saturday, right-wing radio host Dave Janda claimed that President Trump has survived “close to a dozen” assassination attempts while in office.

“I believe there have been a number of assassination attempts on his life since he took office,” Janda said. “I’ve been told that there have been close to a dozen attempts on his life and obviously he has survived those. I believe the difference between JFK and Donald Trump is the following: Donald Trump has the support of the military. Donald Trump, I believe, has not only the Secret Service protecting him, but I believe he also has another layer of protection that he has arranged for, that he’s paid for himself, for him and his family.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-has-survived-close-to-a-dozen-assassination-attempts-claims-right-wing-radio-host-dave-janda/

Gee, you’d think that with all these assassination attempts it would make the news somehow. If only we had an outlet for reporting these things. What is it? Oh well.

*audience laughs and applauds*

Top 10 Conservative Idiots: Wednesdays at 2:00 PM /shameless self promotion

August 8, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-8: Wheel Of Corruption & The Order Of The Phoenix Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-8: Wheel Of Corruption & The Order Of The Phoenix Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! What’s up New York City??? We made it, and you know that old saying, if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere! Glad to see you still have your trains running! Holy shit did we have quite the weekend! I mean you had Nazi rallies in Portland and DC, you had the DC worker’s metro strike, you had Apple forcing Alex Jones fans to get his latest podcast beamed directly to their tin foil hats, to Joe Arpaio telling Sascha Baron Cohen that he’d accept a blowjob from Trump. I mean, damn that is a lot! Do we have time for the thing? Yes? My producer is saying yes. So China’s extremely controversial and I might add glorious dictator Xi Jinping as you may have seen from John Oliver and elsewhere, has literally banned all instances of Winnie The Pooh from China. So I don’t know if any of you saw Disney’s excellent new live action Winnie flick “Christopher Robin”, well, you ain’t seeing that either. No, sir, I have not seen it yet. I’ve been too busy with my own show! And you got to feel for Xi, because, let’s face it – he really really does look like Winnie The Pooh… thank you sound effects guy! That was perfect timing by the way, “Oh bother!” is right! Wait, so does that mean this week’s Top 10 will be available in China? Yeah my producer is telling me that it isn’t available in China anyways. Eh, it’s basic math. If you add 0.0000000001 to one its’ still less than two, am I right? But seriously if you haven’t seen this thing involving China and Winnie The Pooh, it’s something else. And just watching Xi’s obsession with Winnie The Pooh is insane and it’s not healthy on multiple levels. But then again it’s classic dictator behavior. Thank you sound effects guy! Oh bother indeed! OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to this week, but first we have to play Bill Maher’s excellent New Rule from last week where he plainly spells out what this current administration is all about:

In the number one slot this week, we got to talk about it, it’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room, I’m of course talking about Qanon (1), the internet conspiracy theory has finally come out of the 4chan basement and it may be the world’s biggest hoax! Taking slots number 2 and 3 we're going to talk about dueling rallies. Yes, cue dueling banjos. In the second slot is actually next week's Unite The Right Two: Electric Boogaloo Die Harder, and it's already a shit show before it even begins! For the third slot we're going to talk about last week's Proud Boys (3) rally in Portland, and it went about as well as you'd expect a Proud Boys rally to go. At number 4 of course is the guy who we currently call president and that’s Donald J. Trump (4) and we're going to do some Trump fact checking in regards to his latest tweet storm, because they are exquisite! In the fifth slot this week is Alex Jones (5). So yeah Infowars had quite possibly its’ worst week ever and expect Infowars to be broadcast live directly to the fillings of its’ listeners teeth! For number 6 this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” and this week our resident pastor is going to delve into the religious side of the conspiracy theory known as Qanon. Whew, it's insane. At number 7 this week is our weekly investigative piece Top 10 Investigates and this week we’re going to take a look at the funeral industry and specifically a disturbing new trend called “extreme funerals”. Taking the 8th slot this week we have a new installment of “How Is This Still A Thing” and this week we’re going to delve into Tim Allen’s controversial sitcom and ask “Last Man Standing: How Is This Still A Thing?”. In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week we have an all new edition of People Are Dumb, because, well, people are dumb! Finally this week we’ve got a new edition of Deep State Diaries. Last week we showed you the inner workings of the food industry with the USDA, this week we’re going to see how our votes are validated by checking out what’s going on at the Federal Election Commission! And we’ve got some awesome southern rock this week and we’ve got the great Blackberry Smoke visiting the show for the first time! 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"]Qanon
[br] [/font] [br]

Hey everybody! It’s time for the WHEEL OF CORRUPTION! YAY!!!!!

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

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

Let’s get this going! Spin that shit! Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy stop! Clip without context!

Sure, go after the underground pedophiles, but what about the above ground ones, Mark? Like you know – those in your own party! If you’re going to get serious about this, get fucking serious! Spin it again! And it lands on… sex! So we got to talk about it, it’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It’s of course the conspiracy theory known as Qanon. We’ve brought up Q before but this week it finally came out of the conspiracy theory closet and hit the mainstream media big time.

QAnon is the latest high-profile and spectacularly dumb right-wing conspiracy theory. Here's everything you didn't want to have to know about it.

If you're lucky, before last week you had only ever heard of QAnon from some of Roseanne Barr's less racist tweets. Because it was possible to live your life completely unaware of the new, dumb conspiracy theory taking off online until it finally spilled over into the real world thanks to Donald Trump. Recently, people who buy into QAnon have been visibly showing up at Trump rallies and campaign events, wearing T-shirts and signs to show that they're in the know and they support a president who is supposed to be secretly fighting an international ring of billionaire pedophiles.

But if you're one of those lucky people who doesn't spend lurking on or reading about the seedier parts of the Internet, QAnon is likely a big mystery for you. None of us want to have to know about this thing. But since it's spilling into the real world now, here are some of the basics about this convoluted and elaborate conspiracy.

What exactly does "QAnon" mean?

The whole thing started on 4chan. An anonymous user going by "Q," a reference to the highest level of security clearance, began posting in October of last year. According to Q, who claims to be one or more people high in the Trump administration, all past presidents have been involved in shadowy criminal dealings centered mostly on an international pedophile ring and a global sex trade of child slaves. Featuring prominently in this are the usual boogeyman: Barack Obama, the Clintons, George Soros, the whole gang.

Is that not Pizzagate?

It sounds a lot like it, doesn't it? Think Pizzagate but bigger, more complicated, and dumber. In fact, this is a pretty boiled down explanation considering how complex and grandiose the whole conspiracy is.
https://www.gq.com/story/what-the-hell-is-qanon

And yes if you do believe in the Qanon conspiracy theory, I have a bag of magic beans to sell you for $9.99, what do they do? They’re magic! So here’s a good question – how did the republicans get to be the party of batshit crazy, off the wall conspiracy theories?

When people started showing up at recent Trump rallies waving signs with giant “Q”s on them and making references to QAnon, a conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories, members of the press, and no doubt many people at home, were puzzled. Aren’t things crazy enough already without this fresh new lunacy? The trouble is that this is neither the first nor the last absolutely bonkers conspiracy theory to infiltrate today’s GOP, getting both literally and figuratively within a few feet of the president of the United States. In fact, it would have been more surprising if the Republican Party wasn’t overrun with conspiracy theorists.

It’s hard to do justice to the intricate madness of what QAnon is about in a concise manner, but I’ll let Molly Roberts give it a shot:

The simplest description of the plot line goes something like this: President Trump isn’t under investigation; he is only pretending to be, as part of a countercoup to restore power to the people after more than a century of governmental control by a globalist cabal. Also, there are pedophiles.

A figure named “Q,” who supposedly possesses Q-level security clearance, disperses “crumbs” that “bakers” bring together to create a “dough” of synthesized information. (This is not how baking works, but that seems the least of our worries.) Because Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet and 17 is also a number Trump has said a few times, among other clearly-not-coincidences, he is the real deal, not an Internet troll engaged in an elaborate example of live-action role-play.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/08/06/why-the-gop-is-so-easily-infiltrated-by-bonkers-conspiracy-theorists/?utm_term=.fc5cac586357

And you should always listen to Dave Grohl too, for he is wise in the ways of the world! But this might be my favorite story related to Qanon, and who better to explain a batshit crazy conspiracy theory than batshit crazy conspiracy theorists? I mean if you thought the previous people were too stupid to insult, I give you Liz Crokin:

Last weekend, right-wing “journalist” and fringe conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin did an interview with online psychic and YouTube host Jenny Moonstone in which she laid out her theory that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his own death in 1999 and is now behind the QAnon account.

QAnon is an anonymous figure at the center of a right-wing conspiracy theory known as “The Storm” that alleges that high-ranking members of the Trump administration have been using the 8Chan forum board to drop hints revealing that Robert Muller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is really cover for a secret operation to take down a global network of satanic pedophile cannibals. Proponents of this conspiracy theory have increasingly been making their presence known at Trump rallies.

In a video posted by Moonstone on Sunday, Crokin explained her theory that JFK Jr. has been running the QAnon account all along, insisting that any mockery she receives, or attacks she endures, for promoting her absurd ideas is proof that she is right.

Crokin asserted that when she first heard the theory of JFK Jr. being behind the QAnon account, “it immediately resonated with me, I got goosebumps everywhere. I’m a very intuitive person and usually when that happens, that’s confirmation that there is truth to it.”

“Q at one point said, ‘You’re not going to believe who you are talking to here,'” Crokin said. “When Q wrote that, I thought it’s going to be someone that’s so crazy that even people that are woke and know what’s going on are going to be like, ‘Oh my lord, this is insane’ … John F. Kennedy Jr., that would be shocking because we all think he’s dead.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liz-crokin-john-f-kennedy-jr-faked-his-death-and-is-now-qanon/

That is a good point sir! I mean really you can’t get much more stupid than that! And not only is it underground pedophiles, it’s also satanic pedophiles too. I mean not unlike Kevin Spacey. Hey o!!!!!!!!!!!!! And by the way, you might be asking yourself “Who Is Q?”. Well now we have a face – the pedo patrol has got right on the case! I give you… *drum roll* this guy!

With the appearance of numerous sign-waving supporters at a Trump rally last week, the world at large was introduced to a far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Until recently, QAnon stuff remained in the dark corners of 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, but as it continues to spill into mainstream news coverage, we’re forced to hear about all the dumb shit these people are actually doing. According to a new report from The Daily Beast, that dumb shit now includes lionizing some minor player from Vanderpump Rules as a “Hollywood whistleblower.”

For those who have managed to remain blissfully unaware, QAnon is a far-reaching, multi-faceted conspiracy that claims—among other things—that President Trump and Robert Mueller are actually working together to take down a massive pedophile ring run by Hollywood celebrities and major Democratic Party players. “Deep state” secrets are leaked to supporters courtesy of an anonymous message board user named “Q.” Relying on cryptic information from an anonymous source has primed QAnon followers to believe pretty much anything from anyone, including Vanderpump Rules actor Isaac Kappy, who appeared on Infowars recently to accuse Tom Hanks and Seth Green of being secret Illuminati pedophiles.
https://news.avclub.com/the-hot-new-face-of-qanon-is-some-fucking-guy-from-vand-1828132542

[font size="8"]A Tale Of Two Rallies: Washington, DC
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Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin shall we? And it lands on… wait for it… something random in the news!

Gee, you’d think that with all these assassination attempts it would make the news somehow. If only we had an outlet for reporting these things. What is it? Oh well. Spin it again! Racism! You know since the 2016 election racism has reared its’ ugly head time and time again, and the racists only seem to be growing in popularity since Trump got elected. We’ll get into his rallies in a minute. But speaking of rallies, one group in particular had rallies on both coasts. The first one was on the west coast in Portland, Oregon. The second is the one we’re going to get into right now and that’s what happened in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Ooh boy, the racists are pissed, folks. And they are coming for our nation’s capital. Is this Nazis on tour? Nazis on parade? Nazis on parade on parade? But guess what? That’s not the story we want to highlight here. Here’s the story we want to highlight here.

Metro is considering providing separate trains for opposing groups when demonstrators come to Washington, D.C., for a "Unite the Right" rally Aug. 12, the chairman of the transit agency's board said.

"We have groups clearly at odds with each other," Chairman Jack Evans said. "We'd like to keep the groups separate. We don't want incidents on Metro."

"Unite the Right" demonstrators plan to use Metro from the Vienna, Virginia, station to Foggy Bottom in D.C. Police and Metro are making plans to avoid a deadly confrontation like the one at the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally last year.

"Maybe put all of one group on a train or a certain car on a train," Evans said. "We're trying to see how can we keep the groups separate so we don't have any incidents but not put in place programs that could be problematic in the future."
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Metro-Planning-for-Unite-the-Right-Rally-490010251.html

Damn straight. Nazis On A Train might make a good comedy flick but in real life it doesn’t quite work that way. Anyway you want to know how this story played out? New York City, come on, let’s see how it played out!

Metro’s plans to keep white supremacists separate from other riders this weekend are still under review, but the agency attempted to clarify Monday that there are no plans for a “special train” for the group.

In a statement Monday, Metro said it continues to work with law enforcement agencies on security surrounding Sunday’s “Unite the Right” rally that comes one year after a man police said had ties to white supremacist groups plowed a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

“The transit agency is working closely with law enforcement to prepare security options that place the highest priority on protecting Metro passengers, employees and public safety, giving special consideration to the security challenges posed by rail car space constraints,” Metro said.

D.C. police security plans focus on keeping attendees of the “Unite the Right” rally separate from counterprotesters and other riders, something police in Charlottesville failed to do last year.
https://wtop.com/tracking-metro-24-7/2018/08/metro-no-special-train-for-unite-the-right-rally-in-dc/

Well so they may be canceled, or they may not. Either way, don’t ride the Metro if you’re going to Washington, DC that weekend. But really do we need a “white rights” pity party? We don’t, and this kind of crap is making the whole world cringe.

Last August, hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the alt-right descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for “Unite the Right,” a rally to put the power of white nationalists on full display. A year after that event resulted in chaos and violence, groups plan to hold another “white civil rights rally” in Washington, DC.

But a broad coalition of organizers representing anti-racist, anti-fascist, and socialist groups say that when Unite the Right 2 participants arrive in DC, they will be met with significant resistance throughout the weekend.

On the morning of August 12, Shut It Down DC, a coalition of local organizations working to plan counterprotests and other events against Unite the Right, will hold a “Still Here, Still Strong” Rally in DC’s Freedom Plaza. Counterprotesters also plan to be present at the actual Unite the Right event, which takes place later that afternoon in Lafayette Square. Two days before these events, organizers will hold a six-hour “action camp” to train those planning to protest on Sunday.

After the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed as she protested against the first Unite the Right; the brutal assault of DeAndre Harris, who was beaten by white supremacists in Charlottesville and faced criminal charges for defending a counterprotester; and other incidents of violence in the year since, organizers say the impacts of the first Unite the Right rally are still being felt today.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/6/17653252/unite-the-right-2-protest-antiracist-charlottesville-washington-dc

They’re here! They’re racist! They want… something. What that is, even we’re not exactly clear on what they want. I think even they’re not exactly clear on what they want. That’s why they’re racists. At least the DC police chief is preparing properly!

As D.C. anticipates a planned white nationalist rally to coincide with the August one-year anniversary of the deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, D.C.’s police chief is prepared for what’s to come.

