Top 10 Conservative Idiots #13-17: 2022 Year In Review Edition

[Top 10 Idiots]

Last edited Mon Dec 19, 2022, 04:30 PM - Edit history (1)

Top 10 Conservative Idiots #13-17: 2022 Year In Review Edition

Welcome back to the Top 10 Conservative Idiots! Yooooooooooooo! What’s up Santa Ana? Oh man it’s good to be home after many weeks of being on the road. We do want to state that we might go a bit long tonight as it’s our last show of the year, so alert the affiliates! We had a great time in all of the cities and states we visited, plus our big trips to Hawaii and Mexico. We got some big things brewing next year including shows in Vancouver and Paris! That’s right – we’re going to France for our big 300th edition spectacular! And I honestly can’t think of a better way to celebrate #300 either, can you? No I most certainly cannot! So we’re here at the end of the year and once again it’s time for our annual Year In Review edition where we attempt to cram as much as possible about the entire year into six short entries. Now you might be wondering about our plans for next year. Well, I can tell you what we’ve got in store. Season 14 is going to start on January 26th. But before that, we’ve got a new Top 10 home on social media to launch, but we’re still figuring out the logistics of it. We are also looking at the possibility of launching a Top 10 Subreddit as well! We will also be bringing you some Best Ofs and Throwback Thursdays in the meantime, including the Best Of Conspiracy Corner. And of course, starting in March, it’s the return of our popular and long running Stupidest State contest! That’s right, the NFFSA that you know and love is back and better than ever! Then for season 15, we are going to debut a brand new, never before seen feature that even we don’t know what it is yet! Then after that, I honestly don’t know what the future is going to hold for the Top 10. But we will keep you informed as it happens! OK that’s enough of the intro, we have a lot of idiocy to get to. But first Seth Myers discusses Trump’s absence from the main stage, it’s almost Howard Hughes esque.

So here we are folks, it’s the end of the year which means that it’s time for our big annual end of the year 2022 Year In Review spectacular! How do we close out this incredibly insane year that was 2022? Well we of course have to go back to the beginning. In the first slot is January and February (1) when everyone was sick with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, while the January 6th committee started heating up their investigations and popular musicians gave Spotify the heave ho over Joe Rogan’s anti-vaccine nonsense. In the second slot is March – April (2) and the headlines were dominated by Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral hostile takeover of Ukraine, but Ukraine decided to fight back against his evilness! Also back at home, Will Smith pimp slapped Chris Rock during the live Oscars telecast. Yeah that happened! In the third slot this week is May – June (3) which saw the Christian right getting what they wanted – the overturning of Roe V Wade, while Tucker Carlson is in the hot seat after inspiring a mass shooting and getting roasted for decrying the “end of man”. In the number 4 slot this week is July – August (4) when Ivana Trump died (mysteriously) and people began speculating what was buried at her gravesite at Trump’s Bedminster golf course, while Trump hosted Saudi Arabia’s controversial NIV golf league against the rest of the country’s protests. In the number 5 slot is September – October (5) which saw the death of England’s longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, while Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis channel their inner asshole. Finally, in the number 6 slot, closing out the year is November – December (6) which saw MAGA conspiracy theorists getting their asses handed to them in the midterms, while Elon finally completes his hostile takeover of Twitter and is running the site into the ground. Nice service we had once! At the number 7 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 giving a summary of the year that was and offers his annual predictions of what could happen to the Christian right next year! Taking the number 8 seed this week is a new edition of This Fucking Guy (8) and this week we’re profiling former Trump speech writer, MAGA superfan, and self proclaimed alpha male Nick Adams in a new “This Fucking Guy! In the number 9 (NEIN!!!) slot this week is a new People Are Dumb, and we bring our favorite People Are Dumb stories from the entire year of 2022! Finally, closing out the edition is the last stop of our World Tour 2022, and we end by visiting the land of Carnival, the rainforest, and futbol – Brazil! How much is a Brazillian? Plus to get the annual party started, we got some live music from the legendary Black Keys! Buy their new album “Dropout Boogie” or you’re no friend of this program! Enjoy! And as always don’t forget the key!

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[font size="8"]January And February: The Omicron Variant
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So begins our annual look back at the year that was! For the last two years the entire world has been turned upside down and inside out by the COVID-19 pandemic. But that was finally coming to an end in January, right? WRONG!!!! Say hello to the most contagious variant of the virus yet – the Omicron variant! So goodbye to whatever plans you were planning on doing that you’d been saving up for the last two years because we’ve still got this shit to put up with! Oh well. Back to Netflix. While we were all waiting for the Omicron variant to subside, we watched a hell of a lot of shit unfold on TV. Easily the most compelling TV was the January 6th trial which the GOP totally unleashed their inner asshole and did everything they could to get Liz Cheney censured or even expelled from their ranks. Because you know, Liz Cheney had an independent thought, and that’s not good when you have a deranged white supremacist cult running the show. Season 12 feels like it was eternity ago,, but really it was only 10 months. But the January 6th Commission was certainly some compelling television!

In the weeks after the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump's allies sent fake certificates to the National Archives declaring that Trump won seven states that he actually lost. The documents had no impact on the outcome of the election, but they are yet another example of how Team Trump tried to subvert the Electoral College -- a key line of inquiry for the January 6 committee.

The fake certificates were created by Trump allies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico, who sought to replace valid presidential electors from their states with a pro-Trump slate, according to documents obtained by American Oversight.

The documents contain the signatures of Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors from seven states that President Joe Biden won. But these rogue slates of electors didn't have the backing of any elected officials in the seven states -- like a governor or secretary of state, who are involved in certifying election results -- and they served no legitimate purpose.

The documents were first posted online in March by the government watchdog group. But they received renewed attention this week, as the January 6 committee ramps up its investigation into Trump's attempted coup, including how his allies tried to stop states from certifying Biden's victory, in part, by installing friendly slates of electors who would overturn the will of the voters.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/politics/trump-overturn-2020-election-fake-electoral-college/index.html

Holy shit! Trump was so desperate to not only win 2020, but also overturn it in the same way that Wiley Coyote attempts to catch the Road Runner. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic was still a thing and everyone was becoming numb and tired to the bullshit. That was until Joe Rogan went and shot his mouth off, which is what he does for a living. Look, the anti-vaxxer movement, is, was, and has always been complete 100% certified grade A bullshit, and now it’s killed almost 600,000 people who follow this nonsense. So naturally we were on Neil Young’s side when he decided to bail on Spotify because they sided with Joe Rogan.

Spotify is in the process of removing Neil Young’s music two days after Young posted a letter on his website demanding that his catalogue be removed in response to the “fake information about vaccines” on the platform. “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators,” a Spotify spokesman told The Washington Post in a statement.

“We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.” Young’s letter, which has since been deleted, was addressed to his manager and an executive at his record label and cited Joe Rogan by name as part of his issue with Spotify.

“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” he wrote in the letter, according to Rolling Stone. “Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” the letter continued. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Representatives for Young have not yet responded to The Post’s request for comment. Rogan, who hosts one of the most popular podcasts on the platform, has repeatedly spread misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines. In April, for example, he came under fire for suggesting healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/01/26/neil-young-spotify-joe-rogan/

Let’s not forget that there were Nazi protests in Florida and California (the official Top 10 stance on this, by the way – is fuck Nazis and white supremacists!). Back in the MAGA world, Trump went from flat out denying that Antifa and BLM were behind the 2020 riots to full on embracing the Q bullshit. But seriously, we can’t let January and February go by without addressing what might be one of the biggest casting SNAFUs in reality television history. Yes, someone on the TV show The Masked Singer had the bright idea to let former America’s mayor and current insurrectionist Rudy Giuliani be the man behind the mask. It was insane.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Rudy Giuliani was seen as a future face of the Republican Party. Now, he's a punchline.

Giuliani's journey from "America's Mayor" to eye-rolling embarrassment hit another low this week, when it was revealed that not only had he appeared on the latest season of the reality show "The Masked Singer," but also that when his identity was revealed, two of the show's hosts walked off in protest.

As CNN's Chloe Melas reports: "Robin Thicke and Ken Jeong walked off stage following the revelation of Giuliani as a contestant on the popular Fox reality show in which contenders perform in full costume until they are eliminated." The episode is expected to air next month, Melas notes.

It's cringe-inducing all around. And, unfortunately for Giuliani fans -- and I assume there are still some out there -- it's the latest in a series of increasingly desperate attempts by the former New York City mayor to stay relevant.

