Meanwhile At Wonkette....

Welcome back, sinners. It’s time once again for the Snake Oil Bulletin! We would like to take this time to remind our readers that unless you’ve paid your monthly $7.99 readers’ fee, in addition to keeping up on your annual $150 membership fee to our 2 Smart 4 Scammers Club, and thrown in a couple extra bucks towards Donna Rose’s college fund while you’re at it, you are forbidden to read this week’s edition of the Snake Oil Bulletin. We tried to erect a paywall like some sort of real newspaper, but we can’t afford to build that paywall unless you pay us the money to keep you away from our content!

What we’re trying to say, dear reader, is that Yr Wonkette has decided to re-register itself as a church, because if these next few stories are any indication, running a tax-free collection agency / extortion racket sounds like a pretty sweet deal. [Editor’s Note: Your Fare La Volpe is DOING A KIDDING, we are not becoming a church or a scamster, but you can still click those links and help us out with a few bucks, why dontcha, dontcha know?]
Churches would very much like you to pay your “protection fees” now

A 92-year-old invalid was expelled from her local church because she wasn’t able to pay her collection fee. Excuse me, I seem to have misspoken. She couldn’t pay her “tithe.” The Don Pastor apologizes for this egregious error in miscommunication.

Josephine King has been a member of the First African Baptist Church in small town Bainbridge, Georgia, for over 50 years. Over the past few months, however, she has been bedridden and in the care of her family — which is not an unusual thing that happens when you are 92-years-old — making it rather difficult for her to leave the house, let alone attend her beloved church. Or rather, her former church.

See, after King was absent from service for several weeks, and more importantly unable to pay her weekly “tithe” to the collection plate, the First African Baptist decided the best course of action was to finally kick out this 92-year-old bed-bound deadbeat. She was just mooching off all their Jesus juju anyway!

King’s family received a letter in the mail signed by the pastor of the church, informing them that because Josephine had not provided “constant and consistent financial and physical participation,” that this counted as a show of “non-support” towards the church and thus she was no longer welcome to attend services. Jesus is a pretty harsh collection agent. One missed payment and now she’s spiritually bankrupt.

While King’s family has informed the press of this incredible act of church greed, what makes Josephine King’s story all the more egregious is that it isn’t the only one; not by a a tap-dancing mile. Churches requiring, not just urging, tithes have been popping up all over the country, and in many cases their schtick is less “Please donate to the church bakesale kplzthx” and more “You have been found negligent on your spiritual loan payment. You have 30 days to comply.”

Back in July, the Greater Mount Moriah Primitive Baptist Church in Florida checked their tithing books (they seriously keep up on which members contribute what amount in tithes), and realized that Candace Petterson, a woman who had joined their church only six months ago, hadn’t kept up on all the fees they never told her about, so they decided to send her a delinquency notice for $1000 in unpaid tithes:

The single mother said she received what amounted to a delinquency notice from her new church asking her to contribute [at minimum] $50 a month, along with other assorted fees, to remain a member in good standing and vote on church matters.

The predominantly black church, which has operated for more than a century, asked her to pay a yearly $250 anniversary fee and another $150 for Mount Moriah Day – amounting to $1,000, some of which would be set aside to pay off church debt.

You know what’s a pretty great extortion racket? Lure someone in with promises of cool stuff and then slam them with fees you intentionally withheld from their knowledge. It’s comforting when your church operates on the same business model as a loan shark.
Sponsored Intermission

And oh yeah, did we mention the church didn’t just ask the mother to pay, but also tried to bill her 11-year-old daughter?

The letter, from assistant administrator Ladreda Spencer and Pastor B.R. Fulton Jr., also reminded Petterson that children – including her 11-year-old daughter – were expected to pay [at minimum] $5 a month to the church in addition to two annual $15 fees.

We sometimes joke about bad people stealing milk money from kids, but this church is actually doing it. They expect her daughter to show up to Sunday school with check in hand.

If you thought that was all, you are far too optimistic to read this blog, dear reader. In one of the most heinous stories of its kind, back in November a Texas church refused to hold the funeral for a lifelong member because she didn’t pay tithes during the last two years of her life. Why didn’t she pay for those two years, you might ask? Oh, just the fact that she was bed-bound in hospice for two years and IN A FREAKING COMA for the last few months. Should have updated your “vegetative state” exemption clause.

Olivia Blair was 93 when she passed away, having been a member of the Fourth Missionary Baptist Church in Houston for some 50 years. She did everything at this church, including holding her husband’s funeral there six years previously. But when Blair went into hospice, the cost of her care and prescriptions left her with only $60 a month left over from her Social Security check, an amount that Reverend Walter F. Houston apparently still expected her to pay him. After Blair died, her daughter and granddaughter returned to the church to arrange for their mother’s funeral, only to be told by Reverend Houston that because she was negligent on her tithing, the church had already rescinded her membership and would refuse to hold the funeral.

Even after Blair’s daughter explained to the reverend that her mother was on a minuscule fixed income even during the days she was conscious, the reverend only told her, “If Mrs. Blair didn’t have the money for her tithes, then it was the responsibility of the family to remember the tithe.” In other words, it isn’t a tithe, it’s debt. Tithes don’t transfer to a family member when a person isn’t able to pay it. That’s debt, ***.

When confronted by a church activist calling himself “Pimp Preacher” (ignore the bloviating), the reverend told him, “I am not changing my bylaws for someone who was not active… If the family cared so much then why didn’t one of them at least send at dollar over here to reserve her membership[?]” The reverend seems to have his church confused with a country club or a dog park. You don’t lose the privilege to use the baptismal dunking pool just because your yearly check is late.