“Our role is to make sure we have a First Amendment event that goes on without any types of violence or destruction of property,” D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said at a Monday news conference. “We intend to have the entire police department engaged to make sure that we handle this type of thing.”

Jason Kessler, an organizer of last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, submitted a request earlier this year to the National Park Service to hold a rally between Aug. 11 and Aug. 12 at Lafayette Square, right in front of the White House.

Kessler’s application got an initial approval last month, but a permit had not been issued yet.
https://wtop.com/dc/2018/07/dc-police-chief-prepared-for-planned-white-nationalist-rally/

[font size="8"]A Tale Of Two Rallies: Portland
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Let’s give the wheel a good strong spin shall we? And it lands on… Chance!

Nice! I get to advance to Go! I’ll take my $200 thanks! Spin it again! And it lands on… racism! Folks, in case you haven’t noticed Portland has a huge white supremacy problem. After all, it was the center of that Bundy shit show a couple of years back. You know that happened back in the very early days of the Top 10. So what happened on Saturday is exactly what you’d expect at a Proud Boys / Patriot Prayer rally by now.

Hundreds of right-wing protesters and counter-protesters faced off in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, shouting chants like, “USA, USA,” and “Whose streets? Our streets!” at each other across a barrier of police in riot gear.

The permit-less rally was organized by Patriot Prayer, a far-right group founded by Joey Gibson, who is running for U.S. Senate in Washington. In response, leftist Portland-area groups planned a counter-protest rally to start at City Hall and march towards the waterfront, where the Patriot Prayer rally took place.

“We’re here to teach a lesson to the entire country,” said Gibson to a crowd of supporters, minutes before the planned march. “Do not break the line – they will come to us. Go slow and keep tight.”

Many in helmets and riot gear of their own, the far-right groups began their march along the river at around 1:30 p.m. local time, after Gibson quickly took the mic to offer a prayer to the crowd. Anti-fascist protesters followed on the other side of the street, while police jogged to stay in between the two.

That’s when the announcements began. “This is the Portland police bureau. Remain on the sidewalk, get out of the street.” At 2:30 p.m. local time, Portland police were ordering crowds to disperse via loudspeaker.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-police-city-officials-prepare-for-right-wing-rally-and-counter-protest

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Dude, Dave Chappelle called you a racist. You’re a fucking racist. But you know that politics makes for strange bedfellows and we’ve seen more strange bedfellows with the Trump administration than you would have ever thought possible. And they attracted a lot of them to Portland.

Joey Gibson and his Patriot Prayer group came to Portland on Saturday itching for a fight, raising alarms in the Portland community and national press. Instead, the Portland Police did their work for them.

Patriot Prayer rallies, packaged in the language of free speech, attract far-right and alt-right pro-Trump groups, such as the Proud Boys, who provide “protection” for attendees. Gibson himself, however, cagily avoids using the kind of language that smacks of hate.

Gibson’s main intention seems to be to provoke left-wing, anti-fascist activists into physical confrontations with his rally-goers.

As it turned out, Gibson hardly needed help from the Proud Boys; Portland Police went beyond their mandate to provide protection by aggressively chasing counter-protesters down side-streets, and hurling flash-bang grenades into the crowds who had come to demonstrate against Gibson and his far-right comrades. The police handling of the Patriot Prayer protest provoked condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Coming seemingly from out of nowhere, Gibson sprang onto the West Coast political protest scene with no documented political involvement prior to January 2017, when he livestreamed protests of the Trump administration’s Muslim ban at the Portland airport. In April last year, Gibson began organizing his own rallies on the West Coast, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. That month, a Patriot Prayer rally in Portland attracted neo-Nazi Jeremy Christian, who allegedly murdered two people on the city’s public transit a month later.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-portland-rally-far-right-extremists-mingle-with-mainstay-maga/

Yes they are idiots. And racists and sexists and misogynists, and homophobes, and transphobes, and xenophobes. Seriously is there anything good about these guys? Probably not. So was there anything good that came out of Portland on Saturday? Probably not. Even the police were in on it, it seems!

On Saturday, in a planned protest that some worried would turn out to be “another Charlottesville,” hundreds of far-right demonstrators gathered in the city of Portland, Oregon, and were met by hundreds of counterprotesters.

The demonstrators said they were rallying to support the leader of the Patriot Prayer group, which has been behind contentious far-right rallies in several cities in the past couple years. Supporters of the far-right men’s group the Proud Boys also rallied in support.

But the clash turned out to be relatively nonviolent—there were just four arrests—and it was the Portland police who came under fire on social media afterward for their tactics. According to reports from the protests, the police were out in large numbers in downtown Portland and worked actively to keep the two groups separated. But, police said afterward, the crowds turned violent, and some protesters started throwing rocks and bottles at the officers.

“This was a dangerous situation for all those involved, including officers, and I am disheartened that this kind of illegal behavior occurred in our beautiful city,” Police Chief Danielle Outlaw said in a statement afterward.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-police-city-officials-prepare-for-right-wing-rally-and-counter-protest

[font size="8"]Infowars
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Let’s spin it to win it! And it lands on… what? Bankrupt? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Spin it again. And it lands on… Infowars. I’ll tell you someone who’s morally bankrupt and that’s Alex Jones. You know it’s not in my nature to kick a man when he’s down but considering Alex made an entire career out of that, I am pulling no fucking punches, damn it! It is off, it is going off the rails! I mean come on, this is a guy who instructed his followers to harass the parents of murdered children. He called the Parkland students “crisis actors”. He has said every single mass shooting in the last 5 years is a false flag. Well, you can’t false flag this, Alex!

In a rapid domino effect, conspiracy theorist and right-wing media host Alex Jones’ Infowars has been banned from popular streaming services like YouTube, Apple, Facebook, and Spotify. The controversial host has been responsible for the spread of extremely controversial conspiracy ideas, including accusations that the parents of Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors.

On Sunday night, Apple started deleting InfoWars episodes from iTunes, stating that the company does not tolerate hate speech. Now, the entire series appears missing, though a spin-off show and InfoWars app are still live.

After a social media backlash against Spotify for hosting episodes of Infowars and The Alex Jones Show, the streaming media company took four episodes off the air for violating their hateful conduct policy. Now, the entire show is missing, and other streaming services have joined in on the ban.

Earlier today (Monday), Spotify announced that The Alex Jones Show would no longer have access to the Spotify platform.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/08/06/infowars-banned-itunes-spotify-facebook-youtube/

But is it really victory just yet? I mean Alex can crow about how conservativism is being shadow banned all he wants, but in reality there’s no such thing. In fact we explored this topic back in Idiots #5-2 when we talked about how conservatives are afraid of getting banned from social media for being conservative. Nah, see there’s this thing called the “terms of service” which you get when you signed up, and they have this rule that says “don’t be hateful”. Most conservatives violate this rule because hate generally has a conservative bias to it.

With the mid-term elections rapidly approaching, YouTube has become the latest internet platform to restrict the activities of far-right conspiracy website InfoWars.

The company has pulled four InfoWars videos for including hate speech and graphic content, and has banned it from broadcasting live for 90 days.

The move represents the 'third strike' for InfoWars, which received its first in February for 'harassment and bullying', after posting videos claiming that the Parkland shooting survivors were crisis actors - a claim that would be laughable were it not also so callous. The site's second strike followed a few days later and involved similar claims.

However, because 90 days has elapsed since InfoWars' first and second strikes, they are deemed to have elapsed and the site isn't facing a YouTube ban altogether as a result of this third strike.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2018/07/26/why-youtubes-infowars-ban-is-meaningless/#381d708a65af

Um I wouldn’t exactly say it tastes like victory just yet. Even MailChimp banned Alex Jones, and come on, you got to take a service like MailChimp seriously when they say that!

Email marketing service provider MailChimp has removed accounts for Alex Jones and Infowars, citing "hateful content," according to Media Matters for America.

The progressive group said MailChimp confirmed its action on Tuesday, a day after the Infowars founder displayed a document from the company during a livestream broadcast. The document referenced in Jones's show reportedly said MailChimp had removed his account for violating the company's terms of use.

"MailChimp doesn’t generally comment on individual users or accounts, but we’ll make an exception today," the MailChimp statement read, according to Media Matters. "MailChimp notified Infowars that their accounts have been terminated for violating our Terms of Service, which make it clear that we don’t allow people to use our platform to disseminate hateful content."

"The decision to terminate this account was thoughtfully considered and is in line with our company’s values," MailChimp added.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/400755-mailchimp-removes-accounts-for-alex-jones-and-infowars

Oh and here’s my favorite part – if you try to do some fact checking on this subject and you don’t know what you’re talking about – don’t be surprised if you get owned!

InfoWars reporter Millie Weaver on Tuesday publicly humiliated herself by botching the basic terminology of economics journalism to try to claim Facebook is a public utility.

After Facebook axed Jones’ Facebook page this week, Weaver and other InfoWars supporters have tried to claim that this amounts to an unconstitutional violation of the website’s free speech.

The flaw in this argument is that Facebook is a privately run company that can make decisions about whether to give individual media outlets a platform — and the Constitution clearly states only that the government cannot do anything to restrict free speech.

Weaver, however, thinks that she has found a loophole by noting that Facebook is a publicly traded company — which means, in her estimation, that it is publicly owned.

“Dear Libtards who think Facebook is a privately owned business,” she writes on Twitter. “There’s a thing called fact-checking. Facebook is a public business that’s publicly traded. Using that argument to justify banning Alex Jones doesn’t work.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/infowars-reporter-tries-fact-check-claim-facebook-private-company-gets-utterly-humiliated/

By the way, Millie, if you want to do some fact checking, why don’t I show you Infowars’ terms of service for their very own fucking message board?

“You will not post anything libelous, defamatory, threatening, harassing, harmful, abusive, hateful, invasive of another’s privacy, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise illegal.” But harassing or threatening the parents of murdered children is perfectly OK by their standards!! Oh New York City, thank you, I’m out!!!!

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

Shit, I still have a whole 40 minutes left? And we got Blackberry Smoke coming? OK fine I’ll do it for Blackberry Smoke. Let’s spin the wheel shall we? And it lands on…. Oh hey a clip without context!

24 years? Man I can barely keep up with the next 10 fucking minutes! Spin it again! Donald Trump. So we already covered dueling white supremacy rallies on opposite coasts. But someone who’s holding crazy rallies in his own right is of course the guy who we currently call president, Donald J. Trump. I mean the guy is becoming more unhinged by the day. Let’s go through his last couple of rallies, which really are becoming more hateful by the day. I mean just look at these winners:

Well hey if you want to move to Russia, the door is that way, and they will gladly have you! And they're not making America great again, they're making America white again! Oh and by the way before we get into the rallies, here’s some actual fact checking for our friend Millie from the previous entry:

Because of summer vacation schedules, we had fallen a month behind in updating The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

It turns out that’s when the president decided to turn on the spigots of false and misleading claims. As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months. That’s an overall average of nearly 7.6 claims a day.

When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. But the average number of claims per day keeps climbing the longer Trump stays in office. In fact, in June and July, the president averaged 16 claims a day.

Put another way: In his first year as president, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims. Now, just six months later, he has almost doubled that total.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/01/president-trump-has-made-4229-false-or-misleading-claims-in-558-days/

Yeah Trump lies kind of like that guy does. But that’s a staggering statistic there – 4,229 claims in 558 days. And it seems like every day he adds another 100 to that number. So let’s go through a few of these claims made over the last couple of days. Like did anyone see the news about Lebron James? See, LeBron is actually doing the world some good. But Trump of course decided to take a dump all over it:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1025586524782559232

So let’s put up the actual story:

"Anyone that's done what LeBron James has done for the past decade to 15 years for our children to prepare them to flourish in life has to be an intelligent person." With that, Akron Public Schools spokesman Mark Williamson joined first lady Melania Trump in praising a newly opened Ohio public school in support of disadvantaged youth, made possible by the LeBron James Family Foundation, which will spend at least $2 million a year to fund it. "He's a bright guy, end of story," Williamson told Reuters of the three-time NBA champion on Monday. Days earlier, President Trump referred to a CNN interview in which James was critical of him, noting "the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon ... made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do." Lemon counters that "referring to African-Americans as dumb is one of the oldest canards of America's racist past and present."

Racist or not, the tweet has given extra publicity to the I Promise elementary school run by Akron Public Schools in James' hometown, which will offer classes for at-risk students in the third and fourth grades before expanding to the first through eighth grades by 2022, writes Jordan Weissman at Slate. He argues the school is deserving of attention not only because each student will receive free breakfast and lunch, a free Chromebook and bicycle, and tuition to the University of Akron paid for by James upon graduation, but because James is "sending the message that it's worth investing in our traditional public education systems, and that they should be trusted to run socially and academically ambitious schools." At the Guardian, Laurence Halsted adds James is the kind of role model "society needs now more than ever."
http://www.newser.com/story/262994/akron-public-schools-weighs-in-on-lebron-james-intelligence.html

Damn straight! And speaking of bullshit, here’s another one that Trump decided to take a dump all over – my home state. You know republicans have been trying to fuck with California since the 80s, and we’ve been through a lot of shit. We’ve been through fires, earthquakes, extreme heat, and you know what? We’ve survived it. And of course Trump couldn’t be bothered with facts. Let’s throw that tweet up there:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1026587142989008897

I can’t even possibly begin to comprehend that word salad. But here’s someone who can!

In his first remarks on the vast California wildfires that have killed at least seven people and forced thousands to flee, President Trump blamed the blazes on the state’s environmental policies and inaccurately claimed that water that could be used to fight the fires was “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

State officials and firefighting experts dismissed the president’s comments, which he posted on Twitter. “We have plenty of water to fight these wildfires, but let’s be clear: It’s our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires,” said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency.

He and others said that Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to a perennial and unrelated water dispute in California between farmers and environmentalists. Farmers have long argued for more water to be allocated to irrigating crops, while environmentalists counter that the state’s rivers would suffer and fish stocks would die.

The president first addressed the fires late Sunday, writing on Twitter, “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized.” He also referred to a debate in forest management about the effectiveness of removing trees and vegetation as a fire control method.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/climate/trump-california-fire-tweets.html

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Come on let’s give the wheel a good strong spin shall we? Oh hey look it’s a clip without context!

Really, Dave? I can’t think of one! You might want to lay off the covfefe, there, it’s some bad shit. Spin it again! Oh hey it’s time for Holy Shit! Gather around, my fair brothers and sisters of New York City, 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:

My fair congregation! There is a war brewing upon those in the religious right! For there is a conspiracy, if you will. One so outrageously batshit crazy that it deserves it’s own name and theme music! Yes of course I’m talking about the conspiracy theory known as “Q”. But since we are allowed to swear in my church, and I do say this with every ounce of the Good LAWRD in me, but fuck this fucking bullshit! I mean really, can it get any less Christiany than this? Yes, that is a word, sir! What do our religious brethren have to say about such ridiculousness?

Mark Taylor, the so-called “firefighter prophet” and radical conspiracy theorist about whom Liberty University is making a movie, appeared recently on “The Sharpening Report,” where he asserted that the U.S. military is training soldiers to fight underground because that is where satanic pedophiles build secret bunkers in which they abuse, sacrifice, and eat children.

“The underground child sacrifices, the sex trafficking rings, where is that stuff taking place?” Taylor asked. “Underground, in the tunnels.”