Giuliani's descent began slowly -- and then all at once. It was tied directly to his association with Donald Trump, whom he had known for decades as they orbited each other in New York City circles.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/politics/masked-singer-rudy-giuliani-analysis/index.html

Oh and remember all those idiots who post extremely hateful right wing memes? Well they decided to leave the computer and go out protesting into the real world with the “Freedom Convoy”. It screwed up our neighbors to the north in Canada and their capitol of Ottawa. So if you’re the Canadian government, how do you get rid of some unwanted guests? Well there was no good answer to this, and Canada’s attempts to drive the MAGA protestors out (yes, they do exist in Canada, so… MCGA protestor?), was not exactly what one would call “ideal” but it got the job done!

Canada is lifting the emergency powers it enacted more than a week ago to get street protests under control, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the unprecedented authority is no longer needed.

His government invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act after hundreds of semis and other heavy vehicles blockaded the downtown of Canada’s capital city for three weeks. The demonstration in Ottawa sparked offshoots that shut down key U.S. border crossings, including the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit.

“Today, after careful consideration, we’re ready to confirm that the situation is no longer an emergency,” Trudeau said alongside his attorney general and other top ministers in Ottawa on Wednesday. “We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe.”

The legislation gave authorities financial tools to cut off funding to the protesters and compel towing firms to clear out the vehicles, among other measures. Canadian banks froze about C$7.8 million ($6.1 million) in just over 200 accounts under the emergency powers, government officials told lawmakers Tuesday.
https://fortune.com/2022/02/23/justin-trudeau-emergency-powers-trucker-protest-freedom-convoy/

That’s it for January and February! Now it’s on to…



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[font size="8"]March And April: The Ukraine Invasion
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There was so much that happened in March and April of 2022 that it would be absolutely impossible to list everything. It started out innocently enough. It was the glorious return of March Madness after two years of not having it, and Duke attempted to rig their way to the top in favor of Coach K’s retirement , but Kansas ultimately prevailed. The entire world was horrified by the idiotic Freedom Convoy moving across Canada and spreading to the US. They were definitely spreading something, all right! But the real news happened overseas. Vladimir Putin, who we’ve always said is a furry cat and an island fortress away from going full Ernest Starvo Blofeld on us, decided to say “fuck it” and simply invaded the Ukraine. But like most evil supervillain schemes, this one backfired on him big time. Not sure that this plan was brilliant enough for Blofeld. This was more of a downgrade. It’s more of a plot suited for someone like Gru or Shrek. Just make sure there’s plenty of cute cartoon characters making fart noises and you’ll turn a dark plot into a family friendly comedy!

Russia's multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine has thrust the country into a conflict that many on the European continent had thought was one for the history books. Now the country is in the throes of war, with a humanitarian disaster unfolding.

After months of military buildup and brinkmanship on Russia's side of the border, Ukraine's 44 million residents woke up to an all-out conflict on Thursday. Fighting has erupted in several cities across the country, including in the capital, Kyiv, and nearly a half a million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.

Russia had been tightening its military grip around Ukraine since last year, amassing tens of thousands of soldiers, as well as equipment and artillery, on the country's doorstep.

Frenzied diplomatic efforts early this year failed to avert the worst-case scenario. Now those troops are engaged in combat with Ukrainians for control of the country.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/24/europe/ukraine-russia-conflict-explainer-2-cmd-intl/index.html

How best to describe the Russian invasion of the Ukraine? Think of it like getting spam e-mails that you didn’t ask for or don’t want, and the more you try to unsubscribe from the e-mail list the more junk you get! But the longer the Russian war, or as we’ve been calling it, Putin’s grossly illegal and completely immoral invasion, is dragging on, the weirder it gets. My favorite was the Russian version of McDonalds completely pulling out of the country and it being replaced with a much jankier version. Because everything is weirder and jankier in Russia.

What could possibly replace McDonald's iconic Golden Arches? In the case of its Russian replacement, the answer appears to be orange backslashes. Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted McDonald's to withdraw from the country after more than 30 years, a process that entailed pausing operations, looking for a buyer and "de-arching" its restaurants.

Last month, it announced that the existing licensee Alexander Govor would acquire its 850 Russian locations and operate them under a new brand — as well as retain and pay its 62,000 Russian employees for at least two years. The rebranded chain is set to open its first 15 locations in the Moscow region on Sunday, followed by another 200 across the country later this month. And while its new name is still under wraps, it has revealed its colorful new logo. Sistema PBO, which manages the chain, confirmed the design to the state outlet TASS on Thursday.

It depicts a small red circle and two orange lines (aka a burger and pair of fries) against a green background, which the spokesperson said represents the quality of the chain's products and service. Altogether, the three shapes somewhat resemble an abstract letter "M." Twitter users have noted its similarity to the logos of other popular brands, including the Japanese chain Mos Burger, Marriott hotels and the Warner Brothers logo from 1972. Others compared it to a drowning stick figure, cricket bats and the flag of Bangladesh.

The spokesperson added that the name of the new chain has not yet been approved. Citing the state newspaper Izvestia, the BBC reports that the company has submitted eight potential names to the Russian government agency in charge of intellectual property. They reportedly include "Tot Samyi," which translates to "The Same One," and "Svobodnaya Kassa," meaning "available cash register."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104194213/russian-mcdonalds-rebrand-logo

Yeah it’s almost exactly like McDowell’s. Of course while the entire world was staring in horror at Russia’s shockingly evil crimes against humanity that they were committing in Ukraine, we have our own problems here at home. The main problems of course being the Fox / Q Anon wing of the GOP shooting their mouths off on things they don’t understand. And like most things, they ruin everything. But probably the best news out of this terrible time in world history was that Joe Biden did the impossible – he got an extremely qualified black woman nominated and confirmed to SCOTUS! Yeah how seriously awesome is that?

The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson are now over. And they were incredibly ugly.

In advance of the hearings, my colleague Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux wrote that Jackson’s identity as a Black woman as well as her professional background as a former public defender meant that it was likely she’d be subjected to more questions regarding her qualifications than another nominee would be. And sure enough, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee wasted little time grilling Jackson — often in ways that suggested women and people of color are less qualified than their white counterparts, or that their race makes them inherently biased against white people.

There were attacks both inside — and outside — of the hearings that tried to paint Jackson as a supporter of critical race theory, a legal framework for understanding systemic racism that the GOP has co-opted as a catch-all term for anything related to race. Her judicial record in cases involving child pornography was also heavily scrutinized, even though there is no evidence that she was uncommonly soft in her sentences.

We don’t know yet whether the hearings will dramatically alter Americans’ support of Jackson, but at this point, many Americans support her confirmation. Per a March 1-18 poll from Gallup, 58 percent of Americans said the Senate should vote to confirm Jackson, versus 30 percent who thought she should not be confirmed and 12 percent who had no opinion. Notably, that’s the second-highest level of support that Gallup has recorded for a Supreme Court nominee dating back to Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987.1 Only Chief Justice John Roberts scored higher than Jackson, and only slightly higher — 59 percent of Americans said they supported his nomination in 2005.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-broadly-want-the-senate-to-confirm-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-the-supreme-court/

Yeah the GOP are quite literally a broken record. We embrace diversity, they embrace white supremacy and Christian extremism. We want less guns, they want more guns. It’s a truly vicious cycle. But things definitely get weird in April. The GOP is obsessed with the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy that just won’t go away, while the GOP decided to say “fuck you” to participating in future debates. Because why listen to someone who’s never going to change their opinion on anything? Hello brick wall! But I can’t get out of spring without mentioning the Will Smith – Chris Rock confrontation at the Oscars. It was the Pimp Slap Heard ‘Round the World (see: Idiots #12-10 ) ! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Good one! You just got knocked the fuck out! But what I really can’t get out of here without mentioning is Tucker Carlson’s bizarre solution to men’s waning testosterone problem, which resulted in one of the best Conspiracy Corner we ever did (see: Idiots #12-12 ).

Tucker Carlson has a new special on Fox Nation, the streaming platform where Fox News tries to hide some of its more extreme content.

There are jacked, shirtless men wrestling. There are jacked, shirtless men chugging raw eggs. There are jacked, shirtless men obliterating bottles of canola oil with assault rifles. There are jacked, shirtless men milking cows. There are even jacked, shirtless men standing on rocks, posing like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as a mini monolith illuminates their nether regions.

It’s hard to know where to begin with all of this. We’d probably need a therapist to really get into it. We can at least say this particular special, “The End of Men,” doesn’t seem like it’s going to claim that the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6 was a false flag, like last year’s “Patriot Purge” did. So that’s good.