It isn’t your Wonkette’s place to judge (lie), but it seems that if these churches want to keep up the facade that their tithe collection systems are just isolated incidents that COINCIDENTALLY have the same MO as a credit agency, maybe they should rethink their business models. Because as RawStory so helpfully points out, requiring church tithes is actually illegal, and is one of the prime criteria for having your tax exempt status revoked. It’s what happened to that fun time nightclub Jesus gangbang, and people actually LIKED that place.

In Oktaha, Oklahoma, the owners of a local survivalist shop and gun range decided last week that it was high time to jump on the “Muslim-free zone” gravy train, because there’s a whole lot of ISIS activity in the Muskogee County town (population 390). The owners of the “Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear” claim they immediately started receiving death threats — not to mention free publicity — from all over the world after putting up this simple sign in their store window:



We assume that some of those threats came from radical grammar Nazis incensed by the comma splice, but the danger was so clear to some folks that they decided to come on down to Oktaha and “guard” the store. Now someone just needs to guard the store from its guards, since one of them accidentally shot himself Tuesday.

Tell us more about the negligent discharge, “Oklahoma’s Own” News On 6:Well, isn’t that so typical of your law enforcement attitudes, blaming the responsible gun owners instead of the REAL terrorists, however imaginary they may be. Also, “It’s like the Clampetts have come to town” needs to be included in every story about this sort of half-assed militia effort ever written in the future.

In another story on the brave patriots guarding the survivalist boutique from its mostly notional enemies, MuskogeeNow spoke to one of the self-appointed protectors of freedom (though not necessarily his or others’ fleshy parts):Yes, “Eagle One.” We have to wonder how many military cosplaying militia dudes have chosen that highly original codename for themselves. And what happens when two of them show up to the same display of armed wingnuttery?

We imagine that once they’ve hosed the blood off the sidewalk, the next step for Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear will be to enlist the help of George Zimmerman, who we bet would be happy to paint something ugly for them.

After all these years, is our Republicans learning? Nope. We’ve seen the president’s birth certificate, we’ve read endless PolitiFacting, and even the team of private investigators Donald Trump sent to Hawaii four years ago has yet to make any earth-shattering announcements about finding the definitive proof that Obama was not born there. And yet:

You’ll be utterly not shocked to know that among Trump supporters, the number of stone cold idiots is even higher. This is because Trump’s supporters are, science fact, deeply stupid.

In case you were the slightest bit concerned that Democrats are anywhere near as dumb, relax: 91 percent of Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa are vaguely aware that President Obama was born in the United States. No, we can’t explain the 3 percent who say he wasn’t, or the 6 percent who are just like “SHRUG, I DUNNO,” other than to assume those Democrats mistake paste for deep-fried butter at their beloved Iowa State Fair.

Do you want further evidence that Republicans are morons, and not just in Iowa? OK. Public Policy Polling released its latest national polling EXCLUSIVELY to Wonkette fan Rachel Maddow, and oh Jesus, we’re not sure whether to laugh or cry or say screw it and move to the far-off foreign nation of Hawaii:



So if we’re understanding the pretty picture just right, more Republicans wrongly believe Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, was actually born in the US of A, than Republicans who correctly understand that President Obama was born here. The stupid burns so bad, our skin is peeling.

PPP’s poll, now available to non-Maddows everywhere, has some other interesting fun facts, like how 54 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim. But the derp is especially high among Trump supporters:

We can’t even. And neither, apparently, can Republicans.

Residents of Villa Rica, Georgia, are astonished that anyone could have a problem with a group baptism of football players on school grounds before a recent F’ball practice. Because they love America, and Jebus, and F’ball — which is why it made perfect sense to have the minister of First Baptist Church of Villa Rica kick off the season with some full-immersion baptizing on the football field, just like Jesus told us to do in the Constitution’s Fourth Commandment: “Thou shalt keep holy the Lord’s Day and watch F’Ball with the DirecTV Sunday Ticket.” The practice came to light when the church posted a video to the YouTubes explaining how in this Georgia town, the atheistic ACLU holds no sway:
The video had been removed from the church’s YouTube account by Tuesday, as the church apparently gave some thought to Matthew 6:5 and perhaps the Book Of Hourly Legal Fees. Atlanta TV station WXIA has the deets:

After a parent complained, the Freedom From Religion Foundation contacted Carroll County schools to advise them that the ceremony was a clearly unconstitutional religious ceremony on school property, and asked the school district to investigate and make sure it didn’t happen again. FFRF spokeswoman Annie Laurie Gaylor told the TV station:

But … but … everybody WANTS to do it, and since when is America a place where one complaining parent can ruin Jesus F’ball for the whole community?

Pastor Kevin Williams, who opposes separation of church and F’ball, confirmed to the Associated Press that he had baptized 18 students and one coach on Aug. 17, but he’s pretty certain that no establishment clause lines were crossed, because while the mass dunkings were held on school grounds, they were outside school hours, before the official start of F’ball practice, and completely voluntary.

Besides, getting baptized has obviously been good for the team, Williams explained:

Oh, well hey, if it’s owned by the taxpayers, that means it’s NOT a government endorsement of religion, because majority Jesus rule and also apparently there are no spots at the First Baptist Church where people can go to get baptized. Also, too, since high school F’ball is itself a religion in the south, isn’t mixing it with Christianity dangerously close to polytheism?

The school board issued a statement blandly stating that it is “currently looking into the specifics of this situation and will take appropriate steps to ensure all state and federal laws are followed.” Presuming their lawyer is not A Idiot, that should be the end of the F’ball Baptisms, although there’s always the chance that some brave students will follow a touchdown by grabbing a microphone and leading the crowd in the Lord’s Prayer, which ought to be good for another five minutes on Fox News.