Taylor claimed that Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy investment banker and political donor who pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from minors a decade ago, had spent millions of dollars filling in tunnels on his private island that he and others had used to engage in pedophilia and cannibalism in order to be closer to Satan.

“There were having a dining room where they had cannibalism going on,” Taylor said. “It’s all going on underground. Now, the Lord showed me something: Why is it going on underground? Because, number one, they don’t have any resistance underground, and number two, they’re closer to the entities—digging down—that they’re trying to invoke.”

“That’s why they’re doing that,” he continued. “They’re closer to the enemies they’re invoking—of course, it’s in secret—[and] they have no resistance … I read an article where the military is literally training to start fighting underground because so much of that is going on underground right now, globally.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/firefighter-prophet-mark-taylor-says-the-military-is-gearing-for-war-with-pedophiles/

Of COURSE it’s got to be Satanic pedophiles! You wouldn’t want them dang normal, non religious secular pedophiles doing wrong would you? Can I get an amen??? You really cannot make this stuff up, and apparently it’s getting weirder and weirder! Apparently, people like the late, great Kate Spade were involved in this nonsense!

Liz Crokin, a pedophilia-obsessed right-wing “reporter,” responded to the reported suicide of renowned fashion designer Kate Spade on Monday by suggesting that Spade may have been involved in a satanic pedophilia ring and killed herself to escape jail time.

In a video uploaded just hours after news broke of Spade’s suicide, Crokin alleged that the designer may not have actually killed herself, based on warnings posted by “QAnon”—an anonymous poster on the 8Chan forum board that conspiracy theorists believe is a high-level Trump official ordered to leak out sensitive intelligence to their gang of amateur sleuths. Crokin said that “QAnon said that he warned that people would be committing suicide and today it was reported that she committed suicide.”

“The circumstances, just from the initial reports are very shady, they’re very suspicious, she allegedly hung herself with a red scarf and when I hear things like that I immediately think Illuminati and occult symbolism. The Illuminati is obsessed with the color red, we also know that the pedophile Satanists are obsessed with handkerchiefs, talk about handkerchiefs in the [John] Podesta emails,” Crokin said.

Crokin said that pictures of Spade and her husband show them to be “your typical creepy occult couple” and said the couple reminded her of “Tony Podesta and his ex-wife, who looks like Cruella de Vil.” She then urged viewers to search for images of Andy Spade and “pizza,” claiming that numerous photos of him delivering boxes of pizza were evidence that Spade is a pedophile. She also pushed this theory on Twitter:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/liz-crokin-kate-spade-may-have-committed-suicide-because-she-was-a-satanic-pedophile/

Yes and apparently any time that you send out for pizza, you’re engaging in Q. Because who knew there were that many pizzas out there? I could seriously go all day on this nonsense! And by the way, would you validate these psychopaths? I know I wouldn’t!

Adherents to the “QAnon” conspiracy theory and former “Pizzagate” truthers who have alleged that President Trump is secretly working behind the scenes to dismantle a global network of satanic child sex traffickers believe a new press release from the Department of Justice has validated their wild conspiracy theories.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice issued a press release announcing the arrest of more than 2,300 “suspected online child sex offenders.”
<snip>

The announcement was seen as validation by conspiracy theorists who have long-since obsessed over their belief that members of the political, media and corporate elite are part of an international network of pedophiles and that the Trump administration would soon be putting those figures in jail.

On The Goldwater, a news site built specifically for 8Chan users, an author named “Red Pill” wrote an article thanking “AG Jeff Sessions, the ICAC Task Force, and all agencies involved in the process of making America safe again.” The Twitter account for “An Open Secret,” which is a film about “Hollywood pedophiles & convicted sex offenders” shared the news to its followers.

Lisa Crowley, a #QAnon truther with tens of thousands of followers online, said she couldn’t wait until “all the BIG FISH in Hollywood, DC, & corporate America are finally indicted/arrested”:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/former-pizzagate-and-current-qanon-believers-say-the-doj-has-validated-them/

Excuse me a minute… But of course there’s mass indictments coming, my fair congregation, yes, there are mass indictments coming! Because when the good LAWRD JAYSUS rains down fire and brimstone, he rains it down hard!

One of the central components of the bizarre right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is actually just cover for the Trump administration’s effort to take down a global pedophile ring, is the belief that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been racking up thousands of sealed indictments against powerful political, media, and business leaders who will soon be rounded up in mass raids.

During his recent appearance on the “USA Watchdog” program, right-wing radio host Dave Janda reported that these indictments will be unsealed once the primaries in the midterm elections are over and that former CIA director John Brennan will be among the first to be arrested.

“Everybody who is a freedom fighter is tired of hearing this, ‘It’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen,’ and nothing is happening,” Janda said. “What I’m told and have been told—and it’s been consistently told to me—you’re going to start to see movement on the indictments after the primaries are over.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dave-janda-qanon-mass-arrests-will-begin-after-the-primaries-are-over/

Yes, dissecting the Q saga is going to take a lot to unpack and it is going to be like that. By the way did anyone think that America would get to the point where this shit is in the news? I know I certainly did not! And by the way, don’t give VIP access to these morons! Because our GAWD will not allow that, his VIP room is pure!

When President Trump approached the podium at his rally last night in Duluth, Minnesota, he paused for a split-second to gesture to a man wearing a shirt emblazoned with the letter “Q.”

The Q on the man’s t-shirt refers to the right-wing conspiracy theory known as “The Storm” that has thousands of adherents online. The theory goes like this: President Trump is not actually under investigation for possible collusion with Russian officials in 2016, but rather he is secretly working overtime to dismantle a global network of Satanic pedophiles involving some of the most powerful global elites and to share information about this secret project. According to the theory, Trump has ordered top-level officials to disseminate cryptic pieces of information—known as “crumbs”—to a bunch of random people on 4chan and 8chan who spend hours trying to put the puzzle pieces together. The conspiracy theory has been spread by the likes of Infowars and by comedian Roseanne Barr, but some conspiracy theorists have recently begun to allege that the whole operation was compromised once the unknown authors of the Q posts started to criticize one-time Q believers like Jerome Corsi and David Seaman of attempting to profit off the movement.

And as crazy as all of that sounds, it apparently didn’t stop anyone on the Trump advance team from giving someone advertising this theory front-row VIP access at last night’s rally.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-team-gives-vip-rally-access-to-qanon-truther/

Yes there you have it, the conspiracy theorists have come out of the closet and they’re abusing their VIP privileges! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Top 10 Investigates: Extreme Embalming
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Let’s spin the wheel shall we? Come on no whammy no whammy no whammy no whammy… stop! No, a whammy!!!

Spin it again! Oh hey New York City, it’s time to investigate beyond the headlines! This is Top 10 Investigates!

The questions about what happens when one dies are some extremely tough decisions to be made, such as “how will I be remembered?”. “What’s going to happen to my loved ones?”. “What will happen to my estate?”. Yes, you probably have those questions in your head and so much more. But really, the questions about how you will be remembered after you pass on is the one we are looking at for this discussion today. And you most likely don’t want to be remembered in this way. A disturbing new trend has emerged among the funeral industry called “extreme embalming”. Here’s more.

Two weeks after Renard Matthews was tragically shot and killed in his New Orleans neighborhood, the 18-year-old looked exactly how he had in life. At his wake, he lay slumped in an office chair in front of a TV "playing" NBA2K with his hands wrapped around a PS4 controller. Clad in sunglasses, socks and flip-flops, and a Celtics jersey, he even had his favorite snacks—Doritos and root beer—within reach. And that’s just how his family wanted it.

Matthews’s wake was the latest in a string of what funeral directors call "nontraditional" memorial services. Instead of displaying their loved ones in a casket, some families choose to pose the bodies in life-like scenarios to see them as they were in life before they’re laid to rest. The practice first appeared in Puerto Rico in 2008 as a more celebratory send-off to the deceased, with the Marín Funeral Home posing bodies propped up on motorcycles or standing in a makeshift boxing ring.

In 2012, "extreme embalming" funerals hit New Orleans, when the family of Lionel Batiste—the drummer in the famed Treme Brass Band—asked the Charbonnet-Labat-Glapion Funeral Home to lean him next to his bass drum, his hand resting on the cane he always carried. When Mickey Easterling, a New Orleans socialite known for her extravagant parties, died two years later, her family tapped Jacob Schoen & Son to throw her a final blowout, posing her in her signature feather boa with a cigarette in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. And then there was Miriam Burbank, a Saints fan whose daughters had Charbonnet deck her out like they’d always seen her: sitting at a table in black and gold, with a menthol cigarette between her fingers and a can of Busch beer at her side.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmqy7/inside-new-orleans-extreme-embalming-funerals

In fact the concept of non traditional funerals isn’t anything new. It’s gaining in popularity from where it was 5 years ago. In fact there’s a company that actually launches remains into space.

When US Army Infantry Soldier Steven Jenks was deployed in Iraq, he used to get letters from his mother signed like this: "No matter how lonely you feel and how far you are, always look at the moon and know I am with you. I love you to the moon and back."

So when his mother died of lung cancer, Jenks thought it befitting to send her remains to the moon. "I will know that she is looking down on my family and maybe they won't feel so alone," he said in a statement.

Jenks is the first client of Elysium Space, a company that offers "celestial services to honor and celebrate the life of someone you love." (In other words, they launch small amounts of cremated remains into space.) In a press release, Elysium said: "The time to change the vision of death from the underground to the celestial is now."
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7bdw8q/the-space-race-for-lunar-funerals-511

But even that isn’t anything new. However the concept has taken some interesting new turns and has generated controversy. Mainly – how do you prop up a corpse?

MIRIAM Birkbank is sat at a dining room table with a can of her favourite beer and a pack of cigs... but the 53-year-old isn't enjoying a relaxing evening at home after a long day's work.

In fact, she's dead - and her rigid body has been dressed up, contorted into position and put on display at the request of her family.

This is extreme embalming - where bodies are preserved by injecting them with a chemical fluid which makes them totally rigid - before being displayed in bizarre real life positions.

Corpses are forced into position by having their feet nailed to the floor, poles erected behind their necks - and even their limbs prized apart.

The demand for it is growing, with more and more people paying around £2,000 to have their loved one brought back to life for 2-3 days before the funeral takes place.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6750734/extreme-embalming-dead-funeral-pose/

Yes, there’s actually a growing demand for non traditional and unusual funeral services. Of course people want to be remembered as they lived, not as they died. But is this acceptable in current society? Some might say yes and others say no. It’s a hotly debated topic but ultimately we’ll leave it to the deceased.

Charbonnet Labat Glapion Funeral Home, where Matthews' wake took place, is accustomed to handling "extreme embalming" requests. They have go-to specialists that prepare the bodies according to the families' specifications or the stated wishes of the deceased, and also offer traditional New Orleans jazz funerals.

"One time, we stood a deceased drummer from a grassroots band at a drum set," the funeral home told Yahoo Lifestyle.

At another Charbonnet Labat Glapion wake, Miriam "Mae Mae" Burbank, 53, was positioned at a table with a menthol cigarette, an ashtray, and a Busch beer, her fingernails painted in the colors of her beloved New Orleans Saints football team.

"A lot of people didn't accept what I was doing," Burbank's daughter Zymora Kimball told WGNO of her mother's 2014 bar-themed memorial. "I didn't let that stop me, and I know she's happy with how she's looking. That's her, that's Mae."

Other examples of "extreme embalming" have positioned the dead in superhero costumes, driving a car (with some mourners taking the time to sit beside the deceased), or simply sitting in a realistic fashion wearing their everyday clothes.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-lifelike-extreme-embalming-2018-7?r=UK&IR=T

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

[font size="8"]Last Man Standing: How Is This Still A Thing
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New York City, let’s spin it to win it! And it lands on… come on no whammy no whammy no whammy… stop! Clip without context!

I love that he says this while he’s hawking a $1750 generator “with bonuses”. Really, it’s just the Home Shopping Network with an added bonus of “everyone’s going to die”. Spin it again! And hey, it lands on “How Is This Still A Thing!” New York City, it’s time once again to ask:

Tim Allen’s show “Last Man Standing” – how is this still a thing? It used to be that when your favorite TV show was canceled, that was it, it was done. Now we live in an era where shows can hop from network to network. Most of the time it’s generally harmless like Futurama or Brooklyn 99 or Arrested Development. But one show that’s being revived after being cancelled is getting a lot of attention, and it’s for all the wrong reasons.

When Fox announced in May that it would be resuscitating the ABC sitcom Last Man Standing for the 2018-2019 TV season, one question arose: would Tim Allen’s character be a vocal Trump supporter, like Roseanne Conner on ABC’s revived (and later, canceled) Roseanne? The Television Critics Association’s summer press tour seemed to offer an answer: maybe, but we won’t shove it in your face.

“He’s probably pro-Trump,” Allen declared of his Last Man Standing character, Mike Baxter. But “he probably doesn’t defend him,” Allen continued. He also offered that he thinks the character’s view of Trump might be less positive than it is benignly indifferent: “The dude is flying the plane right now; there’s no reason to take him out until he lands.”

“Oh yes we will!” Allen immediately chimed in mischievously. Despite the interjection, Abbott quickly repeated his statement that he didn’t expect the show to specifically comment on the president.
Try Vanity Fair and receive a free tote.Join Now

“We had a bank of stuff” planned in case “Mrs. Clinton” had been elected, Allen then offered. R.I.P., all those lost “lock her up” and pantsuit jokes.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/tim-allen-last-man-standing-fox-trump

Oh thank god he spared us a bunch of pantsuit jokes! Really, that is what passes for humor in the conservative male world? Well this show wasn’t the only one who was prepared for a Clinton victory and they were really hoping for it, because, jokes.

Tim Allen may be a supporter for president Donald Trump, but the “Last Man Standing” star said on Thursday there was one reason he was upset over Trump’s surprising victory. They had to throw away all their pantsuit jokes.

“We had a whole, we had a bank of stuff going on,” Allen said during the the revived comedy’s TCA panel, on how they were planning to address for not-to-be President Clinton. “Those of us in the comedy business went ‘shoot.’ Because of [Trump’s victory], we don’t have all that pantsuit stuff.”

But that doesn’t mean that the comedy leveled at the former Secretary of State’s expense would’ve been mean spirited. “Just the jokes that she would find funny,” he clarified, saying that the for comedians it’s important to not have too much of a partisan slant. “We want both sides to think it’s funny.”

Allen was responding to a question about any story lines the show had to drop because of ABC’s decision to cancel the show. Allen was explaining that “Last Man Standing,” like most other shows, were planning for Clinton to win.
https://www.thewrap.com/last-man-standing-tim-allen-upset-clinton-lost-to-trump-because-he-couldnt-tell-pantsuit-jokes/

Yes that’s the joke, and it’s further evidence of the fact that conservatives don’t really have a sense of humor. Or decency. So is his character pro Trump or not Pro Trump? That is the question!

While Allen admitted that, at least in some respects, his character Mike Baxter probably supports certain aspects of President Trump and his administration, he and the comedy’s executive producers say that there is no specific plan to vocalize that support. At least not now, and certainly not with the blatant, headline-grabbing pride that Roseanne Barr’s character on Roseanne did in that series’ controversial revival. That series was so popular before its scandal-induced cancellation that many critics, reporters, and couch surfers cynically assumed it had led to Fox’s decision to bring Last Man Standing back from the dead.