We also now know what’s going on with the guy on the rock exposing his private parts to a wash of red light. He was tanning his balls. Carlson endorsed the practice in the special as one of several ways men can return themselves to testosterone-fueled dominance, which the special argues is necessary for society to “reestablish order” after collapse.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tucker-carlson-end-of-men-testicle-tanning-1338944/

That’s it for spring everybody! Now we’re moving on to the begging of summer where…


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[font size="8"] May and June
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Summer time and the livin’s easy. Initech is on the microphone with Ras MC. All the people in the dance will agree that we’re… well qualified to represent the LBC! OK enough of that. That’s my Sublime chunk, you know, because we’re all up on what the kids listen to! Well anyway May is where all the shit in 2022 really started to hit the fan. The Golden State Warriors won the NBA finals and the Colorado Avalanche won their first Stanley Cup. And there was also the grand return of the Kentucky Derby in there somewhere. We were first greeted with our old buddy Elon Musk and his plans to buy Twitter to turn it into a safe haven for white supremacists and election denying conspiracy theorists – you know, Trump’s people. Don’t worry, we will get to that later. But the big war was just beginning with Fox News just saying “fuck it” and going after Disney. Why were they going after Disney? It’s just more culture war bullshit started by Ron DeSantis over a controversial bill that would stifle freedom of speech laws everywhere. But it resulted in one of the stupidest circular firing squad arguments we’ve ever seen as a country. And what was the end result? Conservatives decided to go nuclear on Disney, because it’s what Fox wanted. We assume it has nothing to do with the recent megapurchase of all of Fox’s entertainment properties by Disney. Nothing at all.

Disney (DIS) versus DeSantis.

As the media conglomerate continues to grapple with the aftermath of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis revoking the company's special tax district, business leaders around the globe are contemplating their own company values as political issues take center stage.

"I don't think [Disney CEO Bob Chapek] did his homework," Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor and former chairman and CEO of medical device company, Medtronic, told Yahoo Finance.

"We're in a different world today — he was acting like he was back in the 1990s. In this world of 2022, you have all kinds of stakeholders who expect you to take a position, especially your employees," the professor continued, adding that workers today have found their voice "particularly in this post-COVID world."

"They want to be respected and heard, and they want their CEOs to speak on their behalf," he said, saying that Bob Chapek's silence on the Parental Rights in Education Act, or what critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, created the "uproar" that eventually led to the political crossfire with DeSantis.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-vs-de-santis-chapeks-dont-say-gay-fumble-a-warning-to-ce-os-says-harvard-professor-142706701.html

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Love the South Park Mickey Mouse, by the way. But then of course it can’t be a day, week, month or even year in America without a mass shooting. This time it happened in Beffalo, New York. And what makes this one even weirder? It’s no secret that the typical American mass shooter enjoys a life of isolation on the computer browsing the dark corners of the internet with his router’s security protections turned off. And leaving lengthy manifestos. But this shooter directly cited the increasingly violent rhetoric coming from Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, which immediately prompted Fox to go into “please disperse” mode.

As a New York Times investigation revealed in April, Tucker Carlson has spent more than 400 shows and counting “amplify[ing] the idea that a cabal of elites want to force demographic change through immigration,” i.e. the “great replacement,” a racist conspiracy theory that liberal politicians are trying to silence and ultimately wipe out white Americans. That conspiracy theory featured heavily in the suspected Buffalo shooter’s 180-page manifesto, the one he allegedly wrote and published detailing his plans to kill Black people before he went on to take 10 lives. Viewed side-by-side, it’s not difficult to see that the two men share a stomach-turning, dangerous, deeply deranged point of view. But Carlson, a smirking vector of hate, would like people to know that his racist point of view has nothing whatsoever to do with the Buffalo shooter’s racist point of view. Absolutely nothing!

During his Monday night show, the Fox News host took pains to distance his rhetoric with that of accused killer Payton Gendron, which he attempted to do by noting that the cold-blooded killer’s declaration was all over the place and in need of a good editor. “What [Gendron] wrote does not add up to a manifesto,” Carlson explained to his viewers. “It is not a blueprint for a new extremist political movement, much less the potential inspiration for a racist revolution. Anyone who claims that it is is lying or hasn’t read it. Instead Gendron’s letter is a rambling pastiche of slogans and internet memes, some of which flatly contradict one another. The document is not recognizably left-wing or right-wing, it’s not really political at all. The document is crazy, it’s the product of a diseased organized mind. At one point Gendron suggests that Fox News is part of a global conspiracy against him. He writes like the mental patient he is. Disjointed, irrational, paranoid.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/tucker-carlson-buffalo-shooting-payton-gendron

And speaking of violent rhetoric, what’s more violent than full on embracing authoritarianism? The GOP has been increasingly looking up to Hungary’s populist dictator Viktor Orban as a role model for what American conservatism should be. Uh… excuse me? The guy is a literal Nazi! What the actual fuck? An American political party embracing an authoritarian dictator is like rooting for the bad guy in whatever movie you’re watching. You know they’re not going to win, but it sure is fun to root for them, because screw the other guy.

It might seem strange that a nationalist conservative group identified with Donald Trump and America First is holding its annual meeting this week in Hungary.

CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is one of the biggest gatherings of conservatives in the world, and Budapest makes sense when you consider that this year's keynote speaker — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — is a hero to some.

"Right now, the political leader of the conservative resistance in the West is the prime minister of a small central European [country] that most Americans never even think about," Rod Dreher of The American Conservative said at a conservatism conference last year.

Orban has been criticized as a white ethno-nationalist authoritarian. He's restricted Muslim immigration and LGBTQ rights while building a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many American conservatives, however, see Orban's Hungary as a kind of anti-woke paradise.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099680587/a-prominent-conference-of-american-conservatives-is-taking-place-in-hungary

You always wonder how previously free countries turn authoritarian? Well let’s look at what happens here in the states. You know we were taking our summer break when this happened. We were all watching in shock and awe when the January 6th Committee laid the smackdown on the Trump administration. In fact, the news coming out of the committee was so huge that we actually had to take time and do a one entry special report for it. Because you know what the old saying is – a failed coup is just practice for a successful one!

The House committee investigating the Capitol assault has heard accounts of the former president’s remarks as he watched the riot unfold on television.

Shortly after hundreds of rioters at the Capitol started chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6, 2021, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, left the dining room off the Oval Office, walked into his own office and told colleagues that President Donald J. Trump was complaining that the vice president was being whisked to safety.

Mr. Meadows, according to an account provided to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, then told the colleagues that Mr. Trump had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hung.

It is not clear what tone Mr. Trump was said to have used. But the reported remark was further evidence of how extreme the rupture between the president and his vice president had become, and of how Mr. Trump not only failed to take action to call off the rioters but appeared to identify with their sentiments about Mr. Pence — whom he had unsuccessfully pressured to block certification of the Electoral College results that day — as a reflection of his own frustration at being unable to reverse his loss.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/us/politics/trump-pence-jan-6.html

That’s it for the early part of summer. Now onto the heart of summer…


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[font size="8"]July – August: The Overturning Of Roe V. Wade
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So here we are. You know how parents are always threatening to take their kids’ video game systems away from them if they scream in public one more time? And then they scream in public one more time only to find their toy taken away from them? That’s what happened when Republicans did the impossible – they overturned the 1969 landmark SCOTUS decision known as Roe V. Wade. Yup, they actually did it. Which of course set off red flags around the world that something terrible was happening and brewing in the United States. In fact we could barely comprehend the madness of the Supreme Court now being stacked 6 – 3 in favor of batshit extreme religious fundamentalists. And these people all have lifetime appointments by the way. It’s going to take 20 years or more to get rid of these MAGA cretins and they’ll probably be replaced with much worse. In fact we couldn’t even comprehend the madness and we had to do another special report about it.

Women's decisions about their reproductive healthcare are no longer theirs to make. It's now up to the individual states to decide whether or not you can terminate a pregnancy, because the Supreme Court has decided that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.

That's right, the U.S. Supreme Court has officially overturned 50 years of established legal precedent, effectively sending American women back to pre-1973 America, before Roe v. Wade was decided and then repeatedly upheld, and the right to seek an abortion depended on which state you lived in.

That's true again, today. As of June 24, it is now a question for state legislatures whether women should be allowed to access abortion care.