Some good Bible-loving county commissioners in Williamson County, Texas, wanted to make sure local constable officers shared the values of the community — or at least of the commissioners — on issues of gay marriage, abortion, and other important law enforcement matters. According to a lawyer for one of the rejected applicants, the commissioners made it clear, with their questions during the job interview, that they only wanted a Baptist for the job. It’s about what you’d expect in a state whose school textbooks teach that Moses wrote the Constitution, except in Williamson County’s version, that troublesome bit about “no religious test” for public office has been crossed out.

Robert Lloyd had 25 years experience in law enforcement when he applied to be a constable in Williamson County in 2013, but at his interview, some of the questions seemed to be just a teensy bit outside the usual stuff about whether he knows how to target drivers without-of-state license plates and how to say “this particular individual” to TV reporters. He told local TV station KVUE that he also got some detailed questions about his opinions on gay marriage, religion, and abortion.

Lloyd filed an employment discrimination lawsuit; his attorney, Wayne Krause Yang, says, “Everybody knows those are illegal employment questions and they never should have been asked,” but obviously Mr. Krause Yang has too broad a view of what “everybody” knows. After Lloyd sued the county, two other prospective county workers came forward to say that they also had been asked questions about faith and politics during their interviews:

April Nowling, another applicant for a county job, said that Long had asked her who her favorite president was, and when Nowling said she thought it was an odd question, Long told her, “You’d be surprised what you can learn about someone with that question.”

Hurst is now running against Long for a seat on the commission, and Long claims that he made up the incident to try to win office.

As for the constable job, Krause Yang released video of a deposition by another commissioner, Lisa Birkman, who said that she had asked all the candidates questions about their views on gay marriage, and that she had asked all but one candidate, Kevin Stofle, about their views on abortion. She said that the commissioners already knew Stofle’s views on the issue. You’ll be astonished to learn that Kevin Stofle got the constable job.

Mr. Krause Yang contends that the purpose of the questioning was to ensure that the county hired only Baptists”

So far, Williamson County has spent upward of $200,000 defending the case; while the county’s lawyer declined to say so on video, he told KVUE that the commissioners look forward to proving in court that they did nothing wrong. Maybe they can show off their special Baptists-only copy of the Constitution.

Iowa congressmelon Steve King is a Catholic, and as a concerned member of the most strictly hierarchical religious institution on the planet, he’d like to take the opportunity to set Pope Francis straight about a few points of Catholic doctrine. Now, you might think that takes a lot of the chootzpah, for a mere Catholic layman to presume to lecture the man who — according to canon law — is the direct inheritor of the apostolic succession going back to Saint Peter. But sometimes rightwing American Catholics must speak harsh truths, even to the Bishop Of Rome, especially if the Pope doesn’t see why the GOP platform is more important than silly concerns about “economic justice” and “the planet.”

In an interview with Politico, King explains where the Pontiff has got Christ’s Word all wrong, and what he would say to Congress if he were Pope. Which, we might note, he is not.

Hmm. We have a feeling that no matter how much he’s looking forward to hearing that, he just might not, given Francis’s explicit calls to de-emphasize culture-war issues. King also said the Pope should be careful not to slag capitalism, or maybe Francis might not gain U.S. citizenship, and could even lead others astray!

We weren’t aware that Francis had scheduled any study sessions with people prepping for the naturalization test, but that’s a helpful tip, just in case. King also seemed personally affronted by the Pope’s statement that “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” Not really true, said King:

Oh, that’s pretty cute, what he did there, claiming that there’s no such thing as global warming because Frank Luntz recommended in 2003 that the George W. Bush administration use “climate change” because people felt less compelled to do anything about that. Besides, “the weather” is none of the Pope’s business anyway, because Steve King doesn’t think the science is any good, as proven by a focus group 12 years ago:

King also worried that Democrats — a bunch of hypocrites, the lot of them, since God is a Republican — have tried to act as if the Pope agrees with them somehow:

Shame on them! What people need to realize is that there are certain eternal values that the Pope speaks to, or would, if the Pope would just pay more attention to Steve King:

Ah, but what if, instead, Francis were to talk about climate change and inequality, as has been his wont? (Francis does have a wont, though he usually covers it with his alb.)

Good to know that reversing the Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion and marriage equality are a matter of theology, not politics. Say, does that mean that Steve King will leave decisions about whether to have an abortion or get married to someone of the same gender up to the consciences of individual believers? That would be pretty cool.

Also too, as an afterthought, King added that while Pope Francis has called on nations to take in more Syrian refugees, if he really cared about fixing Syria, he’d listen to Steve King:

Spoken like a true American Christian.

It’s always a comfort to know that in the aftermath of a tragedy, people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about can manage to make things a little bit worse. For instance, there’s Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R-Toontown), the genius who explained that sexual assault would be a thing of the past if “these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm,” and who also thinks that cancer is a fungus that can be cured with baking soda. As a person who Knows Stuff, Fiore has written an epically stupid blog post explaining that the only reason anyone died at Umpqua Community College is that the place is a “gun-free zone”:

Gosh, that argument sounds exactly like how Fox News explained the Charleston church shootings. If only everyone were packing heat all the time, we’d be safe! Sadly, thanks to bleeding heart liberals, the Umpqua campus banned the presence of armed citizens who could have stopped the carnage, right?

Great argument, except for the tiny detail that it’s complete ***. Oregon law allows concealed carry permit holders to carry their weapons on college and university campuses. As ThinkProgress pointed out Thursday, it’s true that the student code of conduct for UCC bans guns “without written authorization,” but concealed weapons permit holders have that authorization, in the form of their permits. (Campuses can disallow weapons from designated buildings, however.) When it comes to shootin’ irons, UCC was definitely not a nakedness area.

Further, MSNBC interviewed one student who actually had a concealed weapon on campus Thursday: John Parker, a military vet, had a holstered handgun with him, but he and several other vets, also apparently armed, realized that they were too far away from the building where the shooting was happening to be of help. Parker said he stayed inside a classroom so that SWAT officers wouldn’t mistake him for the active shooter.