“It’s a legitimate question,” Allen said, referring to whether his character, who voiced his displeasure with then-President Barack Obama many times during Last Man Standing’s original run on ABC, would be openly MAGA.

“I think the guy’s kinda a centrist,” he continued. “I think the best line I heard is actually from [Bryan] Cranston from Breaking Bad. The dude’s flying a plane right now. There’s really no reason to get him out of the pilot seat until he lands. So this guy’s a practical guy. He owns a big business. If it’s helping his business, he’s probably pro-Trump. He probably doesn’t defend him. Whatever is good for his business and good for the state of Colorado.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tim-allens-last-man-standing-character-is-probably-pro-trump-but-wont-say-it-on-tv

Yes it’s probably for the best that the character doesn’t go full MAGA. Because when you go full MAGA you don’t go back. Just ask how well that worked for Roseanne.

Tim Allen, who raised eyebrows last year after likening being a conservative in Hollywood to living in 1930s Germany, has opened up about ABC's firing of fellow right-leaning actor Roseanne Barr.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the comedian -- whose sitcom "Last Man Standing" was canceled last year by ABC before being rescued by Fox -- said during a panel at the Television Critics Association press tour that the network "had to do what they had to do," when it came to firing Barr. Her rebooted sitcom was canceled in May after she sent a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to President Barack Obama. ABC has since ordered a spinoff of the show that will not include its titular star.

Allen, who plays an outspoken conservative on "Last Man Standing," also spoke of his longtime friendship with Barr, whom he called "the most diverse and tolerant woman I've ever known for a long time." He added that "it's a very icy time" for comedians.

"I've been a comedian for 38 years and I've never seen it, like Lenny Bruce said at the Purple Onion, 'We've gone backwards,' " Allen said, as quoted by Entertainment Weekly and other outlets. "There are things you can't say. There are things you shouldn't say. Who makes up these rules? And as a stand-up comic, it's a dangerous position to be in because I like pushing buttons. It's unfortunate."
https://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2018/08/tim_allen_talks_last_man_stand.html

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There you have it, Last Man Standing is coming back on the air during a time when pushing buttons isn’t exactly the right thing to do in this increasingly hostile environment. That’s enough to make you ask – Last Man Standing:

[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
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New York City let’s spin the wheel shall we? And it lands on… ‘Merica!

Ha ha, nice! Spin it again, oh hey it’s time for People Are Dumb!

So I want to start of course with America’s most penis shaped state of Florida. Actually I think most or all stories this edition are going to come from the Sunshine State. And there’s an interesting twist to this story that popped up two days after it published. And I know we briefly talked about this last week but there’s much more to it. . Which makes us wonder if there really is something in Florida’s water. Of course if there is, there’s probably an antidote to it. But still, this kind of thing definitely can’t be ignored. Here’s the original story:

A man made a beer run to a Jacksonville convenience store while carrying a live alligator, then posted a video of the “prank” on Facebook.

He yells: "Ya'll aint out of beer are ya? Is he taking the last bit of beer? You aren't taking the last bit of beer are you?"

The man then runs toward a customer with the gator — which had its jaws taped shut — and grabs a 12-pack, Wink News reports.

Florida wildlife investigators are said to be looking into the incident.

First Coast News spoke to the man who posted the video, and he said it was "all fun and games. I knew everybody in there."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-reg-man-chases-people-with-gator-20180728-story.html

And now here’s the story as he tells it. So I guess this one falls under “you be the judge”.:

A man who walked into a convenience store with a live alligator tucked under his arm — with the whole fiasco recorded — was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, last week.

Robert Timothy Barr, 28 — who’s also known as Robby Stratton — and Kevin Scott Keene, 23, were charged with illegal possession of an alligator, illegal exhibition of dangerous wildlife and cruelty to animals, local news station WJXT4 reported.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating the incident, told HuffPost on Monday it is still trying to identify another individual in the case.

Barr was seen in a viral Facebook video boastfully running around the convenience store in late July carrying the 4- to 5-foot alligator whose mouth was duct-taped shut, per news station WTLV.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/drunk-florida-man-who-made-beer-run-with-live-alligator-says-he-doesnt-remember-it_us_5b684b50e4b0de86f4a36b2f

Excuse me a minute… that one never gets old! So sticking with the Sunshine State, this is the only state where you can walk into a convenience store and have this happen to you. And really, it shouldn’t happen no matter where you are.

In one of the more vile episodes to recently transpire inside a 7-Eleven, a Florida man yesterday dumped a bucket containing human feces and urine inside a convenience store in St. Petersburg, according to police.

Investigators allege that Damian Simms, 41, arrived at the 7-Eleven around 1:30 AM Wednesday and proceeded to toss the slurry of human waste on the floor of the business. The liquid splashed on merchandise valued at $28.

Pictured at right, Simms apparently obtained the waste from a portable toilet. “The defendant threw a bucket of port a potty liquid human feces and urine,” reported Officer Donald Ziglar.

In late-May, Simms was trespassed from the 7-Eleven and “returned tonight with a bucket of human feces,” wrote Ziglar, who noted an “indication of alcohol influence.” The incident was recorded by store security cameras.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/revolting/vile-slurry-arrest-710532

Damn straight! Next up we’re going to South Carolina for this one. You know it’s fair season and people will definitely eat some junk food. But whatever your fair food is, as long as it’s deep fried and served on a stick, don’t do this!

A corn dog thief is on the loose in South Carolina, police report.

A Myrtle Beach woman told cops that she returned to her home yesterday afternoon and found a male intruder “just inside her door eating a corndog.” The 30-year-old victim said that she recognized the man as someone she had met last year (but whose name she did not recall).

When confronted by the homeowner, the suspect “said he was hungry and stopped by to get something to eat,” according to a Myrtle Beach Police Department report.

The suspect peddled away from the crime scene on a bicycle owned by the woman, who told cops that her phone was also missing.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/burglary/corn-dog-thief-sought-173958

Next up – bears! And of course you know that bears are godless killing machines. And if you have any sort of nice car, don’t leave food in it if you’re going anywhere near where bears are! Just don’t freaking do it!

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A North Carolina man plans to leave the dents in his rare vintage car for a while to relish the Alaska vacation story behind it. It’s not every day that a pricey collector’s treasure is damaged by a bear breaking into it to steal cookies.

“It’s bar room talk,” Tom Cotter of Davidson, North Carolina, said Monday shortly before he was scheduled to fly home from Anchorage after he toured the state for two weeks in his red 1965 289 Shelby Cobra with several other car collectors.

Cotter’s car sustained major rips to the vinyl roof and dents on the body when the bear broke into it last week at Alyeska Ski Resort, 38 miles (61 kilometers) south of Anchorage. He learned about the break-in when one of his friends texted him a photo of the damaged car the morning it was discovered.

No words were necessary for Cotter, who rushed out to assess the damages. ... “This car will forever be known as the bear Cobra,” said Cotter, 64, an author who writes about finding rare vintage cars. He also has a YouTube channel called The Barn Find Hunter.....
https://apnews.com/22784fa145d24107b9a272020e37dd20/Bear-tears-through-classic-Shelby-Cobra-on-Alaska-road-trip

Finally this week for People Are Dumb – you know… it’s 2018. Twitter and Facebook exist. And if you’re in any sort of public position, don’t be a dick. Because words and actions have consequences, and if you’re not careful it can backfire on you big time. Of course even worse if you’re the employer in this case.

A white police officer in Michigan who says he was taunted by fellow officers when he told them that he was part black will receive a $65,000 settlement, his attorney said.

Sgt. Cleon Brown, a 19-year veteran with the police department in Hastings, Michigan, said a series of taunts began in 2016 when he took a genetic test through Ancestry.com and learned that he was 18% African.

His colleagues at the police department were whispering "Black Lives Matter" while pumping their fists as they walked past him and his police chief referred to him as "Kunta," he said. (Kunta Kinte is a character in Alex Haley's novel, "Roots: The Saga of an American Family."

"It was almost like a disgraced type of reaction that I got from them like, 'Why are you proud of this type of thing?'," he told CNN affiliate WDIV.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/01/us/police-lawsuit-african-ancestry-settlement-trnd/index.html

That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Deep State Diaries Episode 8: The NSA
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Spin the wheel one final time this week! And it lands on… t-shirt cannon!!! Yes everyone will get our awesome new Top 10 tour shirt. Spin it again! And it’s time for Deep State Diaries!

It’s time for episode 8 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 NSA[/font]

*CONTROVERSY ALERT* *CONTROVERSY ALERT* *CONTROVERSY ALERT* For this next entry in our 24 part series exploring all of our government’s institutions and entities we’re going to take a look at our nation’s surveillance industry and explore the National Surveillance Agency. Fun fact: The NSA is actually an unofficial arm of the Department Of Defense. OK so we live in troubled times, obviously. And what happens when your boss owes his debt to a hostile foreign power? Well let’s just say that a lot of shit is going to hit multiple fans when this whole thing goes down.

As Cabinet members, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, looked on on Wednesday, Donald Trump sunk still deeper into the Russia-sympathy hole he has so effectively dug for himself since taking office. “No,” the president replied when asked by a White House pool reporter whether Russia is still targeting the U.S. with attacks on its digital infrastructure. Seemingly enamored of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, Trump has spent the past two days defending the Soviets from charges that they meddled in the 2016 presidential election, telling reporters that Putin gave a “very strong” denial when pressed on the matter behind the scenes. Even as the White House scrambles to backtrack, with certain staffers adamant that Trump correct the record—a push that resulted in a grammatical correction on Tuesday afternoon, and a feeble re-characterization on Wednesday—the person at the top of the food chain seems loath to accept the conclusions of people like Coats, who hours after the Trump-Putin presser put out an unequivocal statement: “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.” (Days before, Coats had drawn a comparison between Russia’s ongoing attempts at interference and warning signs before 9/11: “The warning lights are blinking red again,” Coats said. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-nsa-and-cyber-command-go-rogue

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Yes, listen to the Captain here! Now it is time to fight. Because we have never seen a president who has collided with a foreign power before, what do we do about it? And in fact how do we deal with it? That’s what the NSA is trying to answer here. And you know what? They’re not as evil as you think.

The head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm has directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

The move, announced to staff at the National Security Agency last week by NSA Director Paul Nakasone, is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups and comes as President Trump in Helsinki on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “extremely strong and powerful” in denying Russian involvement in the presidential election two years ago.

It is the latest initiative by national security agencies to push back against Russian aggression in the absence of direct guidance from the White House on the issue.

“Nakasone, and the heads of the other three-letter agencies, are doing what they can in their own lanes, absent an overall approach directed by the president,” said Michael V. Hayden, who has headed the NSA and the CIA. “As good as it is, it’s not good enough. This is not a narrowly defined cyberthreat. This is one of the most significant strategic national security threats facing the United States since 9/11.”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-and-cyber-command-to-coordinate-actions-to-counter-russian-election-interference-in-2018-amid-absence-of-white-house-guidance/2018/07/17/baac95b2-8900-11e8-85ae-511bc1146b0b_story.html?utm_term=.399e9507b723

Not today, Loki! But then what happens when an agency gets too big for its’ own good? That is the case with the NSA, an agency can get too large and overstep its’ boundaries. In fact it seems to have both parties alarmed at how big it is:

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have sent a letter [PDF] to the NSA's inspector general asking him to look into the agency's torching of metadata for hundreds of millions of phone calls.

"We write to request that you conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding, and any systemic problems that may have led to, the deletion by the National Security Agency (NSA) of certain call detail records (CDRs) collected from telecommunications service providers pursuant to Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)," the letter begins.

That deletion was announced back in June, one month after the spy agency revealed in a "statistical transparency report" [PDF] that it had collected 534 million call details in 2017, a tripling of the number from the previous year.

The NSA blamed "technical irregularities" for the receipt and storing of an unspecified amount of phone call data, and said that, since it was not possible to discern between legitimately and illegally gathered details, it was going to "delete all CDRs acquired since 2015."
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/06/us_spying_programs/

So the NSA may be too big and we’re colluding with a hostile foreign power that’s bent on destroying us into oblivion. What do we do? Who do we call when the network gets too big for its’ own good? Where do we go from there?

A pair of U.S. senators is asking the National Security Agency’s inspector general to investigate the circumstances surrounding the spy agency’s decision to delete scores of call records that it collected for foreign intelligence purposes.

The NSA announced in late June that it was deleting all so-called call detail records (CDRs) collected since 2015 after discovering that “technical irregularities” resulted in the agency collecting data it was not authorized to receive.

The NSA said it publicly disclosed the developments in accordance with the agency’s “core values of respect for the law, accountability, integrity, and transparency.” While the spy agency said the root of the problem has been addressed, it offered limited details about the issue.

Now, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are asking Robert Storch, the NSA inspector general, to launch an investigation into “the circumstances surrounding, and any systemic problems that may have led to, the deletion by the National Security Agency (NSA) of certain call detail records,” according to a letter sent Thursday.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/400144-govt-watchdog-pressed-to-investigate-nsa-call-record-deletion

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

Overall importance: C
How Things Are Going: D
Likely hood To Survive: B

Overall: C-

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

When the Top 10 returns we’re going to take a look at how our legal system is going as we delve into the DOJ!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Blackberry Smoke[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen my next guest is a great southern rock band from Raleigh, North Carolina and you can see them on tour everywhere this August and September. Playing their song “Flesh & Bone” from their new album “Shine A Light”, give it up for Blackberry Smoke!

New York City, we had an awesome time! Love you guys. We will be back very soon! We are off next week, I am taking a much needed vacay and we will be running a best of in the meantime. We will be back on August 22nd in the Motor City! See you in 2 weeks!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: Grammercy Theater, New York City, NY
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Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

August 6, 2018

Preview For This Week's Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Well hey if you want to move to Russia, the door is that way, and they will gladly have you! And they're not making America great again, they're making America white again!

*audience laughs and applauds*

This week on the Top 10 - we are live from New York City!!! With the famous Wheel Of Corruption! Qanon comes out of the conspiracy theory closet, we recap all the insanity over the weekend including the Proud Boys rallies in DC and Portland - which went about as well as you'd expect, Trump declares an all out assault on the free press, Alex Jones had his worst week ever, we have some more Profiles In #Civility, we ask how Tim Allen's show "Last Man Standing" is still a thing, and Trump goes off the rails attacking LeBron James for doing society good, something he doesn't know how to do! And in our weekly investigative piece Top 10 Investigates we're going to take a look at the funeral industry and a new trend that is guaranteed to make you go "WTF". And in our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in "Holy Shit", our resident pastor is going to tell you about how his fellow religious zealots are literally turning on each other. And we've got a brand new edition of People Are Dumb, because People Are Dumb. And the next installment of Deep State Diaries is going to take you deep inside the surveillance industry as we look at the NSA! Plus some live music for you from Blackberry Smoke!