In a 6-3 decision, the court decided that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, and that it is up to the states can choose whether or not to impose extreme restraints on reproductive healthcare (including the possibility of criminalization).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-overturning-roe-v-120022373.html

Yeah BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! This is basically setting it up for a religious fascist totalitarian takeover of the US. And it will happen if we let it. in fact the soft coup is already starting in our school boards. And the shit show that Roe V Wade started isn’t ending. In fact people attacked Brett Kavanaugh’s house (see: Idiots #13-2 ) . But meanwhile in the sports world there was a lot of controversy about this new Saudii Arabia-backed NIV golf league. And well, guess who had to intervene? Yup, he did., because the GOP’s new motto is apparently “fuck all y’all”.

Thin crowds were reported at the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament taking place at former President Donald Trump's New Jersey club this weekend—with tickets reportedly being sold for as little as $1 online.

LIV Golf, which aims to rival the near century-old PGA Tour, has drawn substantial controversy due to it being financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. The kingdom has faced strong criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike for its documented human rights abuses, and particularly for the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

While LIV Golf managed to attract some high-profile professional golfers, the PGA Tour barred its members from participating in the competition. Trump, however, embraced the new tournament after the PGA Tour ended its plan to host its championship at his Bedminster club following the events of January 6, 2021.

The New York Times reported Friday that the crowds at the event were "thin and scant at many holes," although it also noted the "easy camaraderie" among the players. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported that many holes "had just a smattering of fans as the day progressed" on Friday. The conservative newspaper additionally reported that tickets for the event were being sold for as little as $1 on StubHub.com.
https://www.newsweek.com/liv-golf-tournament-trump-club-sees-thin-crowds-1-tickets-reports-1729410

Yeah so that happened! I love that tickets were going for $1. Meanwhile, Fox News basically gave up on attempting to overthrow the 2020 election so they’re focusing on going full Nazi in the culture wars. Yes, we know what happened to the guy who sponsored the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that launched this entire controversy. But we can’t let Ron DeSantis (Q – Batshit) off the hook for fueling the controversy in the first place. The entire shit show that resulted from this is absolutely the responsibility of Fox News and they should apologize to Disney for it, but you know they won’t. Because again, the new motto of the GOP is fuck all y’all.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday ruled that a law pushed by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis restricting conversations around race in schools and the workplace is unconstitutional.

In a 44-page ruling blocking enforcement of parts of the law, US District Judge Mark Walker said that Florida's Individual Freedom Act (IFA), better known as the "Stop WOKE Act," "discriminates on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The law, which took effect on July 1, is a key component of DeSantis' war on "woke ideology," and was intended to prevent teachings or mandatory workplace activities that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed based necessarily on their race, color, sex or national origin.

Two Florida-based employers who want to require their staff attend diversity and inclusion trainings, and a consultant who provides such instruction, requested the injunction on the portions of the law dealing with corporate trainings.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/politics/desantis-woke-law-block/index.html

Fox News – the reason why we can’t have nice things. And speaking of people not being able to have nice things – Donald Trump. This might be what happened to be the best news out of the entire summer was when the FBI raided Trump’s home at Mar-A-Shithole, which he basically turned into some kind of fucked up Studio 54 for election denying conspiracy theorists. Watching the MAGA meltdown with their calls to threaten and disband and defund the FBI was absolutely hilarious! The fucking irony – these are the same people who said that “defund the police” was bad messaging!

The FBI seized multiple sets of documents marked top secret from former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago, when agents raided it Monday, according to a search warrant unsealed Friday.

The warrant directed agents to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” in violation of three laws related to handling of government documents.

The warrant indicates that statutes relating to espionage and obstruction of justice are the foundation for the search. Convictions under these statutes can bring fines or prison sentences.

One of the statutes, which relates to removing or destroying government records, includes a punishment of being “disqualified from holding any office under the United States,” according to the text of the law.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/12/documents-taken-in-trump-raid-included-files-marked-top-secret-report-says.html

We’re almost there! We are officially done with summer! Now it’s onto the fall…


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[font size="8"]September – October: The Death Of Queen Elizabeth II
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Two things happened in 2022 that we thought were never going to happen in our lifetime. The first was the overturning of Roe V. Wade. But then again we didn’t think we would have a batshit crazy president who would stack SCOTUS in favor of a small minority faction of religious fundamentalists. The other thing is much sadder – the death of England’s longest serving monarch – Queen Elizabeth II. You know, say what you want about the British monarchy. Like my British friends have some extremely mixed opinions on it. The people who love the monarchy love the Family Windsor. But the people who hate the monarchy on the other hand, have a serious hatred for it. The thing about Queen Elizabeth II was that she was a true champion of women’s and minority rights and progressive values. You know, things that go against what a monarchy typically stands for. But that being said, love her or hate her, we did lose a legend this year.

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, there is a new line of succession to the British throne.

The queen's oldest son, Charles, has become king. And with his ascension to the throne, members of his direct family, including his sons Princes William and Harry, are now higher in the line of succession.

In general, succession falls to the first-born child of the heir and their children, followed by the next oldest sibling of the heir and their offspring and so on. That's why, for instance, Prince Charles' children and grandchildren are ahead in line of Charles' oldest brother, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

Other rules make the order more complicated.

Under British laws established in the late 1600s and early 1700s, the succession to the throne can be regulated by Parliament, which can remove monarchs for "misgovernment," according to the royal family's website.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/News/queen-elizabeth-dies-96-british-royal-line-succession/story?id=65427816

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… love me some Archer. But that being said, some in America weren’t having any of it, and there were some incredibly fucked up conspiracy theories about how Queen Elizabeth II really died. My personal favorite was that Q Anon said that the Queen died a long time ago, and that she was replaced with a body double. File that one under things that no one has ever said, ever, and things that aren’t happening anywhere. But one guy didn’t get invited to an international celebration of life, and he’s pissed. Yeah, you know who I am talking about. And no, Fox News, Biden did not take him as a “plus one”.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says that former President Donald Trump was surprised that he did not receive a personal invitation to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

Speaking on CNN Tuesday morning, Haberman was asked by host John Berman about Trump's reaction to not being invited to the funeral, which will be attended by President Joe Biden later this week.

"Trump and people around Trump believe he had some sort of special connection to the queen," she replied. "There's, for some reason, some expectation around people close to Trump that he should be getting an invitation. He fancied himself as having some kind of close relationship with her. A former aide to Trump told me, 'No, the queen really liked him.'"

However, Haberman said she had heard of no concrete proof that the late queen liked Trump, whom she met when the former president visited the United Kingdom in 2019.
https://www.rawstory.com/queen-elizabeth-trump/

Hey Trump, you’re not the president and you’re not British! You don’t get to attend! Not even as a “plus one”, OK? Fuck off. By the way, we here in the United States were horrified at yet another mass shooting in an elementary school, this time involving the deaths of 23 students and teachers that happened at the end of July. But the investigation into the shooting was getting weird. And it really shows what happens when we live in an America that values the importance of owning a gun over the importance of the life that guns take away. It’s truly fucked up.

A small army of 376 federal, state, and local law-enforcement officers disastrously botched their tactical response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a preliminary report by an investigative committee of the Texas House of Representatives revealed Sunday, painting a picture of dysfunction that went well beyond an embattled school police chief. At a press conference several hours later, state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R), the committee’s chairman, emphasized the simple phrase that best encapsulated the report’s contents: “multiple systemic failures.”

The 77-page document—a page for each minute of the leaked video showcasing the massacre—was compiled in 44 days, the product of more than 35 interviews with witnesses, including school police officers, the district superintendent, the school’s principal, and others. Investigators also interviewed 39 more independent subjects, and reviewed crime scene photos, 911 calls, and both audio and video from the day, according to Burrows.

The result provides a fresh rundown of what happened inside the building, a profile of the gunman who got inside, and a beat-by-beat account of how mistakes or inaction by officers, the school, and the family of the shooter led to catastrophe. “The Committee issues this interim report now, believing the victims, their families, and the entire Uvalde community have already waited too long for answers and transparency,” the report reads, according to a copy reviewed by The Daily Beast.

The document lays out how a bevy of police resources failed to prevent tragedy, even as individual school staffers tried to protect children. Not a single law enforcement officer was on the school’s campus when gunman Salvador Ramos attacked, according to the report. Instead, the school was alerted to his presence by coach Yvette Silva, who the report says “almost certainly saved lives.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-house-of-representatives-tries-to-explain-what-happened-during-uvalde-massacre

Holy shit! When you have nearly 400 cops at the scene of a guy with an AR-15, the problem isn’t that we need more cops! The problem is the guy with the AR-15! But you know a favorite discussion topic of mine lately is stochastic terrorism. It’s basically when someone spouts so much hateful rhetoric that it eventually drives someone to listen to it to violence. But the good news is that the fall ended with one of our favorite bad guys here, Alex Jones, finally getting his just deserts. That’s right – you may have heard that the Mad Man of Infowars got his ass handed to him by the Sandy Hook parents.