As you may recall, an armed civilian at the site of the 2011 Tucson shootings almost shot one of the unarmed people who had tackled and disarmed the actual shooter. Fortunately, he quickly realized the person holding the killer’s gun wasn’t the bad guy before another tragedy occurred.

So, enjoy your dream world, Rep. Fiore: UCC was not a “gunfree zone,” and as a Mother Jones analysis of 62 mass shootings over 30 years showed:

School shootings are frequently cited as proof that killers target places where guns are prohibited. But of the 12 school shootings Mother Jones analyzed, the killers in 11 of them were students or had other personal ties to the schools. Even though Adam Lanza had long since finished school, “the mass shooter in Newtown had long been fixated on Sandy Hook Elementary School, which he’d once attended.”

The idea that adding more guns everywhere creates greater safety is a pleasant fantasy for Rambos, but it just doesn’t hold up to the data — and in the one public shooting I’ve personally witnessed, additional guns probably would have resulted in more injuries or deaths. As Barack Obama put it the evening after the horror in Roseburg, “There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns will make us safer?”

Hobby Lobby, the arts-n-farts store where stay-at-home mommy vloggers buy all their NO HOMO glitter and scrapbooking supplies, is the pinnacle of Christian values and American virtue, which are basically the same thing, if you squint at the First Amendment just so.

So we are a tad surprised — but sarcastically, because we are not even the taddest bit surprised AT ALL — to learn that the Green family, owners of the Sincerely Religious chain store, is under federal investigation, for Criming While Christian. What kind of crimes? Oh, just stealing antiquities and smuggling them into U.S. America, to put in the Biblical Bible Museum of Biblical Bibles they are building in Washington DC. Oops!

Four years, huh? So, let’s see, one … two … carry the five, divide by LOL … Yeah, that would mean the Greens were stealing all of God’s tchotchkes outta the Iraq and lying about it (allegedly) at the exact same time they were suing their way to the Supreme Court because of how so goddamned religious they are. And that is where unelected lawyers in robes made up a whole new special law for the Greens and other like-minded Bible-humpers that says you do not have to obey federal law if you say you Sincerely Believe you don’t wanna.

You don’t have to prove your beliefs are, like, a real thing from a religious text, which is awfully convenient, since the Bible offers many terrific non-judgmental recipes for contraception and abortifacients (thanks, God!) so Bible ladies could get their G-spots pounded so good, just for sexytime funsies.

You don’t have to prove the sincerity of your supposed beliefs either, which is also convenient, since Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) plan for employees — who are not allowed to use *** pills — makes money from investing in companies that produce, yup that’s right, *** pills. Which is different because it’s different so shut up.

So the Greens don’t have to follow federal law, at least as it pertains to healthcare for hoo-ha holes, because they Sincerely Believe the Bible says so. Anyone wanna guess if that exemption also works at U.S. Customs?

Oh, but maybe the Greens did not know they described the few hundred ancient tablets as mere “clay tiles,” with a declared value of about $300, like they picked ’em up at the flea market, a buck a piece, what a great bargain for a little something to remember their family vacay to the Middle East. Is that possible?

Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green says yes, it is “possible that we have some illicit [artifacts],” but not on purpose, heavens no! Just some confusion about paperwork. That’s sincerely believable, because when you’re busy running a successful craft store for Jesus, and illegally demanding to inspect your employees’ down-theres to make sure they are tinkling in the “right” bathroom, it’s easy to accidentally scribble “clay tiles worth $300” when you really meant to write “ancient clay tablets that are thousands of years old and worth approximately a metric ****ton.” Innocent mistake.

Hey, does anyone know if there’s anything in the Bible about lying and coveting and stealing and how thou shalt not do that ***, sayeth the Lord your God, King of the Universe? Maybe a reference to some rules — about 10 or so — inscribed on some old-timey tablets, in ancient American? Who knows, but we’d like to sincerely suggest U.S. Customs assign its top men (Top. Men.) to investigate whether those tablets were sneaked out of the Holy Land and stashed in the Green family warehouse, for fun and profit. Just to be sure.

Remember years ago, or maybe just last month, when Hillary Clinton spent 11 hours explaining to Congress exactly how she did Benghazi and why she did Benghazi and that she would do it again, for the laughs that are NOT FUNNY, Madam Secretary?

Well! Indignant huffing sounds! Someone is very displeased about how the whole spectacle made Republicans look like freakin’ morons, and that someone is … drum roll please … slow-talkin’ slower-thinkin’ Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia. Now that he’s had a month to let it simmer in his brain juices, he is mighty not happy:

Republicans had this plan, ya see, to make her look bad with their special Benghazi committee. They’d already started giving each other celebratory ***, for driving down her poll numbers. And the Big Benghazi Hearing on Benghazi was going to sink her forever! It woulda worked too, if that meddling Hillary Clinton hadn’t outsmarted them, by making them show their work. They were going to ask her all their dumb questions in private, so they could then make ***up to leak to the press and make Maureen Dowd all wet in her loom fruits.

But oh no, Hillz was like, “If you want The American People to learn The Truth about Benghazi, why don’t we do that in public, for The American People?” So crafty, that Clinton. And then she forced them to ask the same really relevant questions a hundredteenleven times, and they were all about how she and gal-pal-with-a-peener Sid Blumenthal — a dude whose name you’d probably never heard before, but turns out he is the key to all of American national security — did Benghazi, together, WITH THEIR EMAILS!

That never would have happened, for 11 hours, if Hillary Clinton hadn’t fooled them into doing it. They are just that dumb, it seems, and it’s all her fault. Mean!

nd making fun of poor dumb rotten peach Westmoreland, because she can speak southern hick just as good as him can? Well, there’s a reason they call her Hitlery KKKlinton, you know.