Top 10 Conservative Idiots: Wednesdays at 2:00 PM /shameless self promotion

August 1, 2018

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-7: Yachty McYachtface Goes On A 3 Hour Tour Edition

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #5-7: Yachty McYachtface Goes On A 3 Hour Tour Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! What’s up St. Louis???? Nice to see there’s some awesome liberals in the Show Me State! We’re having a great time on the road here. This is our 4th stop and we’ve got plenty more coming through the rest of this season including our next stop in New York City, then we’re off to Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Jose, Oxnard, and then back home at the UCB Theater in Hollywood. Later in the year we’ll be hitting Nashville, Philly, Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, Denver, Lexington (new date added), Orlando, Atlanta and Washington DC. And… we are going to London, that’s in the UK don’t you know? Get your tickets! OK do we have time for the thing? OK I’ll make it short. We are not doing “People Are Dumb” this week but I got to talk about this story and it’s classic Florida. OK so… how… what… where… I can’t even. So this was in the Florida city of Jacksonville. Really, do you bring a gator when you go out on a beer run? Well this guy did and then he proceeds to literally use the gator as a weapon and accuse the convenience store of running out of beer. I mean come on if you’re going to go crazy, go all out! I’ve made a lot of beer runs in my life. I have never, not once thought to ever bring a live alligator with me. Shit, I wouldn’t even know where to get a live alligator! And this is one instance where I would say if you’ve got it, *DON’T* flaunt it! Maybe… leave the gator at home next time! OK that’s enough of the intro, we got a lot of idiocy to talk about. But first John Oliver is back and he trolls Facebook hard with a parody ad:

Wow, there was so much idiocy this week that once again it was impossible to contain it all. In the number one slot this week is the NRA (1) and the Trump administration is going to play “what would a dick do” and allow for the release of technology that allows you to 3-D print your own untraceable gun. In the second slot we’re going to lighten things up and tell you about how Betsy DeVos’ (2) $40 million yacht got defaced and sent out into the ocean. In the third slot this week is our Attorney General Jeff Sessions (3) who got in some trouble during a speech to conservative high school students while railing on “snowflakes” and we’ll delve into his “Religious Liberty Task Force”. Taking the fourth slot this week we have some more Profiles In #Civility (4) because once again there’s a metric fuck ton of these stories coming out. In the number 5 seed this week we have a new installment of “How Is This Still A Thing” and this week we’re going to ask “Donald Trump’s Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame: How Is This Still A Thing?”. Taking the sixth slot this week is a new installment of our weekly investigative piece “Top 10 Investigates” and this week we’re going to take a look at something called “Looksmax” – it’s an offshoot of the Incel movement with an added sense of self superiority. In the seventh slot this week is of course our weekly visit to the Holy Church Of The Top 10 in “Holy Shit” and this week our resident pastor is going to tell you about the latest foray of the Dark One's descent into autocratic rule with the creation of the Religious Liberty Task Force. In the number 8 slot this week we’ve got a new installment of “Explaining Jokes To Idiots” (8) and I don’t know if you have heard of this new Netflix series called “Insatiable” – is it a quirky high school revenge comedy – or is it insufferable fat shaming??? We will tell you the difference! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week we’ve got a new installment of “I Need A Drink” and this week we’re going to get drunk and tell you about the guy who rigged the McDonalds Monopoly contest and took it for millions! Finally this week we’ve got a new edition of Deep State Diaries. Last week we showed you the inner workings of the food industry with the USDA, this week we’re going to see how our votes are validated by checking out what’s going on at the Federal Election Commission! And… holy shit, I can’t believe the musical guest we have on tonight. I’m really not worthy of appearing in front of the punk rock legends, I’m of course talking about Social Distortion! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! 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 NRA & The Trump Administration
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OK so let’s play a game of “What would a dick do?”. Now let’s get a hypothetical situation going. You’re the NRA and your support is at an all time low and it’s continuing to decline especially since news has been coming fast and furious that you took Russian money and funneled it to your A+ members. So what do you do to take the heat off your membership? Why not… release documents and manuals that would allow anyone to 3-D print their own guns? Brilliant!

By the middle of this week, anyone with internet access will be able to download blueprints to 3D print an untraceable gun.

This idea came from the pro-gun group Defense Distributed, which was founded by Cody Wilson.

He posted his blueprints online five years ago and the U.S. State Department ordered him to take it down. However, Wilson fired back, citing free speech rights, and won a lengthy legal battle last week.

The guns, which will return to the internet Aug. 1, can be produced on a 3D printer without a serial number and can be produced without a background check.

Beyond the simple concern about unregistered weapons, some see other dangers with the 3D-printed firearms.

“Mostly because we see the great potential in terms of harm to the user that's unintentional because of the unsuitability of the material,” said Dave Dalton, operator of Hammerspace Community Workshop in Kansas City, Missouri.
https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/ruling-on-3d-printed-guns-opens-door-for-easily-accessible-untraceable-firearms

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! So really you want to make mass shootings worse by allowing anyone with a 3-D printer to make their own weapon? Fuck off! But there is some good news is that politicians are trying to block the spread of this.

You know things are fucked up when we have the most advanced technology in the history of mankind and our first thought is “how can we make things that kill people with it?”. But most everybody knows that this is a terrible idea except for you know gun nuts. But many states are planning to sue over this technology, like Washington.

Eight states are filing suit against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety.

The suit, to be filed Monday in Seattle, asks a judge to block the federal government's late-June settlement with Defense Distributed, which allowed the company to make the plans available online. Officials say that 1,000 people have already downloaded blueprints for AR-15 rifles.

"I have a question for the Trump Administration: Why are you allowing dangerous criminals easy access to weapons?" Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday. "These downloadable guns are unregistered and very difficult to detect, even with metal detectors, and will be available to anyone regardless of age, mental health or criminal history."

Joining the suit were Democratic attorneys general in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia. Separately, attorneys general in 21 states urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday to withdraw from the settlement with Defense Distributed, saying it "creates an imminent risk to public safety."
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/washington-to-sue-over-3d-printed-gun-plans/281-578608817

Yeah it’s cigarettes that are the problem, right, Homer? And by the way in case you’re wondering who’s really in charge on this issue, look no further than Trump himself who weighed on the subject. Seriously, he might as well wear a shirt that says “NRA approved” on it.

President Trump claimed on Twitter Tuesday that he had spoken with the National Rifle Association about 3-D printed guns and asserted that publishing instructions for making the weapons “doesn’t seem to make much sense!”

The tweet came just an hour after “Fox and Friends” ran a story on the attorneys general of eight states and the District of Columbia who filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to keep blueprints for 3-D printed guns offline.

After reaching a settlement with the federal government in June, a Texas-based company plans to publish the instructions for 3-D printing weapons starting Aug. 1. The company, Defense Distributed, settled with the federal government after fighting the Obama administration in court for five years. The Obama administration argued that publishing the instructions for printing the weapons was a violation of firearm export laws, while Defense Distributed claimed the State Department was violating its First and Second Amendment rights.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration in federal court in Seattle Monday and is asking the court for a temporary restraining order to keep the blueprints from going live on Wednesday.

Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-says-told-nra-3d-printable-guns-dont-make-sense

[font size="8"]Betsy DeVos
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Let’s lighten things up a bit and talk about the least popular Secretary Of Education that the United States has ever had. After all this is a comedy show here. So if you missed it over the weekend, someone graffitied her $40 million yacht (one of 10) and set it afloat in Lake Huron. For what you might say was a 3 hour tour. Gee, where have I heard that before?

A $40 million yacht belonging to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was untied from its mooring at a Lake Huron marina, police said.

The SeaQuest, a 164-foot luxury yacht, registered under a Cayman Islands flag, was set adrift at the Huron Boat Basin, where it was docked.

"Around sunrise the crew woke to find the boat had been untied from the dock and was adrift," according to a vandalism report filed Sunday by the Huron Police Department.

The crew was able to regain control, but not before the ship struck the dock, suffering several scratches and scrapes, the report said.

The captain estimated that the collision caused between $5,000-$10,000 in damages.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/secretary-education-betsy-devos-40-million-yacht-set/story?id=56840039

Well I guess on the plus side, they didn't name it "Yachty McYachtface"! Maybe this is the New Adventures Of Yachty McYachtface? Or Yachty McYachtface Goes On A 3 Hour Tour? I don’t know – we’re just speculating here! But just the fact that Betsy DeVos owns a $40 million yacht is far from the least cringeworthy thing about this story. Their wealth is absolutely staggering.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s extravagant multi-billion dollar lifestyle comes with a yacht scheduler, a gift buyer and a toy repairer, according to a new report detailing her family’s astounding fortune.

DeVos disclosed her family’s wealth and all its trimmings, including $580 million in assets, when she stepped into the role of education secretary in February, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal dug into her family’s office to reveal the many assistants they hire on, from a household administrative assistant to a personal assistant to take care of all their Christmas season needs from suggesting gift ideas, buying gifts and wrapping presents.

And if the Christmas toys get broken, they have a property manager who takes care of that along with other duties like ensuring that “doors are well-oiled to avoid squeaking.” With all holiday season quickly approaching, the DeVos clan has assistants to help with travel, too.

The DeVos’s household assistant helps the teens pick out “clothing and personal items to pack for travel” and another assistant helps schedule trips on their 10 boats, including a 164-foot boat named the “Seaquest." An associate captain oversees the scheduling of their yacht trips and a boat maintenance assistant coordinates their meals aboard while also following “proper table etiquette, service and entertaining protocol.”
https://www.newsweek.com/can-you-afford-betsy-devoss-lavish-lifestyle-708369

That’s right. Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! That’s right – Betsy DeVos has over $600 million dollars in assets including multiple mansions, yachts, helicopters, jets and basically a whole fucking James Bond villain lair’s worth of vehicles. Oh but if you fact check that boat actually doesn’t belong to Betsy DeVos, OK! But that still doesn’t make it any better!

We have an update to Sunday's item about SeaQuest, the giant motor yacht docked in Milwaukee.

The boat doesn't belong to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick, but to his father, Richard DeVos, and his wife, Helen, according to a spokesman for Dick and Betsy's DeVos' Grand Rapids, Mich.-based private investment management firm.

Greg McNeilly, chief operating officer of Windquest Group, said many people confuse Richard, the co-founder of Amway, and his son Dick. He provided the original 2008 bill of sale for the boat, from the manufacturer to RDV International Marine Limited, and a document transferring the only other share in RDV to Richard M. DeVos years earlier.

Various sites that track the manufacture, sale and movements of so-called superyachts, list Dick and Betsy DeVos as its owner. When asked Sunday if Betsy DeVos was aboard the boat and planning any Wisconsin appearances, a Department of Education spokesperson said she was not and did not, that at some other family must be using the boat.

McNeilly said Monday that Betsy DeVos keeps an "iron curtain" between her duties as a member of President Donald Trump's cabinet and her private life, and that government officials in her department likely had no idea who actually owned the SeaQuest.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/09/17/u-s-education-secretary-betsy-devoss-163-foot-yacht-docked-milwaukee/674959001/

Gilligan!!!!!!! By the way in case you’re wondering how much this little escapade cost, to a family worth billions, it’s the equivalent of fixing a paint scratch on your car. They probably have this much in their couch cushions !

Someone untied a yacht owned by the family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in Ohio, causing the vessel to drift into a dock and incur up to $10,000 in damages, police said.

The $40 million, 163-foot (49-meter) yacht was moored at the Huron Boat Basin when the captain reported it became untied around 6 a.m. Sunday, The Blade reported.

The vessel, named the Seaquest, struck the dock and ended up with large scratches before the crew was able to get control of it.

DeVos was in Ohio earlier this month to tour a career center and a correctional treatment program. It's unclear why the yacht was in Huron.
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/national-international/Betsy-DeVos-40-Million-Yacht-Untied-Causing-10000-in-Damages-489252331.html

[font size="8"]Jeff Sessions
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Hey you know what? This might be the first Top 10 we’ve done in a long time where Trump hasn’t done anything stupid enough to get him a spot on the list! What????? Yeah how about a round of applause for that! But you know who is stupid and evil? Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions. Now… save your boos for later. Before we investigate what he did this week, we must first talk about what he did over the weekend!

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made light of some therapy practices on college campuses across the country, and accused some liberal universities of creating a generation of "snowflakes." While delivering remarks to Turning Point USA's High School Leadership summit, a right-wing non-profit organization, Sessions said that "far too many schools are complicit" in cracking down on students' First Amendment rights, preventing "genuine debate" to play out on the college campus.

"Whether you realize it or not, freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack," Sessions warned.

Sessions cited "safe spaces," art therapy (a platform issue recently taken up by Vice President Mike Pence's wife Karen Pence) optional exams and therapy animals on campuses as "coddling" young people and preventing them from "scrutinizing the validity of their beliefs on the issue of the day."

"After the 2016 election, for example, they held a 'cry-in' at Cornell -- I hope they had plenty of tissues for them to cry on. They had therapy dogs on campus at the University of Kansas, and Play-Doh and coloring books at the great University of Michigan, for heaven's sake. I thought that was...you know, give me a break! Students at Tufts were encouraged to 'draw about their feelings.'"

With such practices, Sessions said, schools are doing "everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes." He called it a "disservice" to the students and nation alike.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sessions-slams-liberal-colleges-for-fostering-sanctimonious-sensitive-snowflakes/

Really Jeff? That’s what you have to complain about? Nothing else is mattering right now? We’ve solved all our problems? OK fine. But seriously why don’t you come up with solutions as to why today’s college students are overworked and overstressed! Or are you just going to complain about it? Complaining about it is easier.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday accused colleges of creating “a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.” Sure, when it comes to handling free-speech scuffles, colleges have room to improve, said Howard A. Gillman, chancellor of the University of California at Irvine and a noted First Amendment scholar, in a Chronicle interview. But that’s not the best way to think about the issue, he said.

Gillman discussed ways colleges can “improve the quality of the conversation” about free expression. He also highlighted the security costs associated with protests and visiting speakers as a significant concern. Berkeley, he noted, spent nearly $4 million over a month on free-speech events, including a “free-speech week” that didn’t end up happening.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/UC-Irvine-Chancellor-on/244033

Yeah something tells me a “free speech week” might not be the best idea they’ve ever come up with, but seriously why are you continuing to bash Berkeley? Hold a grudge much? Oh yeah that’s *ALL* republicans do. While we’re trying to save our democracy from another Russian attack, they’re railing on “snowflakes”. Because, reasons. And by the way in case you’re wondering if he couldn’t be any more of a dick, look at what he told high school conservatives.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions chuckled and repeated "Lock her up" after the familiar Trump campaign rally chant rang out during his speech at a conservative conference for high school students on Tuesday.

The chant, President Donald Trump's pejorative mantra against political rival Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, occurred during the attorney general's appearance at Turning Point USA's High School Leadership Summit in Washington.

As Sessions commended attendees for fighting for conservative values, the crowd responded with cries of "Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!"

Sessions then laughingly repeated the line.

"Lock her up," Sessions said once, chuckling. "I heard that a long time over the last campaign."

During his speech, Sessions decried what he sees as the silencing of young conservatives on college campuses to create a "generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes." Sessions also praised the president, saying one of the things people liked about Trump was his willingness to stand up and express the views he thought were right.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-repeats-lock-her-chant-high-school-n894021

That one was stupid enough that it got the double facepalm folks! And then he *DOUBLED* down on his chants to lock Hillary up while speaking to college students! Seriously, he doesn’t get it does he? But then again neither does this whole damned administration! I mean really, if you cry about crybabies, does that make you a crybaby yourself? Ah! Just think about it!

Universities are "coddling" students and not fostering an environment for developing capable adults, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a group of high school students Tuesday.

"Rather than molding a generation of mature, well-informed adults, some schools are doing everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes," Sessions said.

