Week of August 3

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Of course, looking like a bewildered child at an Organic Chemistry lecture wasn’t Donald Trump’s only intellectual low point this week. How could it be? The guy’s a low-point machine!
On Tuesday, he read an un-passioned speech about our national parks in which he pronounced Yosemite as “Yo-SEMITE,” the way nobody in the history of Am-e-REE-ka has ever pronounced it.
He’s an original idiot. I’ll give him that.
But then on Thursday, during a speech at a Whirlpool plant in Ohio – or what Trump refers to as “some dump that isn’t one of my golf courses” –  the president’s forked-tongue/tiny-puckered-mouth combination failed him yet again when he pronounced Thailand as “Thigh-land”, which, in fairness to the president, is what Whirlpool executives traveling there for “business” have called it for decades.

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On Monday, a very curious picture was posted on Instagram by Trump supporter and supposedly righteous person, Jerry Falwell, Jr. The photo, showing Falwell and a then unidentified young woman, is harder to explain than it is to look at, and it’s super hard to look at…It’s not in the top 10 but if there was an 11th commandment it would definitely be, “Thou shalt not expose thy front-butt.”
Falwell, who is the President and Chancellor of Liberty University – evangelical Christian safety school! – tried to explain the photo, but managed only to make it inexplicably worse:
“She’s pregnant, she couldn’t get her pants up”… bad start.
“And I had on a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in a long time so I couldn’t get mine zipped either”… the plot grossens.
“And so I just put my belly out like hers”… saddest… ending… ever.
Between this and Trump waving a bible around like a giant “#1” foam finger, suddenly The Crusades don’t feel like the worst thing to come out of Christianity.

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Turning now to some good news: school is back in session!
Now here’s the bad news: it’s a clusterfuck of epically viral proportions.
A 15-year-old student at North Paulding High in Dallas, Georgia, took this photo of a wildly overcrowded hallway filled with students not wearing masks or practicing social distancing… and that’s the line to the nurse’s office!
Hannah Watters was suspended from school for “posting student’s images to social media without their consent,” because apparently every student at North Paulding High has a profile pic of the back of their head.
The suspension was lifted, but as an alternate punishment, Watters was ordered to return to the school and serve as a hall monitor.
Several days later, six students and three staff members tested positive for COVID-19, but the school has remained open mainly because the students in the above photo were still waiting to get out.

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New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday announced that the state is seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association in a lawsuit that accuses the leadership of the nonprofit organization of personally separating the “non” from the “profit.”
According to the lawsuit, senior NRA leadership spent millions on personal trips, private jets, and “grossly excessive salaries” – all money that any self-respecting NRA member knows is intended exclusively for lining the pockets of republican politicians.

Among the defendants officially named in the case are The NRA itself, Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre, and… wait, what?!

Early 90’s pop trio “Wilson Phillips“?!

“Hold on,” indeed!
I mean, Phillips I could see. The hottest one is always the trouble maker.
But the Wilsons?! They would never do something as nefarious as pilfering the coffers of a controversial, politically charged non-profit organization.
Or would they?
No. The answer is no.
It turns out the lawsuit is charging Wilson “Woody” Phillips, the former Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of the NRA, and we’ll get to him in a minute. First let’s focus on Wayne LaPierre, who for the past 30 years has ruled the NRA with an iron fist and what seems to be a severe case of “evil resting face.”
The complaint lays out numerous charges of illegal expenditures by LaPierre including an all-expense paid African safari with his wife, where he undoubtedly shot things, eight high-end family trips in just three years to The Bahamas, where he presumably shot things, and memberships to several exclusive golf clubs where he claims to have shot an even par 72, but c’mon! He’s obviously a duffer! The guy probably has a bayonet attached to every one of his clubs!

It’s also been charged that on many of those Bahamas trips, LaPierre and his family were gifted the use of a 107-foot yacht owned by an NRA vendor, which, to me, is probably not as bad as it looks. I mean, who among us hasn’t borrowed a friend’s 107-foot yacht in the Bahamas? How the hell else are you supposed to get from Shroud Cay to Harbour Island?! On the back of DJ Khaled’s jet ski?!

Actually, not a bad option.

As for Wilson “Not Wilson Phillips” Phillips, he was the NRA’s treasurer and Chief Financial Officer for decades which means he either knew about all of LaPierre’s spending…
Normally there would be an “or” there, but this time there’s no “or.” He definitely knew. Hell, these guys probably lit each other’s Cuban cigars with 100-dollar-bills they lit by touching them to an overheated AK-47.
Phillips did some questionable spending of his own, including a “deal” he set up  worth more than a million dollars that somehow benefited his girlfriend, who, in fairness, was probably pretty pissed off at the time that she wasn’t on a 107-foot yacht in the Bahamas.
Phillips also set up a 1.8 million dollar contract for himself for “consulting services” to the incoming treasurer who has since confirmed that, quote, “Woody never consulted me,” adding, “If he did, my girlfriend would have a millions dollars and I’d be retired right now with a cushy fake contract.”

So while we still may have to rip their guns from their cold, dead hands, it looks as if the NRA is about to have its power and influence ripped from its empty, pilfered pockets.

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