But the Benghazi committee isn’t about to let looking like *** idiots stop them from doing that some more! Rep. Westmoreland says they get to go on a field trip “to Germany and to Italy to do some more research, on the Benghazi.” Whee! But no! What if it is just another trap set by evil mastermind Hillary Clinton? It probably is. Perhaps the committee ought to stop spending millions of dollars on the nation’s longest congressional investigation in history, just to be on the safe side and make sure she doesn’t

In a move that’s certain to help improve relations between police and the populations they keep in line safe, a Chicago cop is suing the estate of Quintonio LaGrier, the 19-year-old he shot to death, along with an innocent bystander, at the young man’s home on the day after Christmas. That ought to be a warning to people not to make the police kill them.

In the early hours of December 26, 2015, officer Robert Rialmo responded to a call about a domestic disturbance. Quintonio, a Northern Illinois University student who had reportedly been acting “erratically in the months leading up to the shooting,” called 911 three times, claiming that someone was threatening his life. but giving no details. While police were on the way, his father also called 911 to say that Quintonio had tried to break into his bedroom with a baseball bat, and asked police to help his son, whom he later said “had some emotional problems.” Rialmo shot the teen just outside the home; one bullet went through Quintonio’s arm and struck the family’s downstairs renter, Bettie Jones, in the chest, killing her. Jones’s death has been described as an accident by police.

Four days after the shooting, Antonio LeGrier filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the City of Chicago, accusing 911 dispatchers of rudely dismissing Quintonio’s calls for help (when he didn’t answer the first dispatcher’s questions, she hung up on him), and accusing Rialmo of acting recklessly. Friday, Rialmo filed a countersuit against the teen’s estate, claiming that all the unpleasantness of having to shoot and kill two people had left him badly traumatized.

The lawsuits present very different narratives of what happened. LeGrier’s suit says Quintonio was shot from a distance of 20 or 30 feet away, while Rialmo’s countersuit says when the teen was about four feet away from him, Quintonio “took a full swing at Officer Rialmo’s head, missing it by inches,” after which Rialmo backed away with his gun still holstered as Quintonio swung the bat again. According to Officer Rialmo, he shot the teenager as he prepared to swing at him a third time, from a distance of 3 or 4 feet.

LeGrier’s attorney, Basileios Foutris, disputes Rialmo’s account, arguing that it made no sense for Quintonio to have attacked a police officer after having called 911 three times:
(Just to cover all the Rashomon bases here, we should note that the LeGrier family’s lawsuit alleges Quintonio became increasingly frustrated and angry after being dismissed by 911 operators. So yes, lawyers do argue in multiple directions.) Foutris also called the countersuit “a new low even for the Chicago Police Department … First you shoot them, then you sue them.”

Bettie Jones’s family has also filed a lawsuit against the city, which claims Rialmo indiscriminately fired a “hail of bullets” at Quintonio LeGrier and in the general direction of Ms. Jones. LeGrier’s body was hit by six bullets, according to an autopsy.

Yr Wonkette is neither an attorney nor a medical examiner, but we’re reasonably certain forensic evidence should indicate fairly clearly whether all those bullets went into Quintonio LeGrier from a distance of four feet or twenty. But maybe we’ve seen too many movies? If the evidence really does show that LeGrier was shot at extremely close range, we’d be willing to buy Rialmo’s version of events, although his lawsuit for $10 million (presumably to come from any potential settlement with the city, unless a family who had to take in a renter had a secret stash of millions) still sounds over the top:
We get it: Shooting people to death is haaaard. In addition, an attorney for Rialmo, Joel Brodsky, explained that if only people didn’t have domestic disturbances, cops wouldn’t have to sue them after killing them:
The AP reports that lawsuits like Rialmo’s are “extraordinarily unusual,” according to former federal prosecutor Phil Turner, now a defense attorney who isn’t involved in the case:
Even so, you have to admit that the threat of a lawsuit against any survivors should make black people think twice before having mental problems. Or renting an apartment from anyone whose son is having mental problems. Or dancing on sinking police cars in a music video. Or going outside at all.

P.J. O’Rourke, the conservative polemicist whose books unaccountably get shelved in the “humor” section, made a very serious announcement this weekend on National Public Radio’s news quiz show “Wait Wait…Don’t tell Me!” And what is that announcement? You needn’t wait, for we will tell you: He endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, because however much he loathes her (which is a full Benghazi hearing’s worth of loathing), she is at least an actual human politician, not the fur-bearing crapsack the Republican Party will presumably choose as its nominee. Here’s the audio 9in the article)

For P.J. O’Rourke, it’s fairly funny stuff:

We like that bit at the end about Donald Trump finding The Button. That works quite nicely. Surprisingly, the most biting comment of the whole show wasn’t even the “endorsement” of Hillary; it was host Peter Sagal’s introduction of Tom Bodett as “A man of few words, especially recently published ones.” Ouch.

We’ll confess to a bias here: we still have not forgiven P.J. O’Rourke for running National Lampoon into the ground when he was editor. It was a perfectly good satire magazine when they handed it to him; don’t talk to us about a “changing magazine marketplace” or “staff moving on to other gigs” or “Michael O’Donoghue and Doug Kenney dying,” or other factors, damn it, we blame O’Rourke! OK, him and all those awful movies they made after Animal House (fine, and Vacation, although the original short story by John Hughes, “Vacation ’58,” was still better). And even though he didn’t write the “O.C. and Stiggs” stories, they happened on O’Rourke’s watch, for which he cannot be forgiven.

In addition to wrecking NatLamp, P.J. O’Rourke is “America’s Leading Satirist,” at least according to the Cato Institute, for whom he wrote the most unhilarious legal brief ever filed in American history. Every few weeks he’s on “Wait Wait,” and then he returns to his home in Obscurity, New Hampshire, where he keeps churning out stuff that someone, somewhere finds funny. But we’re not very good at appreciating rightwing humor anyway.