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay at least $965 million in damages to numerous families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting for falsely claiming they were actors who faked the tragedy, a Connecticut jury said on Wednesday.

The verdict, which came after three weeks of testimony in a state court in Waterbury, Connecticut, far outstripped the $49 million Jones was ordered to pay in August by a Texas jury in a similar case brought by two other Sandy Hook parents.

The Connecticut verdict applies to both Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, the owner of Jones' Infowars website. FSS filed for bankruptcy in July.

The plaintiffs in the Connecticut case included more than a dozen relatives of 20 children and six staff members who were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. Jones claimed for years that the massacre was staged as part of a government plot to take away Americans' guns.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/jury-begins-third-day-deliberations-alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-trial-2022-10-12/

Thank you Nelson! We’re almost at the end of the year everybody! Moving on to:


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[font size="8"]November – December: The GOP Goes Full Nazi
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We made it everybody! We’re at the end of the year! And much to the rest of the MLB’s objection, the cheating Houston Astros somehow managed to win another World Series. Ugh. Whether you love or hate the Astros, at least we did get this out of it:

There’s so much we could discuss about what’s happening right now, but we cannot deny that the end of the year 2022 was dominated by one piece of news – the systematic and hostile takeover, and complete destruction of the Twitter platform by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk. If you’re familiar with Norse mythology, or at the very least the movie Thor: Ragnarok, you know that Surtur is a mythical being that is a giant flaming monster that destroys Thor’s home world of Asguard. Elon is basically a real life version of Surtur. He took over that platform and basically nearly completely destroyed it. How did he do that? He let on racists, sexists, white nationalists, neo Nazis and other undesirables that have been banished to the dark corners of the internet. Yeah that’s a bad thing, Elon. When you play with neo Nazis and white supremacists, you are playing with fire. You might as well burn the place down at this point.

Elon Musk sold $3.95 billion worth of Tesla stock since completing his purchase of Twitter late last month.

Musk’s Tesla stock sales, totaling 19.5 million shares, have been widely anticipated ever since the Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Musk had sold blocks of Tesla shares worth a total of $15.4 billion earlier this year since his deal to buy Twitter was announced.

Twitter confirmed Musk bought the social media company October 27, but he waited until November 4 to start selling additional Tesla shares. He also sold blocks of Tesla stock on Monday and Tuesday this week, according to filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday night.

It’s not clear if the money Musk raised went toward the Twitter purchase, or to support losses at Twitter since he took over.

Musk disclosed last week that Twitter has seen a “massive drop in revenue,” as a growing number of advertisers pause spending on the platform in the wake of his takeover of the company. He blamed “activist groups” pressuring advertisers for the loss of ad dollars.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/business/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale-twitter-purchase/index.html

Yeah so Twitter is an absolute fucking disaster of a platform right now. And in fact we here at the Top 10 have made the announcement that we’re abandoning Twitter and setting up shop on Mastodon when we come back in January. In fact the Twitter news dominated the other headlines, like the fact that Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, was the victim of an actual terrorist attack (see: Idiots #13-13 ). Yeah remember that thing we said about stochastic terrorism? That’s what the right wing has been doing, and stochastic terrorists are now turning into actual terrorists! It’s really fucked up! It of course caused Hannity and Tucker to go into full “nothing to see here please disperse” mode.

Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, made light Monday of the violent assault against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband on Friday.

“It is not impossible to protect our kids at school. They act like it is,” Lake said at a campaign stop along her “Ask Me Anything” tour.

“Nancy Pelosi — well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. Apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,” Lake said, prompting laughs and applause from the crowd and the event moderator beside her.

The Speaker was in Washington, D.C., when an intruder broke into her California home and attacked her 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Paul Pelosi underwent surgery for a skull fracture and significant injuries to his right arm and hands, according to the lawmaker’s spokesperson.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/arizona-governor-candidate-kari-lake-221539673.html

Early November / December was also dominated by the Club Q shooting (see: Idiots #13-16 ) and that was colossally fucked up. And don’t worry – the conspiracy theories surrounding that shooting were not only fucked up, but definitely worth seeking out because they are about as off the deep end as it gets. And then there was Kanye West, aka Ye, who we’ve largely avoided discussing because of his rabid anti-semitic views. But we had no idea that he’d be hanging out with white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes and saying “I Love Hitler”.

Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

The two had arranged to break bread Tuesday night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of private phone conversations as Ye lost lucrative partnerships and became a mainstream cultural pariah for his antisemitic remarks, according to those familiar with the talks between the two men.

But Trump may have been walking into a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls — one that leveraged his own penchant for spectacle and showmanship against him. Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.

Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity. News of the meeting prompted an avalanche of criticism, from some Republican rivals and allies of Trump and his then-week-old presidential campaign.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/story-trumps-explosive-dinner-ye-nick-fuentes-rcna59010

And by the way, you know that we can’t get out of here without tying everything together in one nice, neat little package, right? So this year has been plagued by war and threats of white nationalism and neo-Nazism. Well the story that happened TODAY, as we’re putting together this week’s edition, is one of those things that ties up this year quite nicely. In fact it sums up everything about the year 2022 that we couldn’t even come up with if we had like 1,000 former Saturday Night Live writers. Hanging out with Nazis is bad, and Elon’s invitation of them is bad. But you can always judge a person by the company they keep, and it’s pretty safe to say that Dave Chappelle’s career might be coming to an end.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was met with a mixture of boos and cheers from an audience at a Dave Chappelle comedy show Sunday night.

The comedian brought the Tesla CEO out on the stage at a special Punchline Comedy Club event at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

In a video shared on Twitter, the crowd can be heard jeering Musk, whose recent purchase of the social media platform has attracted criticism due to concerns about mass layoffs and looser content moderation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle tells the audience. A number of audience members cheered — though there was also a loud chorus of boos, too.

“You weren’t expecting this, were you?” Musk tells Chappelle following the boos.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-booed-by-crowd-at-dave-chapelle-comedy-gig.html

That’s our 2022 year in review everybody!




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[font size="8"]Holy Shit: 2023 Predictions
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Gather around my fair brothers and sisters! It’s time to take a seat in the pew and pass the collection plate, for the Holy Church Of The Top 10 has convened and it’s time to remind you that the holiest among us are the most full of:



My fair congregation! Please be seated! You know we come to the end of the season and the end of the year of our LAWRD 2022. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in January. Now we’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs this year. We’ve also had a lot of scary things happen this year. So we are devoting our end of the year edition to our favorite thing which is predicting what’s going to happen next year. And there’s a lot of different ways that we could go. But in this increasingly upside down world that we live in, it is fun to speculate about next year, isn’t it? Because supporters of the unholy, ungodly Dark One are getting weirder and nuttier. I call him “The Dark One” because I speak of a man so foul, so depraved and disgusting that his name dare NOT be spoken in my church! So which way should we start? I know let’s start with a guy who is currently dominating the headlines – Kanye West. Or as he’s also known, Ye. Did you know that Ye loves Adolf Hitler? A man who is commonly so associated with the word “evil” that his face appears in the dictionary? Well here’s how that is going.

Kanye West praised Adolf Hitler and Nazis, denied the Holocaust, and attacked Jewish people at length during a disturbing Thursday afternoon interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler,” Ye said. “Also Hitler was born Christian.”

“I see good things about Hitler also” said Ye, who wore a full face mask throughout the interview. “I love everyone. Jewish people are not going to tell me you can love us, and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I’m done with that.”

When Jones said he didn’t like Nazis as the show moved to a commercial break, Ye interjected.

“I like Hitler,” he said.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-alex-jones-i-like-hitler-1234639617/amp/

Yes, my fair congregation! Hitler is the face of EVIL! He is not “loved” and nobody should love him. He is the face of mass murder and genocide and this attempt by Ye is most certainly gaslighting! But speaking of Ye, how about his white supremacist friends? You know the ones that Elon Musk considers to be close friends of his? Well, the Proud Boys have been turned into some kind of weird version of Project Mayhem from Fight Club! They’re disrupting drag shows and destroying power grids, we presume to disrupt drag shows. It’s absolute madness. But here’s where we think that is going.

A holiday drag story time event was canceled in Columbus, Ohio, after the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremist groups showed up in force.