Sessions made the statements during an address to the Turning Point USA's High School Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. The AG said universities are "actively preventing" students from "scrutinizing the validity of their beliefs."

"After the 2016 election, for example, they held a 'cry-in' at Cornell. I hope they had plenty of tissues for them to cry on," he said. "They had therapy dogs at the University of Kansas. Play-Doh and coloring books at the University of Michigan for heaven's sakes. You know, give me a break. Students at Tufts were encouraged to 'draw about their feelings.'
https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/ag_jeff_sessions_says_colleges.html

[font size="8"]Profiles In #Civility
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Regular viewers of the Top 10 will know by now that we started Profiles In #Civility because there are a *TON* of these stories that have been coming fast and furious lately. And we’re compiling all of these stories in one place that you can show to your conservative friends the next time one of them shoots their mouth off and calls for #Civility. So I want to start this week with one that really pissed me off, yeah it’s the one involving Mission: Impossible star Ving Rhames. Because I love these movies (Fallout is great, BTW) and he plays a great character in them. And you can’t even be safe in your own home anymore!

Actor Ving Rhames said he was a target of racial profiling earlier this year after Los Angeles police came to his home and held him at gunpoint in response to a neighbor calling 911.

Rhames, 59, recounted Friday during a radio interview promoting "Mission: Impossible Fallout," that he was watching television in his Santa Monica home when he heard noise coming from the backyard. He said he thought it was his two English bulldogs at first — only to quickly find out it was police.

"I get up, I open the door, there's a red dot pointed at my face from a 9 millimeter," Rhames said on Sirius XM's The Clay Cane Show on Friday. "And they say, 'Put up your hands.'"

Santa Monica police told NBC News that their officers do not carry laser-guided service weapons.

After following police instructions, one of the officers recognized Rhames because their sons went to the same school, the actor said. The officers then told him that a female neighbor had called police to report "a large black man was breaking into the house," Rhames added.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/actor-ving-rhames-said-neighbor-called-911-report-him-large-n895611

Seriously this is one situation where you might want to get to know your neighbors better, although I think Ving might want to take a raincheck on that one. Next up – there’s this story out of Colombus, Ohio. If you’re going to be a racist dick, maybe don’t be a racist dick when you’re sitting in a van with your work number and address on it!

The confrontation between the two strangers began as a traffic dispute on the North Side.

It should have ended there, on Morse Road at Interstate 71, with the honk of a horn. That’s where Charles Lovett left it.

Jeff Whitman didn’t.

Feeling wronged, Whitman showed up at Lovett’s house. That alone was unsettling; Lovett’s house was not right around the corner from the Tuesday morning encounter. It was almost two miles away.

People have been shot in situations that began like this, when a minor flash of road rage escalates. Given that, Lovett remained remarkably composed. He was so composed that he had the foresight to begin recording the encounter on his phone, a decision that would ensure that neither man would remain anonymous.

“Is there a reason you just followed me to my house?” he asks Whitman, who sits in his van at the end of Lovett’s driveway. At this point it is necessary to point out that Whitman is white and Lovett is black.

“I just want to let you know what a n----- you are,” Whitman says in the now viral video.
http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180729/theodore-decker-racist-words-blow-back-on-man-family-and-business

Holy shit! Oh by the way this particular story doesn’t end there. It gets crazier. In fact we might need the Sad Hulk Music for this part of the story. It naturally escalated from there once the internet got involved and you know what classy people the internet can be!

&t=4s

They shared his image online, overloaded his voicemail and flooded consumer websites like Yelp with hundreds of negative reviews, complete with images of the Ku Klux Klan and Hitler.

“Your type is not wanted in this country any longer, nor are your ‘heating and cooling services’ ever needed again,” reads one.

All of this has had the intended effect.

“It was an awful mistake and obviously I don’t know how to explain it, and it’s ruined my life and it’s ruined my family’s life,” Whitman says.

He says this in a voicemail left for me on Thursday, two days after he most definitely didn’t apologize when confronted by a local television reporter.

Now, in this message, he sounds despondent.

“I’m out of business, I’m completely out, I’m done, I’ll never work in Columbus again,” he says. “This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.” The message ends abruptly.

So the moral of the story here is don’t be a racist dick while sitting in a work vehicle. We can all agree with that one can we? Next up – we go to my home state of California! And specifically the district adjacent to my home district is the home of Dana Rorabacher (R - Moscow). So what happened when Dana couldn’t answer tough questions? Guess what!

Over the past two years, The Daily Banter has repeatedly scrutinized California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher for his ties to Russia. Warned as early as 2012 that the Kremlin had been cultivating him as an asset, he continued to spout Kremlin talking points and meet with dubious actors, including Russian spy Maria Butina, whom he met with in 2015. More recently, he found himself duped by Sacha Baron Cohen, who filmed him endorsing his bogus guns-for-tots program on his show Who is America?

All these issues have made Rohrabacher, running for his 15th consecutive term in California’s 48th district, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the 2018 midterms. But if you call his offices in Washington D.C. and Huntington Beach, CA, to register your dissent, you’ll be treated very poorly – or worse, reported to the police.

Ivy Perlman (name changed) is an activist from Los Angeles who currently lives in another state. Last week, she repeatedly called Rohrabacher’s offices with questions concerning these recent developments. Although any citizen is within their First Amendment rights to call a congressperson’s office, regardless of whether or not they live in their district, the Rohrabacher office refused to answer her questions and hung up on her multiple times, occasionally sending her straight to voicemail.

When Ivy called again, she found that the office had redirected her to the Capitol Police, who then placed a report with the LAPD’s Threat Assessments Unit and informed the Washington and Huntington Beach offices that they’d done so. Using her cell phone’s area code, they traced Ivy’s call back to the LA suburb where she was raised. Around 11:45 AM on Wednesday, July 18th, Ivy’s mother, Jen, found a card from the LAPD on her doorstep that read, “Ivy Perlman, please call me. Thank you.”
https://thedailybanter.com/issues/2018/07/27/rohrabachers-intimidates-citizens/

Hey Dana: ты сосать как личность! Thank you St. Louis! And then finally this last #Civility story I want to talk about this week is in Charlotte, North Carolina, and if you’re a racist and you’re going to use the N word, maybe you should learn that the word is not a catch-all!

Tin Nguyen and his partner, Cat Bao Le, say they will continue to confront white supremacists and hatred after an unknown white man banged on their door, yelled racial slurs, threatened to call police, and argued with them about a sign in their yard that says “F--- Donald Trump.”

The man told Nguyen and Le, “I’m gonna get you, n-----.”

Nguyen is a 38-year-old lawyer in Charlotte who defends people in immigration cases and whose mother and father were refugees from Vietnam in the late 1970s. Le, 37, is also Vietnamese-American and is executive director of the Southeast Asian Coalition, a youth and advocacy organization in Charlotte.

What happened to them is the latest in a string of high-profile cases where a white person is captured on cellphone video demeaning a person of color or threatening to call police.

“They want to police everything that we do,” Nguyen said Tuesday, speaking to reporters in front of his home.
https://www.heraldsun.com/news/state/north-carolina/article215039475.html

[font size="8"]How Is This Still A Thing
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St. Louis, it’s once again time to ask:

This week – Donald Trump’s Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame. How is this still a thing? In the year and a half since the inauguration, Trump’s star in front of the Dolby Theater on Hollywood Blvd has attracted a lot of negative attention. It’s been smashed, it’s had a wall built around it, it’s been urinated on, it’s been used as a target for dog feces, it’s attracted people fighting in front of it, and this week it’s been smashed again.

President Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed Wednesday morning by a man with a pickax that witnesses say he concealed in a guitar case, police said.

Officers were called around 3:30 a.m. to the star's location on Hollywood Boulevard near Highland Avenue, where they found a small pile of rubble in place of the star that Trump received in January 2007 for his role in the NBC show "The Apprentice."

The star-smashing suspect, who reported the crime to police, later turned himself in to Beverly Hills police after leaving the pickax at the scene, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. He called police and said, "See you soon," Lt. Karen Leong of the LAPD's Hollywood Division told the Los Angeles Times.

The suspect was identified as Austin Clay, 24, who was booked on suspicion of felony vandalism. His hometown was not immediately available.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/President-Donald-Trump-Star-Hollywood-Walk-Fame-Vandalized-489103611.html

And by the way if you’re considering visiting that area, it’s in a rather heavily visited spot on Hollywood Blvd, right outside the Dolby Theater. So if you’re a tourist vising the area or heading out to the Hollywood Bowl for a show, you might want to avoid this area.

A brawl between supporters of President Donald Trump and anti-Trump opponents broke out on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last night near the president’s damaged star.

The Los Angeles police are looking for two men that are shown assaulting three Trump supporters. They are also accused of stealing a camera.

A man who identified himself as Tony Hoff said on NBC-TV News that he and his friends knew that going to the star and dressing in full MAGA gear would provoke people. But he “didn’t expect” the chaos that happened.

The fights started around 9:30 PM near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland, just across from the theater where the Academy Awards are held. The Trump star has frequently been the scene of confrontations, and this week the star was destroyed by a man wielding a pickax.

The brawl resulted in Hoff sustaining a cut over his right eye and half-a-dozen blows. His companion, a female who was not identified, said they wanted to “incite conversations” and were “proud they stood up for what they believed.” She added that many productive conversations occurred before the violence.
https://deadline.com/2018/07/hollywood-walk-of-fame-fight-breaks-out-near-damaged-donald-trump-star-1202435553/

Yes there were probably people betting on this. But as horrifying as this is, what might be the funniest thing right now is there are guys dressed as Russian soldiers guarding the site where the WOF plaque once stood.

A pair of fake Russian soldiers stood guard at the remains of President Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, days after a man destroyed it with a pickax.

The two stonefaced men, dressed in olive green uniforms and thick hats, were spotted “protecting” the star on Hollywood Boulevard this week.

The guards also reportedly braved the 90 degree California heat in their heavy outfits and were also seen carrying a Russian flag.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/399440-russian-soldiers-guard-trumps-destroyed-hollywood-star

Now you’d think that would be enough for people to stay away, but Trump’s star on the Walk Of Fame, or what is left of it, has become the hottest tourist attraction in Los Angeles. So apparently maybe don’t do this in the future, kids. Because it can have some serious consequences.

A man who said he took a pickax to Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame early Wednesday has given himself up to police, authorities said.

The man strode up to Trump’s star off Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue about 3:30 a.m. and proceeded to destroy the majority of it, including bashing through Trump’s name plate, police said.

The man was carrying the pickax in a guitar case, according to KNBC-TV.

After bashing through the plaque, the man “called police and advised he had vandalized Donald Trump’s star and basically called on himself and said, ‘See you soon,’” said Lt. Karen Leong of the LAPD’s Hollywood Division.

Private security officers in the area attempted to intervene but couldn’t stop the man because they don’t have police powers, she said.

“I think they did the best they could,” she added.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-trump-star-pickaxe-20180725-story.html

Yes but apparently there won’t be any bad court thingys here. So why is this still a thing you might ask? With all the controversy surrounding the star, why wont it get taken down? Because the committee that runs the HOF won’t take down anything, that’s why!

Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star will not be removed, despite being vandalized and then fought over by rival protesters, TMZ reported on Sunday.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, keeping the star was not an easy decision. The LAPD and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said that removing it could trigger attacks on other celebrities’ stars.

On Thursday, Trump’s star, while damaged and roped off, became a battleground for Trump supporters and opposers.

Trump supporting YouTuber Elijah Schaffer and Trump opposer, Instagram star “Real Snake Boy,” along with Schaffer’s bodyguard, Tony, ended up in a fight over Trump's divisive politics.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-walk-fame-star-will-stay-after-physical-altercation-1047074

So that explains why the Hollywood COC won’t remove stars even if they have a controversial nature attached to them. But why? Why won’t they remove stars you might ask? Well the answer is much more than just “we say so”.

In 2016, Otis Elevator heir James Otis walked up to Donald Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, sledgehammer and pickaxe in hand. “I decided I just sort of had enough about the sexual abuse and the sexual misconduct towards women,” he told CBS News soon after. “And I realized there was many women in my own life who’ve experienced that sort of sexual abuse. So I said I’ve gotta come up and do something.”

That something was smashing the star to pieces, which was the most damage the star had ever seen... until this week, when the star was pulverized by protester Austin Clay yet again. (Amazingly, Clay was bailed out by none other than James Otis.) By now, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which oversees the Walk, is used to fielding requests for comment about the star. In response to The Outline the Chamber sent over a boilerplate statement carrying the weariness of someone who would really prefer to stop talking about this.

“To reiterate: The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an institution celebrating the positive contributions of the inductees,” said Leron Gubler, President/CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California State landmark. Our democracy is based on respect for the law. People can make a difference by voting and not destroying public property.”
https://theoutline.com/post/5547/hollywood-walk-of-fame-protest-donald-trump?zd=1&zi=t34kahv6

There you have it – that explains why the HOF will never remove stars. That’s enough to make you ask – Donald Trump’s Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame:

[font size="8"]To p 10 Investigates: Looksmaxing
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St. Louis, it’s time to investigate beyond the headlines. This is Top 10 Investigates!

The era of social media has given rise to some very crazy movements, both good and bad, that you might not have heard of. It’s also given rise to celebrities who wouldn’t otherwise be celebrities. In the last two years, and especially in the last six months since the devastating terror attack in Toronto that killed 8 people, you might have heard of a burgeoning movement called “Incels”. These people – primarily young, under 25 males, call themselves “involuntarily celibate”. But recently, the Incel movement has broken off and given birth to a newer movenement called “Looksmax”. Here is how the Looksmax movement is defined.

It’s late on a Friday, and hundreds of men are browsing the forum Lookism.net. A new member logs on and posts two photos showing the lower half of his face.

“What surgeries/implants are needed to fix this?” he asks. “As you can see I have a recessed jaw/chin.”

The replies come swiftly: “It’s not just your chin. Your upper lip is retruded as well. Orthognathic surgery if you can afford it. Chin implant or [genioplasty] if you can’t. You should also look at jaw angle implants,” someone responds. “Start saving.”

It’s a typical exchange on the message board, where new posts continue to pop up throughout the night with men asking other men for physical evaluation and advice.

“Rate my face.” “I already know I’m ugly.” “Dropped 7K on a nose job.” “Candid photo of my profile reveals my subhumanity.” “I don’t even leave the house anymore, I don’t want to be seen.” “No Tinder matches in first 24 hours — is it over?” At one point, someone compares the skull sizes of Justin Bieber and Zayn Malik, carefully assessing which pop star has a more masculine-shaped head.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/incels-looksmaxing-obsession_us_5b50e56ee4b0de86f48b0a4f

Yes unfortunately these people have probably never seen Fight Club. Think of Looksmaxing like the Incel movement but with an added sense of both self superiority and self loathing. But in order to further understand the Incels and the Looksmaxers we must first begin to understand their language.

Michael had never even heard of incels until he accidentally stumbled onto a YouTube video criticizing men whose identities centered on their being involuntarily celibate. The high school student—who declined to share his real name in an article that might portray him as an angry virgin—had long struggled to date women, and the clip had the opposite of its intended effect: he actually found himself agreeing with arguments that were supposed to make him cringe. Suddenly, Michael realized, he had a proper term for what he now calls his "condition," and when he plugged "incel" into Google, he ended up on subreddits that provided an entire vocabulary around which to order his existence.