Did we digress? What we are getting at is that Donald Trump is so awful that not even P.J. O’Rourke can bring himself to support him, which is a pretty remarkable achievement. We could talk more about O’Rourke and how he brought low a great magazine from its heyday, but suddenly we are run over by a truck.

Wait... true conservative... P. J. O'Rourke... something doesn't quite compute there.

Would any true conservative endorse the Donald for that mater?

P.J. O’Rourke, the conservative

OH hooray! Nice time! We are so, so, so happy to read a nice thing after this week of awfulness! Incredibly badass Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Obviously) will be introducing a bill next week called the Top 1% Accountability Act, which will require all rich people claiming over $150,000 in tax deductions to undergo a drug test to make sure they’re not spending that money on drugs. They would have to submit a drug test, no more than three months old, or take a much lower standard deduction when filing taxes.

OH I LOVE HER. I LOVE HER SO GODDAMNED MUCH. SHE IS MY HERO AND EVERYTHING I WISH I COULD BE!!! Who cares if the primaries are over? I am electing her president of my heart, right now.

This is in response, you see, to the many states that drug test those who receive cash welfare assistance, and to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suing the federal government for not allowing him to drug test people getting food stamps. The assumption with these laws is that they will save states tons of money by kicking off welfare all the people who spend their government assistance riches on drugs. As it turns out, there are not nearly as many of those people out there as Republicans imagine. Weird! And the cost of those programs far outweigh the benefits! Other than the smug satisfaction of getting to insinuate to poor people that you think they are probably on drugs!

It’s a horrible thing to do, which is why Rep. Gwen Moore is so awesome and my new favorite person ever. I want her and Nina Turner (who once introduced a bill that would have required men to undergo “special precautions” in order to get Viagra, which is still my favorite goddamned thing ever) to get together and be ball-busting superheroes.

Of course, Moore is not just busting balls here. She’s damn serious about this bill, and says she intends to get co-sponsors and push it through, both to highlight the sheer stupidity of drug testing welfare recipients, and to call attention to how much money our country spends on tax expenditures, noting “We think it’s important to engage in some transparency and accountability around tax deductions.”

Moore says the idea came to her when she saw Paul Ryan giving a speech about his not-at-all-helpful plans to help the poor in America. “When he stood in front of a drug treatment center and rolled out his anti-poverty initiative, pushing this narrative that poor people are drug addicts, that was the last straw,” she said.

Now, if that *** made our faces burn, we can only imagine how Moore felt — as someone who actually has been a welfare recipient herself. “I am a former welfare recipient” she said, “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”

She also wants to bring attention to the fact that we perceive poor people who receive government assistance as “entitled,” but not rich people who get piles of tax deductions, even though technically, they cost us more. And, quite frankly, are way the hell more “entitled.” She notes that, when it comes to drug abuse, “There are no boundaries with regard to class or race … if these poor people who are entitled to SNAP for survival are required to be drug tested, then certainly those people who claim $150,000 or more in tax deductions should be subjected to the same in order to receive this benefit from the government.”

And that’s true! Frankly, in my experience, I’ve known way more rich people with drug problems than poor people with them. Maybe because they can afford it? Drugs are expensive!

“I would love to see some hedge fund manager on Wall Street who might be sniffing a little cocaine here and there to stay awake realize that he can’t get his $150,000 worth of deductions unless he submits to a drug test,” she says.

US TOO, GWEN, US TOO.

You know what really grinds our gears? Institutions that give rightwing morons an excuse to claim that they’re being oppressed by political correctness by actually being oppressive. Knock that off, guys! Most of the right’s whining about political correctness and oppression and stuff is actually unfounded, of course: as a private company, the Moron Channel had every right to suspend the Duck Dynasty guy for being a bigot, for instance. And no, calling a racist a racist isn’t actually infringing on their free speech rights, either. On the other hand, this dumb thing the University of California-Irvine has done really does violate the spirit of the First Amendment and academic freedom and all that stuff we liberals are supposed to be for, and so, as we say, gears are ground, man.

Here’s what happened: the College Republicans club has been effectively banned from campus after inviting professional rightwing *** and Breitbart writer (ah, but we repeat ourselves) Milo Yiannopoulos back to campus in November after a minor violation of rules for guest speakers during his previous appearance at UCI earlier this month. Administrators say it’s not a suspension, and that it’s about the club’s failure to follow rules, not about offensive speech — and absolutely nobody believes them.

In a series of weirdass legal filings full of Sovereign Citizen word magicks, Ryan Bundy, one of the multiple freedom-figtin’ sons of Cliven Bundy who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year, is making believe that he is not actually subject to federal or state law, because he is a free man and you can’t put your filthy laws on a free man, you monsters. It’s not quite the same as pleading guilty, but it doesn’t make him magically immune from prosecution any more than painting his *** green and wearing purple undies would make him the Incredible Hulk.

Oregon Public Broadcasting, which we’ve subscribed to because their coverage of the Bunditarian Freedom Comporee was so good, sorted through some of the SovCit arglebargle for readers who insist on living in mere reality:

Oh, and what a beautiful document it is, complete with the magical phrasing and capitalization/punctuation games that Sovereign Citizens’ pseudolegal “theories” insist separate the physical human being from the “corporate” or “legal entity” known by the name “Ryan Bundy.” One is a man, a lump of flesh, the other a mere legal fiction created by the illegal machinations of the United States Government (Inc.), which isn’t real, either. We’ve cropped out his signature on all but the first image, which for all we know makes us liable for prosecution by a citizens’ grand jury made up of gnomes.