Red Oak Community School and the First Unitarian Universalist Church had advertised its “Holi-Drag” story time charity event for kids last month. Shortly after, members of the Proud Boys announced plans to disrupt the event, Right Wing Watch first reported.

On Saturday, scores of Proud Boys dressed in the signature black and yellow uniforms and members of Patriot Front, some of whom were armed, rallied outside of the First Unitarian Universalist Church, which was hosting the event. Alleging that the story time event amounts to “grooming”—the rhetoric at the heart of recent political attacks on LGBTQ people—the Proud Boys held signs with messages like, “Groomers make Santa sad” and “Groomers go home.” Another read “Proud Boys Story Hour Today’s Book Death of the West Chapter 9,” in an apparent reference to a book authored by far-right activist Pat Buchanan, who fearmongers about immigrants replacing “America’s white majority.”

Other videos show Proud Boys members dancing to the “YMCA,” the unofficial LGBTQ anthem, and a police officer acknowledging that he high-fived a Proud Boy because he had complimented his mustache.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/proud-boys-promise-to-disrupt-more-drag-story-time-events/

Oh yes, my friends! The devil is most certainly walking among us, and he works in mysterious ways. That is right, he moves… in mysterious ways! That’s my Bono impression. Screw it, it’s our last show of the year and I’m doing whatever I feel like! The man can’t keep us down, you all know this, my fair congregation! Happy hour in the confession booth later! Anything goes! OK I’m revealing way more than I probably should. But moving on, come on we’re predicting the future here! What about our old buddy Mike Lindell? Yes, Mr. Christian voter fraud himself wants to run for the RNC chair. Come on, if creepy Pillow Man is the future of the GOP… I’d rather be stuck in the past!

Businessman Mike Lindell—aka the MyPillow Guy—poured tens of millions of dollars into spectacularly failed efforts to prove that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump by fraudulent election machines, while portraying his efforts as a spiritual crusade. The election conspiracy theorist is still at it.

A fundraising email sent Tuesday for the Lindell Legal Offense Fund features a Christian nationalist logo (see above) and a familiar claim. “It’s being stolen again,” declares the email, mixing claims about Trump’s 2020 loss and the recently concluded midterm elections. “Great people ran for office across this country, earned your vote and are now being cheated by electronic voting machines!”

Lindell is among the Trumpist conspiracy theorists being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines Lindell singled out. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

Lindell spread these claims by funding far-right media outlets and personalities during Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, sometimes through affiliate programs allowing media personalities to give listeners a discount code for MyPillow purchases in return for a percentage of the sales.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/mike-lindell-wants-more-money-to-make-bogus-claims-about-voting-machines/

No… no… nothing is over here! We’re just having some fun predicting the future! Because if the followers of the unholy, ungodly Dark One can call themselves “prophets”, then so can I! I’m just a prophet who knows how to have a good time! But we think one of these groups of people will probably wind up either taking themselves out by drinking the Kool-Aid, or they’ll go down in a fiery blaze of glory like Waco! People who don’t know how to have a good time, though, are fundamentalist Christians. No sir, they are the kind of people to literally rain on your parade. Biden signed into law the Defense Of Marriage Act, but these are people who take things way too literally! They only want one form of marriage.

Second, anti-LGBTQ leaders have sounded false alarms about equality legislation for decades—but their dire predictions about freedom disappearing as LGBTQ people make strides toward legal equality have failed to materialize.

Consider, for example, the frenzied opposition to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed Congress in 2009 and was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The legislation strengthened an existing federal hate crimes law by including crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

If the apocalyptic warnings from far-right religious and political leaders during debate on the bill had any grounding in truth, the years since then would have brought about the criminalization of Christianity, prisons filled with pastors who preached against homosexuality, and conservative Christians piled into boxcars and sent to concentration camps. Influential Christian nationalist “historian” and serial liar David Barton told a California church that sponsors of the hate crimes law—which explicitly targets violent crimes—wanted to make it a federal crime for preachers to read Bible verses denouncing homosexuality. Religious-right leaders and far-right members of Congress falsely claimed, without the slightest evidence, that the law would create legal protections for bestiality and pedophilia.

More than a decade later, of course, none of that has happened. No preachers were dragged from their pulpits. Far-right Christian leaders are still quite free to rage against legal equality for LGBTQ people, and political operatives are free to run political campaigns that smear us with dishonest propaganda. Freedom has survived, and the campaign against the federal hate crimes law has been exposed as a lie.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/old-habits-are-hard-to-break-anti-equality-leaders-dishonest-and-alarmist-attacks-on-the-respect-for-marriage-act/

Well the bigots lost! Biden passed the Defense Of Marriage Act! All right folks, that’s it for me! I’m outta here for the winter! Before we get out of here, we want to thank everyone for supporting us for five straight years! We’ll see you again in January! Mass has ended, may you go in peace! That’s it this year for:




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[font size="8"]This Fucking Guy: Nick Adams
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This week’s This Fucking Guy is a former Trump speechwriter and current TPUSA Influencer, Nick Adams! In case you haven’t heard the name, Nick Adams is a real man’s man. Yeah he’s a self-proclaimed “alpha male”. In fact he wears the “alpha male” badge much in the same way that Mayor Quimby wears a sash that says “mayor” on it, in case you forgot his title. And for some reason he has a weird obsession with Hooters. That’s right – Hooters. You know, that restaurant where scantily clad women in tight t-shirts and short shorts serve you beer and barely passable buffalo wings? Yeah that place. Apparently they also have football on the TV monitors there. But this fucking guy has a completely weird obsession with the so-called “Brestaurant”. Look, I love drinking beer and watching football as much as the next guy. I personally had no idea that my choosing not to eat there has made me less of a man. If you go there with the intention of harassing and oogling the waitresses, that just makes you a creepy pervert. And you're also the kind of guy who the waitresses point and laugh at behind your back when you leave the restaurant. If you have had one order of Buffalo Wings, you’ve pretty much had them all. But this whole alpha – beta male debate is quite possibly the stuff of pure insanity, and this fucking guy, Nick Adams, is at the heart of the argument.

A conservative author was blasted online Monday after he defended the right of “alpha males” to enjoy wings and brews at Hooters with their buddies — and their families.

Nick Adams, who claims to be President Trump’s favorite author, said he was “sick and tired” of being shamed by “feminists” after he tweeted about his favorite restaurant chain.

“I am sick and tired of beta males and feminists trying to guilt alpha males out of eating at Hooters,” Adams tweeted.

“There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with eating at Hooters on a weekly basis, EVEN with the family and kids.”

The MAGA writer was responding to a deluge of online attacks that came from an earlier tweet that used some outdated cliches to explain the difference between the alphas and betas.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/07/nick-adams-blasted-for-saying-alpha-males-should-take-their-families-to-hooters/

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Well in case you’re wondering what the average “alpha manly male” gets offended by, the answer is that it doesn’t take much to offend the guy who’s more of a man than you will ever be. You know what offends the average alpha male? Oat milk. That’s right – milk that’s made from nature. But wait, milk is supposed to come from cows! No there’s plenty of other substitutes for it. Of course that’s what happens when the guy who we inexplicably used to call president loves to court the poorly educated.

He insists he is an “alpha male” and “Trump’s favourite author”, but it seems US political commentator Nick Adams can be easily defeated with a morning coffee containing oat milk.

Yes, really.

In a revelation no one asked for on Friday night, Adams tweeted that he was asked earlier that day if he “wanted ‘oat milk’ in my coffee” – the quote marks around “oat milk” doing a good job of telling you where this story is going.

“I informed the girl behind the counter that it’s not physically possible to milk an oat and immediately left the coffee shop.

We hate that we have to explain this, but oat milk is made by mixing rolled oats and water together before straining to produce the liquid. Hardly controversial.

Fortunately, many Twitter users agree with us, and thus, his status as an “alpha male” was called into question.
https://www.indy100.com/politics/nick-adams-oat-milk-alpha

By the way in case you’re wondering how ridiculous the alpha male – beta male debate gets, well, apparently Mr. Adams has a solution for why the GOP did so poorly in the midterms . it’s because of – wait for it – Gen Z doesn’t eat at Hooters enough. In fact Nick Adams tweets so much about Hooters that you might think he owns stock in the company or something. His Twitter account basically only tweets about two things – alpha males and Hooters. It’s something else. Here’s a small sampling.

Link to tweet

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Who the hell spends four hours at Hooters on Sunday even during football season? You’d think people have better things to do. But playing Nick Adams’ game is like playing a game of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon. Except there’s just one degree, and he’s an alpha male who eats at Hooters and everyone else is a beta male! You know how the GOP did so poorly in the midterms? Beta males didn’t eat enough at Hooters to qualify for elite alpha male status.