<snip>

"At first, 'low inhib,' [but] I later made the inference that it meant somebody who was shameless, and pretty much acted out with little to no regret," he told me. "'Beta-bux' was extremely confusing, but then I figured out that it just meant some unattractive man [who] literally used his abundance of money to keep a mildly attractive woman by their side, and if the money wasn't even a variable, the relationship wouldn't exist."

The incel world is not unique within the wide array of misogynist and other fringe American subcultures for providing adherents a shared dialect with which to spread toxic ideas. But if you're not already steeped in the primordial muck of the broader manosphere, it can be exceedingly difficult to parse what these people are talking about, and why. As J.M. Berger, an analyst of the intersection between radical ideology and social media and author of the forthcoming book Extremism explained, the incel community is still relatively new, small and understudied. "Another complicating factor is that a lot of different ideological strains are currently consolidated under the alt-right heading," he told me. "Drilling down into the component parts of the alt-right is a challenge, and it's sometimes easier for people to just treat it as a more cohesive group than it actually is."

But given incels' demonstrated capacity for murder, and the broader reality that much of the violence in American life is perpetrated by men against women, it can be helpful to have a general idea of how these people think—and how they talk. What follows is a brief guide to 32 of the most common phrases used across the murky forums and subreddits populated by incels, along with an attempt to grapple with the ubiquity of each term in what amounts to a noxious alternate reality.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xmaze/learn-to-decode-the-secret-language-of-the-incel-subculture

That’s about the most accurate way of describing Looksmaxing that we can think of. But there’s even more method to the madness than a strange vocabulary and way of looking at the world and even themselves. Incels and Looksmaxers live in a dangerous subculture. One where murder and other horrifying thoughts lurk.

Ben, who tweets from the handle @BenIsYourHero and declined to give his full name, found the image in a closed Facebook group called “Incels say the darndest things,” a gathering place where users mock and argue against the work of the “involuntary celibate” community. Soon, his tweet went semi-viral, popping up on blogs, anti-incel Tumblrs, and incel subreddits.

The term incel, a self-adopted label for a group of men who blame women and feminism for their inability to find sexual partners, first gained public notoriety in 2014, when Elliot Rodger killed six people in Santa Barbara, California, in “retribution” for women refusing to give him the sex he believed he deserved. It entered mainstream discourse again in 2018, when Alek Minassian allegedly killed 10 people in a Toronto vehicular attack after praising Rodger on Facebook and declaring “the Incel Rebellion has already begun!”

Incel culture has flourished online, where like-minded men post unsigned messages on Reddit, 4chan, and incel message boards, describing their most sinister fantasies about worlds in which women are collected like tax dollars and redistributed for sex. These insular communities have developed an in-group lingo that’s tricky for outsiders to parse. When a community that’s highly anonymous, decentralized, and often contradictory becomes fodder for memes, which are easily stripped of their provenance and edit history, it becomes extremely difficult for observers to understand and contextualize what they’re seeing. Memes can provide crucial insight into what’s really going on in incel forums. They can also warp the truth. Whether a meme is a bit of primary-source incel doctrine, a hyperbolic riff on an in-joke, or a work of satire can be impossible to determine if you don’t spend hours a day steeping yourself in the native language of incel culture.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/incel-memes-like-millimeters-of-bone-and-virgin-vs-chad-mask-a-dangerous-and-toxic-culture.html

That is probably the way Incels and Looksmaxers see themselves. But if you want to see what kind of celebrity the Incels make their own, look no further than this.

Incel is shorthand for “involuntary celibate”, a term used to describe (largely) men who are not only serially rejected by women romantically and sexually, but also feel that they are being denied sex that they are in some way owed. Their justification for this entitlement is rooted in the fact that they consider themselves physically attractive, or at least think they are “nice guys”. This has caused them to develop a universal hatred of women for repeatedly rejecting them despite these perceived good qualities. Born in the depths of Reddit and 4chan, the term entered public discourse after the south California shooting by “incel hero” Elliot Rodger in 2014, and re-emerged earlier this year following the Toronto van attack by self-proclaimed incel Alek Minassian.

When it comes to Love Island’s Alex, he fits the perfect archetype of an incel: he’s stereotypically attractive, an A&E doctor who saves lives, has indicated that he feels he is owed attention, and has, generally speaking, failed to secure it. Incels have flocked to Reddit and 4chan to support “our boy” Alex, seeing him as a mainstream reinforcement of their incel beliefs. This fandom was bolstered by the nation’s own (and admittedly waning) Alex fandom – with the Twitter hashtag for the show previously rife with support for Alex. For his incel fanbase, the widespread support became the perfect rationale for their own incel-related gripes: How could the nation’s successful, attractive, loveable sweetheart still not manage to get a girlfriend?
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2018/07/how-love-island-s-alex-became-incel-icon

There you have it, that’s not only how Incels see themselves, it’s what kind of celebrities they call their own. That’s it this week for Top 10 Investigates. Good day.

[font size="8"]Holy Shit
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Gather around, my fair brothers and sisters of St. Louis, 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:

My fair congregation! You know in these deeply divided times we live in, the one person who you can always count on is the good LAWRD JAYSUS! In fact people who work under the Dark One are praising JAYSUS so heavily that they now are going to feel the need to force their beliefs on others. In fact, our current Attorney General – the one who they call Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, feels that the time is now to fully expunge separation of church and state! Behold!

The Trump administration has consistently championed a narrow view of religious liberty in America. But the Justice Department’s latest religious liberty initiative may be the most far-reaching — and potentially troubling — one yet.

On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a “Religious Liberty Task Force” that will enforce a 2017 DOJ memo ordering federal agencies to take the broadest possible interpretation of “religious liberty” when enforcing federal laws. That memo, for example, prohibits the IRS from threatening the tax-exempt status of any religious organization that actively lobbied on behalf of a political candidate, which is not allowed under the Johnson Amendment.

In a bold speech delivered at the Justice Department’s Religious Liberty Summit, Sessions characterized the task force as a necessary step in facing down the prevailing forces of secularism. “A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom,” he said, which “must be confronted and defeated.”

The task force will be spearheaded by Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy Beth Williams. The Advocate reports that in 2010, Panuccio, as an attorney, defended supporters of Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California for nearly five years. More specific details of the task force’s structure and organization have not yet been announced.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/7/31/17631110/jeff-sessions-religious-liberty-task-force-memo-christian-nationalism

Yes, even JAYSUS thinks this is ridiculous! So much for that thing we call the First Amendment, which guarantees that anyone can practice any religion they like. But be it not for the ultra paranoid, completely insane Christians, we would not be in this mess! But here we are!

Today, HRC blasted the Trump-Pence Administration’s creation of a taxpayer-funded task force as part of their ongoing campaign to license discrimination against LGBTQ people in the public square. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of the task force this morning at the U.S. Department of Justice alongside anti-LGBTQ extremists from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Colorado baker who refused to serve a gay couple in violation of the state’s nondiscrimination law. It will be led by Jesse Panuccio, who was an attorney in 2010 for supporters of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban.

“This taxpayer funded task force is yet another example of the Trump-Pence White House and Jeff Sessions sanctioning discrimination against LGBTQ people,” said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. “Over the last 18 months, Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions have engaged in a brazen campaign to erode and limit the rights of LGBTQ people in the name of religion. The Attorney General standing shoulder-to-shoulder this morning with anti-LGBTQ extremists tells you everything you need to know about what today’s announcement was really all about.”
https://www.hrc.org/blog/doj-creates-religious-liberty-taskforce-to-defend-anti-lgbtq-discrimination

You know ladies and gentlemen give it up for the Top 10 Gospel Choir! How great are they? So you know who the target is? It’s really just an elaborate dog whistle to the Dark One’s even darker base because we have had countless stories about just how sinful they can be! And in our good book it doesn’t say that, it invokes the golden rule – “judge not lest ye be judged” and that is the only sin in our book, and breaking it is EVIL!!! Can I get an amen?

The Trump administration has a tough time making its case to evangelical voters. Convincing them of the existence of a war on religion helps.

On Monday, Jeff Sessions stood before the assembled crowd at a "Religious Liberty Summit" in Washington and assured the largest and most powerful demographic group in America that their years of suffering unimaginable cruelty at the hands of the federal government would soon come to an end. "This Department of Justice is going to court across America to defend the rights of people of faith," he declared, announcing the formation of a Religious Liberty Task Force to ensure that the DOJ effectively implements its guidance on the subject, both in the office and also in court. "As our nation grows older, we must not let it depart from this noble tradition."

Sessions' speech, on its face, does not pertain only to Christianity. But in his descriptions of "our great tradition of religious freedom," the subtext is text: He bemoaned the inability of "ministers" to "affirm...holy writ from the pulpit," and applauded the legal battle over contraceptives waged by the Little Sisters of the Poor. He excoriated judges for refusing to hold that "morality" can be the basis for secular laws. He fondly name-checked Pilgrims, Catholics, Presbyterians, and other Christian groups who settled this country after fleeing persecution in Europe. And he invited Jack Phillips, the bakery owner who refused to serve a same-sex couple in Colorado, to speak as a panelist. Thanks to President Trump, he reminded the audience, we say "Merry Christmas" again.
https://www.gq.com/story/jeff-sessions-religious-liberty-dog-whistle

Yes and listen to the good LAWRD! Because that’s not how any of this works! You know the Constitution says one thing and the book sayeth another, let’s not combine the two of them! So how is this going to work you might ask? Well it’s essentially going to give the Christian right an excuse to be bigger dicks than they already are!

WASHINGTON — American culture has become "less hospitable to people of faith," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday in vowing that the Justice Department would protect people's religious freedom and convictions.

Sessions spoke at a Justice Department summit on religious tolerance at a time when courts have been asked how to balance anti-discrimination laws against the First Amendment's religious freedom guarantees. He also announced the creation of a "religious liberty task force" to implement Justice Department guidance on respecting and accommodating religious beliefs, including those of department employees.

Conservative groups immediately praised Sessions for promising to protect deeply held religious convictions, though critics of the Trump administration have repeatedly voiced concerns that the attorney general's stance undercuts LGBT rights and favors the rights of Christians over those of other faiths.

Sessions, the country's chief law enforcement officer, warned Monday of a "dangerous movement" that he said was eroding protections for religious Americans.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-sessions-america-hospitable-religious-people-20180731-story.html

There you have it – only the truly paranoid would think their freedoms are being eroded! Mass has ended may you go in peace! That’s it this week for:

[font size="8"]Insatiable: Fatty Patty’s Revenge
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OK… OK. So we got another week and another batch of idiots who just quite don’t get humor. I mean really if these people had been around in the 90’s, Chris Farley would not have had a career. And the Austin Powers sequel, which featured a character called “Fat Bastard” would have never been made, because the fat police would have accused them of fat shaming. Now the subject of body image in the 2010s is a tricky one because we have this thing called the “internet” and they can be a tad, well, let’s just call them “judgmental”. But really the fat police – and this is coming from someone who is in no way shape or form small – are as insufferable as the condition they are angry about!

A woman’s petition to cancel Netflix’s upcoming dark comedy series “Insatiable” gathered more than 118,000 signatures on Change.org on Tuesday. Signatories have decried the project as a “tone-deaf” venture that encourages “fat shaming.”

The series stars Debby Ryan as a high schooler who is bullied for being overweight, before losing weight when she’s forced to get her jaw wired shut after being punched in the face by a homeless man. Several took to social media to protest the trailer, which shows Ryan with and without a fat suit to represent her character’s unplanned weight transformation that garners positive attention from her classmates, whom she wishes to take vengeance on.

“For so long, the narrative has told women and young impressionable girls that in order to be popular, have friends, to be desirable for the male gaze, and to some extent be a worthy human … that we must be thin,” the petition reads. “This series needs to be cancelled. The damage control of releasing this series will be far worse, insidious, and sinister for teenage girls, than it will be damaging for Netflix in their loss of profit.”.
https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/insatiable-fat-shaming-netflix-show-1202882565/

Seriously – that guy would not have a career today if the fat shaming police had been around in the 1990s. But what the fuck? Have you seen the show? Are you in a position to judge where you’ve actually seen it? No? OK then thanks for playing!

And so to Insatiable, a Netflix comedy-drama that has yet to air, but is already the subject of a petition calling for it to be banned. A single one-minute-52-second trailer has been released, from which it can be inferred that the story concerns an overweight girl who is the victim of bullying. Owing to a plot device, she has to have her jaw wired shut during a summer holiday. The side-effect of this is that she loses weight. She returns to school looking like the classic high school princess – and hellbent on bloody revenge. From the looks of the trailer, chaos ensues. As one might expect in a comedy-drama.

At the time of writing (although the number is climbing fast), almost 170,000 signatories are demanding Insatiable never be aired, on the basis that it is “fat-shaming”. When I read this, my naive assumption was that the entire series must have leaked online, giving a complete overview of the story arcs, nuances and so on. But no – people who really do imagine themselves to be progressives really are calling for a creative work to be banned on the basis of a trailer. All manner of furious commentators weighed in, railing against what they think it is about, producing some fantastically witless statements, including a widely quoted one from someone who explained “physical violence is not an OK response to bullying”. Good point! Also, murder is terrible. There should be no shows about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2018/jul/27/ban-fat-shaming-show-insatiable-netflix-its-critics-cry-but-none-of-them-have-seen-it

OK so here’s the thing people – we get the idea of body shaming. And you know what, unlike Planet Fitness, we really are a judgement free zone! But don’t immediately judge it without seeing it first, that is what we call “shooting the messenger”. And that is something we are *NOT* cool with, because we’re the messengers, damn it! Even the stars are defending the show!

Ryan also said that she and the show's writer and showrunner, Lauren Gussis, felt it was important that in scenes where Patty was heavier, her size was not used "as a punchline" and the abuse the character suffers is never justified.

Gussis also put out her own statement on Twitter, saying that she was suicidal as a teen and that she wanted revenge on her own bullies. She said this caused her to develop an eating disorder and "the kind of rage that makes you want to do dark things."

"This show is a cautionary tale about how damaging it can be to believe the outsides are more important — to judge without going deeper," Gussis wrote. "Please give the show a chance."

Still, users on Twitter are already criticizing "Insatiable."

"What purpose do the false sexual assault accusations in the script serve, though?" actress Mara Wilson wrote, seemingly responding to an undisclosed plot line in the show.

In a Twitter thread, Nabela Noor, a beauty vlogger, wrote that the trailer "repelled" her, and asked for a show where an overweight girl loves herself as she is.
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/netflix-series-insatiable-accused-fat-shaming-stars-defend-show-n893511

So really yeah we know fat shaming is a thing and it’s not a pleasant one. But at least give the show some time to come to fruition. Remember all the hoopla surrounding the flick “I Feel Pretty” by the same people for the same reasons? I mean come on they made Amy Schumer apologize for her own damn movie!

It’s 2018 and nobody wants to see Debby Ryan in a fat suit.

Let’s just get that out of the way first.

Yet that’s how she appears in the 90-second trailer for her new teen show "Insatiable," which premieres August 10 on Netflix. In the promo, released last week, we meet Patty, an apparently miserable, tormented, fat teenager who has her jaw wired shut following an attack in a parking lot. When she returns to school, she’s newly thin and determined to exact revenge on her high school bullies.