Read more at http://wonkette.com/604979/surprise-ryan-bundy-goes-full-sovereign-citizen-declares-self-idiot-not-subject-to-your-damn-laws#0clj9ym8byi1Jv0w.99

The Clinton Foundation, it’s this thing. It is very, very terrible and there is a lot of collusion, and it is all pay for play, because sometimes people who gave money to the Clinton Foundation asked if they could have meetings with Hillary Clinton. The AP did a whole story about this, which we ignored, but we should not have ignored it, but Hillary Clinton definitely SHOULD have ignored the Nobel Prize winning guy who invented microloans, and who she’d been working with since she was First Lady of Arkansas, her meeting with him was obviously only because she loves that cold hard KKKlinton Kash, the kind the Clintons get zero of from their foundation, because what are they, farmers Donald Trump?

Well, now the august New York Times is taking its whacks, and you will not believe the collusion and pay for play they’ve found now! Just look at this headline, which suggests all kinds of skulduggery: “Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Dept.”

So dude, Douglas J. Band, probably wanted to go party it up in Cabo San Lucas but, like, doublepark the whole time and never pay his tickets, right?

Wait, dude was going to NORTH KOREA? That does not sound like fun bikini hijinks! And he was going to help Ol’ Bill Clinton negotiate for American journalists who were having to do the news for Kim Jong Un? What’s that line about “Mrs. Clinton has long denied that donors had any special influence at the State Department”? Who’s the donor? The journalists? Doug Band? NORTH KOREA? IS NORTH KOREA DONATING TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION????

That would be a problem!

Oh.

Huh.

Might as well start the impeachment proceedings now, Paul Ryan, because Hillary Clinton never gave a diplomatic passport to her husband’s aide who wanted one to go party like a rock star at North Korea’s all you can eat gravel buffet.

Ever since Donald Trump first announced his intention to run for president of the United States, neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront have seen a massive surge in traffic from people beginning to discover just how much they have in common with white supremacists. In fact, they’ve even had to change servers in order to accommodate all the new recruits!

Clearly feeling the adrenaline rush from realizing how much they have to offer an unfortunately large segment of the population, Stormfront has set its sights on drawing even more people into their web of hate. Well, not people so much as children! Yes, they have decided that it is time for your American children to join the Hitler Youth.

This past Tuesday, Stormfront writer Andrew Anglin was thrilled to announce that “[a]n enterprising Stormer has been handing out fliers at Pokémon GO gyms for the purpose of converting children and teens to HARDCORE NEO-NAZISM!”

No, really! That is their plan. They are all going to go to whatever the hell Pokémon gyms are and distribute flyers to children about how they need to convince their parents to vote for Donald Trump so that “hooknosed Jews” and black people don’t ruin their lives and kill their mothers. Fun!
There are actually way worse parts in this than I even transcribed, if you can believe it.

Now, you may be wondering why on earth a bunch of internet nazis want to hang out with preteens, so Anglin explains!
You know what? Not true. Remember those folksinging Nazi twins “Prussian Blue”? Totally not even Nazis anymore. So there goes that theory!

Anglin suggests that those hoping to participate in the Nazi Pokémon Go Challenge “Get your MAGA hat on, and use a skull-like face mask (this will make you appear extra awesome as well as protect your identity – this isn’t illegal, but someone might take your picture).”

Yes, and then those kids will go back to their parents and tell them that a creepy adult wearing a skull mask wants them to vote for Trump and gave them this charming racist flyer, and then certainly their parents will want him to be president. What a great idea! Parents love it when adults in masks approach their children and try to get them to join hate movements! What a great idea! Pokemon? How about UBERmon??? It works if you work it.

Hey, did you notice that Donald Trump seemed like he was on elephant tranquilizers during last night’s Las Vegas presidential debate? You did? Did you notice he wasn’t even sniffling? Low-energy, that guy. Total loser. Sad.

But someone did have some energy, and we will play him for you now (flash video)!

Well, that was exhausting, wasn’t it?

Look, we are not saying Donald Trump Jr. stole all his dad’s coke. I mean, we said it in the headline but that was a joke.

OR WAS IT?

Sure. A “joke.”

We are just saying that when we did coke sometimes in college, never even very much because we were terrified of ODing and also all our friends made us go sit in our own closet with a piece of paper and a pen to write down all the things we wanted to tell them BUT WAIT YOU GUYS FIRST JUST THIS ONE LAST THING, um, well, it looked something like that. But with more “telling people all the things that were wrong with them” but in a LOVING WAY because WE CARED.

Anyway, we think Donald Trump Jr. might have been trying to make some points in there (were we able to pick “NATO” out of that hypersonic word stream?), but who can even tell, our earballs do not work that fast.

Donald Trump has big plans for America. He’s going to make all of us who are already rich even richer and more prosperous, and the only price we have to pay is four to eight more years of delay in doing something about global warming, which isn’t merely a Chinese plot to keep America from competing, but is also a complete hoax perpetrated by scientists for nefarious motives. What, you never heard of evil scientists who want to rule the world? There’s one bit of good news in all this: The rest of the nations who have signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement still plan to go ahead with reducing their carbon outputs, even as the nation that supposedly leads the world in science turns itself over to leadership by a party that doesn’t believe in science anymore — at least, not in science that you can’t drop from fighter jets on some ay-rabs.

In September, Scientific American reported Trump was looking to transition planning help from a team of notorious climate denying flacks. Chief among them is Myron Ebell, director of the “Center for Energy and Environment” (motto: “Energy good, life irrelevant”) at the rightwing Competitive Enterprise Institute, who will reportedly be leading Trump’s transition plans for the EPA. If you’ve read the invaluable Merchants of Doubt (or seen the film), you’ll recognize the CEI as that fine anti-regulatory “think tank” which has been with us since those good old days when its main focus was denying that second-hand smoke was bad for anyone’s health, that the ozone layer needed protection, that acid rain was real, and now, of course, that there’s any scientific consensus on global warming.