Conservative political commentator Nick Adams was mocked after he complained once the "red wave" Republican legislators and pollsters had anticipated failed to materialize and offered a rather absurd criticism of Generation Z, who've represented the youngest and newest demographic at the ballot box.

Adams claimed that the "red wave" would have happened if Gen Z kids had eaten at Hooters—yes, the restaurant whose wait staff are primarily young women whose revealing outfits and sex appeal are played up and are a primary component of the company's image—when they were children.

Writing on Twitter, Adams said that if that had been the case, that he could have "guaranteed" a red wave on Election Night.

Adams, who refers to himself as an "alpha male" on his official Twitter profile, issued several more tweets advocating for parents to take their minor children to Hooters.

In one tweet, he said he is "sick and tired of beta males and feminists" who've tried to "guilt" so-called alpha males from eating at the restaurant.
https://www.comicsands.com/nick-adams-gen-z-hooters-2658636299.html

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… great movie! It’s like a broken fucking record with this guy. You spin me right round, like a record baby, right round, right round… yeah we’re turning this place into Hooters! Because you know that restaurant is synonymous with being a family friendly joint! By the way, even Hooters themselves are sick of the bad publicity they’re getting from him. Oh and did we mention that Mr. Adams is from Australia? That’s right – he’s not even a natural born citizen! Of course the Trump people don’t care about that sort of thing. They do apparently care too much about whether you eat at Hooters or not. And worshipping Trump and Baby Jesus. Don’t forget Baby Jesus.

Hooters, the restaurant chain equally famous for its wings and its well-endowed waitresses, started trending on social media Monday thanks to a conservative commentator's tweets.

Australia-born pundit and author Nick Adams argued that true "Alpha males" dine at Hooters. From there, Twitter users had a field day making fun of Adams' hot take.

Adams shot off a series of Hooters-related tweets, with one explaining that he'd visited the franchise recently.

"I was at Hooters over the weekend when I overheard two stunning waitresses discussing their plans to vote on Tuesday," Adams tweeted on Monday. "They both were undecided but said they were leaning Republican because of the cost of gas and groceries. I pray those two lovely ladies make the right call!"

Four minutes later, he continued on his Hooters tangent, writing: "I am sick and tired of beta males and feminists trying to guilt alpha males out of eating at Hooters. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with eating at Hooters on a weekly basis, EVEN with the family and kids." https://www.newsweek.com/hooters-alpha-male-comments-conservative-pundit-spark-backlash-1757656

That’s more manly than you Christian alpha male who eats way too much at Hooters, Nick Adams. This week’s:




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[font size="8"]People Are Dumb
[br] [/font] [br] BO

Hit it!

Of course you know by now that people are people, and people are dumb! And this is my favorite People Are Dumb of the year because we get to bring you the best of People Are Dumb! That’s right – the stupidest of the stupid, the dumbest of the dumb, the biggest idiots of all time! So where to start? I mean there’s so many places that we can go. Probably one of my favorite People Are Dumb stories from this year is this story that came out of South Carolina. You know the church gets so much scrutiny because of its’ stance on sex (which is: don’t do it), but what happens when a youth pastor gets caught doing something creepy? Well, of course the church fires the guy and then they have to go into major damage control mode. But yeah after watching that Hulu documentary God Forbid, you should definitely be questioning what your local churches’ after hours activities are. Especially after you see this insane story!

A church in South Carolina says that it has placed a pastor on leave after a social media post claimed he had given children stickers that read "I [heart] hot youth pastors."

Fairview Baptist Church youth pastor Cory Wall has been "placed on administrative leave," according to the church.

The decision comes after a widely-shared Twitter post claimed a youth pastor gave kids, including a 14-year-old girl, a sticker that said "I [heart] youth pastors" on it. The post claimed the youth pastor was a 35-year-old man and that the sticker made the 14-year-old "very uncomfortable."

In another widely-shared social media post, alleged emails from the pastor attempt to explain that the stickers were meant to be a "joke," even if "in hindsight, the joke was of very poor taste and a mistake."

Online backlash apparently prompted a response from Fairview Baptist Church. On both its website and its Facebook page, the church announced that Wall has been placed on administrative leave.
https://wpde.com/news/local/i-heart-hot-youth-pastors-stickers-given-to-kids-leads-to-pastor-being-placed-on-leave-south-carolina-youth-children-love-fairview-baptist-church-cory-wall

Next up – we go to this story out of Japan from September. Look, no one is immune from being featured in a People Are Dumb story. But my favorite thing about this year is how conservatives went nuclear on Disney because they were mean to Ron DeSantis over his “Don’t Say Gay” bill. I mean come on, Disney is the largest employer of LGBT people in the entire country! But one thing you don’t do is that you don’t take Star Wars memorabilia or any other kind of memorabilia from Disney. Because they will come down on you faster than Fox did.

A man was caught and arrested for impersonating a hotel guest and a Cast Member as he took a gold necklace and an R2-D2 droid worth about $10,000, according to sheriff’s reports detailing the man’s scheme that unfolded across Disney property this year.

Proudfoot caught security’s attention last month as he pushed a cart on Epcot Resorts Boulevard to Walt Disney World Swan Reserve. He wore a Disney World name tag that said “David” and a bright orange safety vest.

The security officer “noticed the behavior as (suspicious) and offered to assist the male with the cart onto the property. The male appeared confused about the location of loading docks or proper procedures of the Swan Reserve. Security then called deputies to respond,” the arrest report said.

Proudfoot claimed to be David Rodgers and said he was a Walt Disney Company employee stationed at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort’s receiving division. ...........(more)

https://wdwnt.com/2022/06/florida-man-poses-as-cast-member-steals-10000-r2-d2-droid-in-supposed-attempt-to-earn-a-job-in-disney-world-security/

Next up – of course we can’t do a People Are Dumb segment without a trip to the Sunshine State! And there were a lot of crazy Florida Man stories to choose from this year. Let’s start with this one from Pinellas County where of course it involves someone naked, and it also involves copious amounts of alcohol, which is pretty much the standard for Florida Man stories! Add an alligator and some of that famous weather that Florida is known for and you’ve got yourself a Florida Man cocktail! And this one must be some pretty strong stuff!

Police in Naples, Florida, arrested a 31-year-old man early Friday after they found him in possession of a baby alligator, firearms and drugs during a traffic stop, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.

Officers arrested Michael Marolla, of Naples, the front-seat passenger, at about 12:30 a.m. near 12th Street SE and Golden Gate Boulevard after they stopped the driver of the pickup truck for driving with a suspended license.

Police found a live baby alligator in an open plastic tub in the bed of the pickup truck, according to the Facebook post, which said officers also found two firearms in the truck and loaded syringes that tested positive for methamphetamine in Marolla’s jacket.

Police charged Marolla with two counts of carrying a concealed firearm. He also faces charges of possession of a controlled substance and possession of narcotic equipment.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna23772

Next up, I love this story from back in May out of Minneapolis. Look, if you’re going to run from the cops, it’s probably never a good idea to drive directly into a concrete wall. Because we all know that the wall is going to win ten times out of ten, right? Well yeah it was probably a dumb decision and that’s exactly what makes this People Are Dumb material. Because remember – it’s not just that someone is stupid and does something stupid. There has to be a bit of pure insanity thrown into the mix as well, because reasons!

A Minnesota woman was arrested Monday night after her attempt to flee from police ended when she drove into fresh concrete.

According to Hubbard Broadcasting affiliate KAAL-TV, Rochester police saw the woman drive through a red light at around 4:40 p.m. When the officers tried to stop her vehicle, she refused to stop.

A short time later, another officer tried to stop the woman near Westover Lane and Seventh Street Northeast but she accelerated, crashed through construction barricades and drove into 150 feet of freshly poured concrete, bringing her to a stop. She was then arrested and taken to a hospital for a psychological evaluation.

KAAL reports that the woman is estimated to have caused between $30,000 and $40,000 in damages.

Police told KAAL that they have received at least nine complaints about the woman driving erratically and using a bullhorn to “spread the word of God” since May 11.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/local-news/woman-arrested-after-driving-through-fresh-concrete-while-fleeing-police/

Finally this week – this might be one of the single most insane Florida Man stories ever, and there were plenty to choose from, believe me! And this is one of those stories where we promise you that life imitates art. And also that the Simpsons predicted it! This is what happens when you involve a stolen car and a plot to destroy said stolen car by train. It’s a real life Simpsons episode. Where can I go see Hail To The Chimp? Surely I have time for one little movie. Off to the drive in!