The Twitter backlash was swift with some calling the show “fat torture porn” and others citing it as an example of fat tropes that need to be eliminated. One person asked, "Why was it necessary for Patty to lose weight? Why couldn’t a fat person get revenge?"

When I was a teenager, I was a clerk at a video store hellbent on collecting fees from customers who returned movies after our midnight deadline. After closing one night, I was up at the front of the store alone. A man rapped on the window as he dropped his tapes through the outdoor slot.
https://www.salon.com/2018/07/23/insatiable-fat-revenge-story/

Fat torture porn? I don’t remember that section on Porn Hub! So if there’s one thing I want to say to the fat shaming police is this – and I will shout it from the rooftops! LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP!!!! Seriously, have a sense of humor about yourselves. Remember I mentioned Chris Farley? He made a whole career out of it! And take a page from our favorite animated programs! The Simpsons? Homer is fat! Family Guy? Peter Griffin is fat! South Park? Cartman is fat! But not these people, they won’t have any of it!

Alyssa Milano on Friday defended the upcoming Netflix series "Insatiable" after social media users accused the show of fat-shaming. The dark comedy focuses on a teenager named Patty, who has been bullied over her weight, but gets revenge on her bullies after she becomes thin.

Milano, who co-stars on the show, addressed the critics and said, "We are not shaming Patty. We are addressing (through comedy) the damage that occurs from fat shaming. I hope that clears it up." The actress linked to an article about the show in Teen Vogue that talks about the nuances of the series.

The trailer for "Insatiable" was released Thursday. It shows Patty, a high schooler who classmates call "Fatty Patty," played by actress Debby Ryan. After Patty gets her jaw wired shut during the summer, she returns to school "hot." In a voiceover, Patty refers to herself as a "former fatty," and the teen is ready for payback against anyone who was mean to her.

On the show, disgraced attorney Bob Armstrong (played by Dallas Roberts) sees Patty's potential as a beauty queen and takes her under his wing as he coaches her for beauty pageants. Milano plays his wife, Coralee.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alyssa-milano-netflixs-insatiable-fat-shaming-accusations-defense/

[font size="8"]I Need A Drink
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Hey St. Louis, I really need a drink!

So you know the deal behind this segment is that we kick back, have some drinks, and talk about anything in the news as long as it doesn’t relate to politics. Because there’s so much bad shit in the news right now that it really makes one want a nice stiff glass of Jack doesn’t it? So bartender, tell me, what goes well with a Big Mac? A Big Mac martini? What’s in that? Thousand island and vodka? I’ll just stick with my usual Jack Daniels mixed with Jack Daniels. So this week we’re going to tell you about the guy who bilked McDonalds out of millions.

A wild story about a network of criminals arrested on charges that they defrauded McDonald's out of more than $24 million through its Monopoly promotion is making the rounds on the internet after Jeff Maysh unearthed the full account in a Daily Beast report over the weekend.

The story dates back to the 1990s, when Jerry Jacobson, a former police officer, set up a scheme to provide winning McDonald's Monopoly pieces in exchange for a cut of the money, the report says.

Launched in 1987, McDonald's Monopoly game is one of the fast-food chain's longest-running marketing promotions. Customers collect the Monopoly game pieces and tokens attached to McDonald's packaging for a chance to win up to $1 million.

In the 1980s, Jacobson took a job at a specialty printing company, where he worked with one of its clients, Simon Marketing, on its $500 million McDonald's account, The Daily Beast reported. He went on to be hired by Simon Marketing and was responsible for overseeing the printing of McDonald's game pieces and transporting them from the production presses to the packaging factories. He was known for running a tight ship, the report says.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-monopoly-game-rigged-scam-report-2018-7

Yes where’s my drink? Ah thank you waitress! And by the way give it up for the wait staff here at Helium – truly great. The greatest, OK? Nobody is greater! Back on topic – so holy shit! $24 million and all it took was running his own printing company? So who gets to play him in the movie?

Ex-cop Jerome Jacobson ended up claiming over $24 million (£18 million) in cash and prizes, ripping off millions of game-playing customers in the process, and thanks to his court case coinciding with 9/11 he has been forgotten by history.

However, an investigation by Daily Beast crime reporter Jeff Maysh this week has revealed the sheer scale of the scam to the world.

Temptation proved too much for Jacobson, who ended up in control of the Monopoly instant prize tickets through his security job at a marketing firm, and despite having an accountant shadow him as he delivered them to restaurants he still managed a quick visit to the toilet to pilfer them.

But stealing the prize tickets was just the start, as he had develop a national network of gangsters, friends, family, ex-drug dealers, gamblers, a family of Mormons and his butcher to claim the prizes which included cars and $1 million cash prizes.

He even sent a winning $1 million ticket to a children’s hospital in Tennessee, because he could. His gave his step-brother, who was rich anyway, winning $1 million tickets which he gave to the Salvation Army or flushed down the toilet.
https://metro.co.uk/2018/07/30/how-the-ex-cop-in-charge-of-mcdonalds-monopoly-pulled-off-24000000-scam-7776720/

Excuse me a minute… I love that scene! So he sent a million dollar ticket to a children’s hospital because he could. Congratulations, Jerome! You screwed over some needy kids! That sounds like a very Trumpian thing to do. “I hire the best people, OK?”. So how was this contest rigged? How was he able to get away with such a heist? And more importantly – who gets to play him in the movie? I personally say Will Ferrell but that depends since I couldn’t find a picture. Anyway…

On August 3, 2001, a McDonald’s film crew arrived in the bustling beach town of Westerly, Rhode Island. They carried their cameras and a giant cashier’s check to a row of townhouses, and knocked on the door of Michael Hoover. The 56-year-old bachelor had called a McDonald’s hotline to say he’d won their Monopoly competition. Since 1987, McDonald’s customers had feverishly collected Monopoly game pieces attached to drink cups, french fry packets and advertising inserts in magazines. By completing groups of properties like Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues, players won cash or a Sega Game Gear, while “Instant Win” game pieces scored a free Filet-O-Fish or a Jamaican vacation. But Hoover, a casino pit boss who had recently filed for bankruptcy, claimed he’d won the grand prize–$1 million dollars.

Like winning the Powerball, the odds of Hoover’s win were 1 in 250 million. There were two ways to win the Monopoly grand prize: find the “Instant Win” game piece like Hoover, or match Park Place with the elusive Boardwalk to choose between a heavily-taxed lump sum or $50,000 checks every year for 20 years. Just like the Monopoly board game, which was invented as a warning about the destructive nature of greed, players traded game pieces to win, or outbid each other on eBay. Armed robbers even held up restaurants demanding Monopoly tickets. “Don’t go to jail! Go to McDonald’s and play Monopoly for real!” cried Rich Uncle Pennybags, the game’s mustachioed mascot, on TV commercials that sent customers flocking to buy more food. Monopoly quickly became the company’s most lucrative marketing device since the Happy Meal.

Inside Hoover’s home, Amy Murray, a loyal McDonald’s spokesperson, encouraged him to tell the camera about the luckiest moment of his life. Nervously clutching his massive check, Hoover said he’d fallen asleep on the beach. When he bent over to wash off the sand, his People magazine fell into the sea. He bought another copy from a grocery store, he said, and inside was an advertising insert with the “Instant Win” game piece. The camera crew listened patiently to his rambling story, silently recognizing the inconsequential details found in stories told by liars. They suspected that Hoover was not a lucky winner, but part of a major criminal conspiracy to defraud the fast food chain of millions of dollars. The two men behind the camera were not from McDonald’s. They were undercover agents from the FBI.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions

Yes… I’ll take some more Jack please! Thank you! So holy shit! This *IS* a real life crime movie waiting to happen! So anyway this goes on to further explain just how crazy the odds of you actually winning even a PT Cruiser or even a million dollars are:

He read small print that revealed how the odds were stacked against the customer: McDonald’s makes one piece from each set of properties extremely rare, so while thousands have three of the four railroads, the odds of pulling the Short Line Railroad—and winning a PT Cruiser—were 1 in 150 million.

Come on let’s face it, the PT Cruiser probably isn’t worth $100 these days. What? It’s a PT Cruiser! I’ve driven these cars – they’re the shittiest cars known to man! So that’s where you draw the line then sir, are you serious? Security! Thank you. PT Cruiser fan in the audience. But here’s how the FBI finally caught the guy:

Before each bi-annual game, Jacobson arrived at the drab Dittler Brothers’ office at 5 a.m to observe their Omega III supercomputer making the McDonald’s prize draw. He watched the printing presses that roared for 24 hours a day for three months, using 100 railroad cars of paper to print half a billion game pieces. Laid end-to-end, the paper tickets would stretch from New York to Sydney–nearly two tickets for every American. Jacobson observed technicians applying the “INSTANT WINNER!” stamp to blank game pieces, and pioneered random watermarks that deterred counterfeiters. He locked the winning pieces in a vault behind coded keypads and dual-entry combination locks. It was Jacobson who personally scissored out the high-value game pieces and slipped them into envelopes, before sealing each corner with a tamper-proof metallic sticker. In a secret vest, of his invention, Jacobson transported the winning pieces to McDonald’s packaging factories across the country.

Everything he did was overseen by an independent auditor. On flights she sat in coach, while Jacobson flew first class, where he tried to impress other passengers by flashing his old police badge. On one flight, Jacobson and another security manager sent an air steward back to show the accountant the empty liquor bottles they’d guzzled. When they arrived at the factory, Jacobson would summon a forklift of french fry containers, hide the winning game piece, and send it into the wild. Then he liked to hit a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and order “everything”–more than he could eat, and charge it to his expense account.

[font size="8"]Deep State Diaries Episode 7: The Federal Election Commission
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It’s time for episode 2 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 FEC[/font]

In case you haven’t noticed – or you’re living under a rock – we’re in an election year! So naturally of course in our quest to educate people on what the Deep State actually does, we have to talk about the Federal Election Commission! As you know they’re the governing body of our nations’ elections to make sure that they’re fair and safe. Of course when you’re involved in Russian “meddling” is it really safe and secure? Well let’s find out! Let’s start with this case out of Michigan where a democratic candidate accused a GOP candidate of… wait for it… election fraud! Shocker!

WASHINGTON – Four years after the Free Press first raised questions about excessive contributions former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land may have made to her own campaign for U.S. Senate, she and her husband have agreed not to challenge a Federal Election Commission finding to that effect and pay a fine of $66,000.

Last week, the FEC said that it had closed the case brought by the Michigan Democratic Party in 2014 against Land — the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2014 — and her husband, Dan Hibma, over questions about contributions first reported by the Free Press.

As part of an agreement between the FEC and the campaign signed in May, Land and her husband accepted the commission’s finding that Hibma contributed $700,000 to the campaign — well more than the $2,600 limit per election — though they said they agreed to the settlement only “for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and avoiding litigation.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/07/30/terri-lynn-land-husband-pay-fine-excessive-contributions/863372002/

Yes isn’t it? But the FEC is so much more than the auditing body of our elections. For instance they also govern how much money that candidates can give to politicians. Of course you know that since the decision known as “Citizens United” was approved, all of those rules got thrown out the window!

The National Rifle Association (NRA) violated federal law by using a common vendor to illegally coordinate with four Republican Senate candidates, according to a complaint filed by a non-partisan public interest watchdog.

On Monday, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted a 25-page complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that that the NRA used a consulting firm to evade federal rules prohibiting coordination between congressional candidates and outside spending groups.

The complaint alleges that GOP consulting firm OnMessage created a shell corporation called Starboard–located at the same address and with essentially the same business model–in order to share and use strategic information between the NRA and the Senate candidacies of Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner,Thom Tillis and Ron Johnson during the 2014 and 2016 election cycles.
https://lawandcrime.com/administrative-law/nra-illegally-used-shell-company-to-coordinate-with-gop-in-violation-of-election-law-complaint-says/

Yeah that’s kind of how the NRA is reacting right now – maybe Sideshow Bob is an NRA employee, or at least we think. But then what happens when a candidate files illegally? See you should pay attention here folks!

U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly, who represents Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District, received “excessive contributions” totaling $75,100 when he first captured the north Mississippi House seat in 2015.

The Federal Election Commission found that Kelly, a Republican and former district attorney from Tupelo:

• Received campaign contributions from four individuals totaling $25,200 that exceeded the limit of $2,700 that a person can donate during an election cycle.

• Received a loan of $50,000 — $49,900 of which exceeded the campaign limits because they were guaranteed by an individual other than the candidate, thus, they were considered contributions.

The issues, according to the FEC audit, were resolved during the investigation with the loan being repaid and contributions returned.
https://mississippitoday.org/2018/07/14/fec-kelly-received-contributions-exceeding-limits-in-2015-special-election/

And by the way what happens when you file illegally? Well there’s many things that can happen but the main thing you need to know is that it will get tied up in court for years and probably get thrown out before it advances because, US legal system.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) officials wrote in documents released Friday that the Trump Organization may have made an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign by having a staffer assist Melania Trump with her speech at the Republican National Convention, but dismissed the complaint because the action was too minor to be considered a violation of law.

FEC lawyers wrote in an April 2017 filing, first made public on Friday, that Trump Organization employee Meredith McIver’s assistance in writing Trump’s July 2016 speech may have resulted in “a corporate contribution to the Committee.”

However, commissioners wrote that because the value of such services appeared to be too minor for consideration, the commission decided to dismiss the allegation.

Trump’s speech sparked backlash after it was found to have included words and phrases identical to former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/395890-fec-dismisses-complaint-alleging-trump-org-made-illegal-trump-campaign

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

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

Overall: B

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

Ooh this is going to be a fun one! Next week we’re going to take our first stab at looking at the intelligence community as we look at the NSA!

[font size="8"]And Now This:[/font]
[font size="8”]Social Distortion[/font]

Ladies and gentlemen, my next guests are punk rock legends from my home of Orange County, California. You can see them on tour everywhere this fall and at the Surf City Blitz festival in Huntington Beach on October 27th. Playing their song “Machine Gun Blues” from their album “Hard Times & Nursery Rhymes”, give it up for the legendary Social D!!!

St. Louis, we had an awesome time! This was fun! We’ll be back soon! We are off to New York City (NEW YORK CITY????) next! See you next week!

Credits

Host: Initech
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of Live Audience At: Helium Comedy Club, St. Louis, MO
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About Top 10 Idiots

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. The Top 10 is posted once a week on Thursdays at 2:00 PM. There is a full archive of all past, present and future Top 10 editions that can be found here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218599098\ Announcements for our current season schedule are posted in our Best Of editions that appear at the end of each season. Updates are posted regularly on the official Top 10 Mastodon account and the official Holy Shit Mastodon account. The Mastodon accounts are used to announce what's going to be in next week's edition, new content, advertising our segments, and so on. This account will post official Top 10 editions, and any related content including our spinoff series: Holy Shit The Sunday Sermons. If you wish to contact the Top 10 you may do so here: E-mail (all questions, concerns, suggestions, and hate mail welcome): Top10ConIdiots@gmail.com Follow the Top 10 on Mastodon: Top10ConIdiots@mstdn.party Follow The Holy Church Of The Top 10 on Mastodon: ChurchOfTop10@mstdn.party **This account will ONLY be used to post official Idiots editions, promos, and things related to the Top 10. No other posts will come from this account** Top 10 Wiki: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211322508