And what a peach this Ebell is! In a biography he submitted to accompany his testimony before Congress, Ebell brags he’d been listed by Greenpeace as a “Climate Criminal,” that Rolling Stone had called him a “misleader” on climate science, and that the Clean Air Trust had named him its “Villain of the Month” in March 2001 for convincing the G.W. Bush administration to not regulate carbon emissions. He also wants to gut the Endangered Species Act, or as he puts it, to “transform [it] into a program that respects property rights and actually protects endangered wildlife habitat,” since apparently now it does neither. He’s called the Paris Climate Agreement “an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate’s authority,” because of course it is. He is just one of many of the reasons we can’t have nice things. But Exxon-Mobil can!

Aren’t you reassured? Now go blow some cigarette smoke into your baby’s face while you’re at it, because the science isn’t settled.

Ebell isn’t the only charmer the Trump campaign reached out to for help. For the Department of Energy, there’s Republican lobbyist Mike McKenna, who sports an impressive résumé including time with the DOE during Poppy Bush’s administration, plus lobbying for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, Southern Company Services, and Dow Chemical. And to help with the Interior Department, there’s David Bernhardt, who was solicitor for Interior in the G.W. Bush administration.

Ready for a real thigh-slapper? According to Politico, possible candidates for Secretary of the Interior include Forrest Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil; former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer; Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, or possibly Donald Trump Jr., whom we thought was supposed to be off keeping Daddy’s business separate from his presidency. Maybe that was Ivanka. But the most tantalizing prospect of all? How about Interior Secretary Sarah Palin?

Yeah, we just died to death, too.

Now, let’s not get too panicky here: this crowd of science deniers may completely defund all climate research and do everything they can to dig, drill, and mine all the fossil fuels possible, but it’s not like it’s the end of the world.

It’s a more like the end of the world’s habitability for large mammals, though, so don’t get too sentimental about the biosphere. And don’t worry — the planet probably won’t become incapable of sustaining human life until Baron Trump’s grandchildren are handed the mess. Maybe sooner, maybe later.

People on the internet are talkin’, talkin’ ’bout people, talking’ bout how it looks as though Donald Trump maybe photoshopped his hands to make them look bigger. Because, hey, they sure do look a heck of a lot bigger in his picture than in the original Getty Images photo! Here is a GIF that makes the difference even clearer.

The dude who made the GIF is a Disney animator, not your rightwing Uncle Joe with the PIXELS, so we are pretty sure he knows what is what.

HOWEVER. Although Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he is adept at using the Twitter machine, I do not believe that he is getting it together to photoshop his own hands. This leads me to believe that it was obviously the work of someone else. Someone whose actual job it was to secretly replace Trump’s hands with alternative hands that were much larger. Someone who was perhaps working on something else when their boss walked in and was like “Can you put that on hold for a minute? I’m gonna need you to make Trump’s hands look bigger in this photo!”

And how weird was it later, when that person was asked “So how was your day today, honey?” and they had to be like “Oh fine, did some work, photoshopped the president’s hands to make them look bigger.” Did this come from Trump? Or from someone who was thinking that if he saw the picture and his hands looked tiny, he would have a tantrum! Oh! Or maybe it is their whole job and they are the Official White House Hand Biggener? Like, they sit around all day waiting for pictures of Trump’s hands to come in so they can photoshop them? Maybe? Who knows! It is a mystery! ...

A committee in the Alabama legislature begins hearings today into the possible impeachment of Gov. Robert Bentley, the state’s super-sexy ol’ governor who had an affair (he insists no actual bonage really occurred, you bet) with his top advisor, Rebekah Mason. Also some of the squickiest phone sex you’ve ever heard on cable news. An attorney for the state House committee investigating possible impeachment released a great big report Friday detailing all sorts of cheerful stuff about Bentley’s conduct, which was chivalrous, romantic, passionate, and accidentally synched to his wife’s iPad. Whoops!

How about some misuse of public resources in his attempts to cover up the affair? You betcha! Probably the most charming part of the report is the finding that, after Bentley found out his wife, Dianne, had recorded his phone calls with Mason, Bentley ordered the head of his security detail, Ray Lewis, to take care of breaking up with Mason for him, which strikes us as considerably more rude than breaking up by text:
....

Now here’s something new: Rocky Mountain Fur Con (RMFC), Denver’s big annual furry convention, has been cancelled for 2017 after one of the organizers, Kendal Emery, turned out to be a sovereign citizen kook who’s also pals with a group of white supremacist furries calling itself the “Furry Raiders.” On top of that, the supposed nonprofit group that organized the convention had its nonprofit status revoked in 2011; the group failed to file tax returns between 2008 and 2015. Oh, and then there was the weirdass not-actually-legal “cease and desist” letter organizer Emery sent to a woman who’d exposed his 1993 conviction for criminal sexual contact with a minor. So things are, to say the least, a little strange in the Furry community right now. Trekkies and My Little Pony fans are reportedly shaking their heads and saying “what a bunch of weirdos.”

The freaky intersection of loony rightwing politics and furry fandom shouldn’t reflect badly on most furries, who are regular folks who enjoy dressing up as animals and maybe enjoying a nice late-night game of Fight or Flight Reflex. But yeesh, check the Denver Channel’s exhaustive summary of all the rabbit holes and backbiting this mess has generated in the Colorado furry community. The story blew up nationally when JJ MacNab, one of the top chroniclers of rightwing and sovereign citizen groups, tweeted a link to a story last week in the furry blog “Flayrah” about the kerfuffle, detailing the sudden cancellation of this year’s RMFC. Shortly before the story was posted, RMFC chair “Sorin” (Zachary Brooks) posted this lovely passive-aggressive note explaining the con had been cancelled because of certain people who want nothing but trouble. For once, that didn’t mean the Jews. Or maybe it does:

....