A 38-year-old Florida man was arrested after a bizarre string of events that started after he allegedly stole a car and abandoned the vehicle on train tracks. An oncoming train hit the car, sending it flying into a nearby home, according to the Martin County Sheriff's Office.

Miraculously no one was injured, police said.

The man, identified as Bradford Weitzel, of Port St. Lucie, was charged with grand theft, and criminal mischief. Additional charges are expected, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Weitzel told police that he somehow ended up on the train tracks along Indian River Drive, according to police. Police said he claimed that the vehicle suddenly stopped dead on the tracks as a train was coming. He then told police that he got out and ran, leaving the car on the tracks, according to the sheriff's statement.

Police say the man told them that within seconds the train hit the car, hurling it into a nearby home where the homeowners were asleep. The suspect then allegedly told police he continued on to a nearby fruit stand, where he reportedly vandalized the business and tried to steal a forklift.
https://www.insideedition.com/florida-man-steals-car-which-ends-up-in-a-house-after-its-struck-by-a-train-police-73102

That’s it this year for:

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[font size="8"]World Tour 2022 Destination #16: Brazil
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Part of our mission statement here at the Top 10 Conservative Idiots is that we view conservative idiocy not just as a uniquely American problem. No, it’s a global problem and conservatives are ruining everything they touch all around the world. Which is why we present to you:



[font size="4"]Destination #16: Brazil [/font]




We come to the final stop on our 2022 World Tour everybody! And we’re in one of the world’s largest countries – Brazil! Brazil is home to the largest city in South America – Sao Paulo. It’s also home to the largest parade in the world – Carnivale. It’s capitol, Rio De Janeiro, is home to a world wonder – the Cristo Redentor statue. But you know what else Brazil is the home of? Well you might have heard about it, and we’ve been covering it, but Brazil was the home of a major presidential election this year. One that was, to use a technical term, a clusterfuck. On one hand, you have incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, who may media pundits around the world dubbed “the Trump Of The Tropics”. He lost to this guy – Lula De Silva. But needless to say Bolsonaro has taken some lessons from his American doppleganger. And like what happened in the United States, Brazil had a January 6th style riot on its’ hands, and the shit hit the fan!

Supporters of Brazil's outgoing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, tried to attack the headquarters of the federal police in Brasilia on Monday.

Tension escalated after police arrested a pro-Bolsonaro indigenous leader.

Mr Bolsonaro was defeated in last month's election by his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but some of his supporters refuse to recognise the president's defeat.

They set alight several vehicles and blocked a number of roads, police said.

Police said the protesters "attempted to invade" the federal police building, where José Acácio Serere Xavante was being held.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had ordered that the indigenous leader be detained for 10 days for "alleged anti-democratic acts".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63956778

Yeah it’s funny how the people who claim that they’re “saving” democracy are the ones who are working the most to actively destroy it! Brazil is also the home of the world’s rainforest, or at least what’s left of the rainforest. At least they finally have a president who’s going to stop the devastation of it for the time being. Ask me again in six years and I will tell you whether or not this post is accurate. But things are bad there. Like really bad. In fact things are so bad that the people of Brazil are calling it the “Road To Chaos”. Which would also make a bad ass progressive rock album name.

Aerial photos from reconnaissance mission reveal effort to smuggle excavators into Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory

The surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises.

Its objective: a clandestine 120km (75-mile) road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungles of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory in recent months, in an audacious attempt to smuggle excavators into those supposedly protected lands.

“I call it the Road to Chaos,” said Danicley de Aguiar, the Greenpeace environmentalist leading the reconnaissance mission over the immense Indigenous sanctuary near the Brazilian border with Venezuela.

Aguiar said such heavy machinery had never before been detected in the Yanomami territory – a Portugal-sized sweep of mountains, rivers and forests in the extreme north of Brazil’s Amazon.

“We believe there are at least four excavators in there – and that takes mining in Yanomami territory to the next level, to a colossal level of destruction,” the senior forest campaigner said, as his team prepared to take to the skies to confirm the road’s existence.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/12/brazil-goldminers-carve-road-to-chaos-amazon-reserve

Oh come on it’s not like Avatar. Though, like Avatar, in that rainforest, there are some very bad people doing some very bad things! But even with a new president, Brazil is still corrupt as shit. There’s a reason why we don’t mix big business monopolies with government. Because it could end very badly for all parties involved. And it’s a situation that is probably going to play out in Brazil. We saw how badly things like this fucked up countries like Russia and Iran. But we definitely do not want Brazil or any other country venturing down this path. What could go wrong?

Brazil's lower house of Congress voted late on Tuesday to make it easier for politicians to take roles at state-run firms, hammering shares of the state-run oil company, devastated by a political graft scandal over the past decade.

The proposed change to the State-Owned Enterprise Law, which now heads to the Senate, cuts the quarantine from three years to just a month for people with decision-making roles in political parties or campaigns to take positions at state-owned companies.

Shares in state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA) (Petrobras) closed 10% lower on Wednesday. State lender Banco do Brasil SA lost 2.5%.

Petrobras was at the center of a record-breaking political corruption scandal over the past decade, due in part to political appointments in its senior management under the Workers Party (PT), which returns to power next month.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-congress-votes-relax-rules-politicians-state-run-firms-rattling-2022-12-14/

Yes, good question! What could possibly go wrong? Well a whole lot, but we’re not going to talk about that now. We’ll save it for future editions. But you know, we don’t want you to think that this show is all about negativity! No sir, or ma’am, or they, or whatever you prefer to be called. This is why elections of all kinds and all positions matter! It looks like people are finally turning the tides of conservative madness and isolation, because that’s no way to run a life, or a country. Because Lula definitely looks like he wants to bridge the gaps that Bolsonaro tore apart! Yeah how about that?

Brazil's future foreign relations minister on Wednesday said President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has asked him to restore relations with Venezuela once he is inaugurated on Jan. 1.

Mauro Vieira said a diplomatic mission will be sent to Caracas at the beginning of January to organize the official Brazilian residence before an ambassador is appointed and approved by Congress.

Diplomatic relations were broken in 2020 by the current rightist government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro also signed a decree in 2019 banning the entry of the top officials of leftist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's administration into Brazil, including Maduro himself.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-12-14/brazil-president-elect-lula-to-restart-diplomatic-relations-with-venezuela

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

Tourism: A
Culture: B+
Political Spectrum: C
Liberal Appeal: B

Overall: B-

Change from 2017: It will be interesting to see where Brazil goes under Lula. Hopefully he can undo a lot of the damage sustained under Bolsonaro.

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

There is no next week, we’re at the end everybody! We will be heading out for a brief 6 city World Tour at the start of next season beginning with Costa Rica on Jan. 26th! See you next year!



[font size="4"]And Now This: [/font]
[font size="4"]The Black Keys[/font]



Come on people, let’s get this post season party started! My next guest has a great new album called “Dropout Boogie”! You can see them at the iHeartRadio festival Jan. 14th with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse! Playing their song “Wild Child”, give it up for the Black Keys!

Well folks this is it! This is the end of the season and the end of the year! I want to thank my staff, my crew, all of our host venues and most importantly, our fans! We had an awesome time this season and it was really great to get back out on the road again! We’ll see you back on January 26th , 2023 for our first new edition of 2023! Don’t worry – we will be bringing you plenty of content until then including Best Ofs, Best Of Conspiracy Corner, and scrapped entries! Also don’t forget we will be announcing the Top 10’s new social media home relatively soon! Until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

We’ll see you next year!

Credits

Host: Initech
The Black Keys Appear Courtesy Of: Nonesuch Records, Inc.
Top 10 Conservative Idiots Recorded In Front Of A Live Audience At: Constellation Room At Observatory OC, Santa Ana, CA
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Initech Productions: Yes, We Got The Memo

[SergeStorms]

1. Alright! Top 10 Idiots.

Bookmarked for later. I can't wait to tuck into this one. There were sooooooooooooo many idiots from which to choose.

[Top 10 Idiots]

2. Oh yeah, this was a truly banner year for idiocy. Like all around the world.

And of course we just barely missed the Trump NFT SNAFU... which I can't even...

[SergeStorms]

3. Yeah, too bad about the NFT "big announcement".

You could have spent 1 through 10 on that alone!

[Top 10 Idiots]

4. It will definitely be in "catch up on stuff we missed" when we come back!