WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The National Rifle Association’s decision to ban guns during Mike Pence’s speech at its annual meeting in Dallas this week “leaves him totally vulnerable to a bear attack,” the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, warned on Monday.

Speaking to reporters at the Education Department, DeVos said that she was “deeply concerned” that the N.R.A. was underestimating the danger posed to Pence by “the savagery of one rogue bear.” “All it would take is one angry bear to ruin what otherwise promises to be a really nice gun event,” she said.

She added that, after contacting the N.R.A. leadership, she was alarmed to discover that there would be no bear detectors at the entrance to the Dallas venue. “A bear can simply waltz in there,” she said, shaking her head. “This is madness.”

DeVos urged the gun organization to rethink its plan and insure that every member of the audience for Pence’s speech is fully armed. “If there are no guns, that is sending a very dangerous message to bears,” she said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/nra-gun-ban-during-pences-speech-leaves-him-vulnerable-to-bear-attack-devos-warns

LONDON—Saying the moniker was the perfect way to honor the caliph of the Islamic State, Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, announced Friday that the name of their third child was Louis Arthur al-Baghdadi.

“We’ve always loved the name and felt that this was a beautiful way to pay tribute to the many contributions of the notable jihadist,” said Middleton, who noted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s numerous achievements as the leader of the militant terrorist organization, confounding the expectations of British subjects, many of whom believed the couple would choose a more conventional aristocratic name such as Albert, James, or Alexander.

“Al-Baghdadi has played a vital role in shaping Britain’s foreign policy over the past decade, and it keeps with the royal tradition of honoring those who have continued to drive change in the world. Furthermore, something about it felt like a perfect fit for our son—it rolls right off the tongue.”

At press time, several reports emerged that Queen Elizabeth II was disappointed by the choice, as she favored al-Zawahiri instead.

https://www.theonion.com/duke-duchess-of-cambridge-announce-name-of-third-child-1825606672

MOSCOW—Confessing that her relationship with the Putin government was closer than previously disclosed, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya admitted Friday to repeated and frequent communication with the Kremlin concerning the Trump campaign’s “unprecedented, colossal, and towering” ineptitude.

“On numerous occasions, I notified the [Russian federal security service] FSB on matters pertaining to the Trump campaign’s breathtaking incompetence,” said Veselnitskaya, divulging that she even spoke with Putin himself, who completely agreed with her assessment of Donald Trump Jr. as an amateurish dolt capable of bungling even the most rudimentary tasks.

“Moreover, I sent thousands of files relating to incidents, occasions, and events during which the Trump campaign demonstrated that its staff consisted of clueless dipshits totally oblivious to the treason they consistently committed against the United States at almost every given opportunity. I would not characterize the FSB’s reaction as one of surprise.”

Veselnitskaya confirmed that she eventually broke ties with the Trump campaign, citing concerns that the bumbling jackasses in charge would fuck up everything Russia was working towards, choosing instead to concentrate her efforts on “the ruthless Machiavellian savants” of the National Rifle Association.

https://politics.theonion.com/russian-lawyer-admits-to-repeatedly-informing-kremlin-o-1825612874

It's the Onion, folks. Don't blow a gasket.

Anyone else watch this yet? It's a pretty eye-opening documentary, and is highly recommended viewing for those with Showtime.

It's a true account about how a Miami-based Russian strip club owner, a high-end marina owner, and a Cuban drug dealer managed to supply the Cali cartel with extraordinary material smuggled out of the Soviet Union after its collapse.

It's disturbing to think what stuff might have been sold internationally to criminal elements and still be available out there to the highest bidder.

James Comey, the former director of the FBI fired by President Donald Trump, said the GOP makes him “embarrassed and ashamed” and accused Republicans of entering a “fool’s bargain” because they are trading their values for policy wins with the current administration.

Trump fired Comey from the FBI in May 2017, accusing him of mishandling the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. But Comey says he was fired to disrupt the investigation he was leading into suspicions of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election.

Since his firing, Comey and Trump have clashed publicly and the ex-FBI director has released a tell-all book about his relationship with the president, who he has accused of acting like a mafia boss and being “morally unfit” to lead the country.

“I've been embarrassed and ashamed by the way the Republican party has abandoned one of the two things that led me to consider myself a Republican in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president,” Comey said on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° on Wednesday night.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/james-comey-apos-m-apos-073241981.html

He should also be embarrassed and ashamed for his pre-election actions to deliberately subvert Hillary's election chances.

Over the course of three years, archaeologists in Peru uncovered the graves of 140 children, all killed by a swift cut to their chest, presumably to rip out their hearts. The massive gravesite is shedding light on the mysterious ancient Chimú Empire, and raises question on what could have driven these people to do such a heinous act.

The accidental discovery of child skeletons on a site formerly known as Huanchaquito-Las Llamas was first made in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2014 that archaeologists were able to gain sufficient funding in order to conduct a proper excavation. Now, several years and many hours of manual digging later, the excavation team uncovered the remains of 140 children and 200 young llamas. Although the study on the findings has not yet been published, the researchers involved explained their work in a National Geographic exclusive published on Thursday.

The children are reported to have all been between five and 14 at the time of death, although the majority of the children were between eight and 12 at the time of their alleged sacrifice. The llamas were all less than 18 months old at their time of death.

According to National Geographic, the site is evidence of the single largest child sacrifice event in the Americas, and could possibly be the largest event of this kind in world history.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/remains-140-children-had-hearts-170136714.html

Pretty grim finding.

LOS ANGELES—Expressing concern over the fallout from several controversial tweets praising the president, Kanye West’s publicist was reportedly worried Thursday that the rapper’s support of Donald Trump would damage his carefully crafted public image as a manic, self-absorbed lunatic.

“Christ, we’ve worked so hard to maintain this image of Kanye as an incredibly vain, impulsive madman, and now he’s gone and ruined it all,” said stressed-out publicist Tracy Nguyen Romulus, explaining that she was in the middle of a massive damage control campaign to counter the effects that West’s statements had on fans who had always seen the hip-hop star as paranoid, egotistical, and delusional.

“I’m concerned that when people think of Kanye now, they’ll associate him with these tweets, and not as being a batshit narcissist who will say absolutely anything for attention. Not to mention Kanye went and linked himself to our deeply unpopular president, destroying the illusion that he’s really just a deranged egomaniac absolutely obsessed with fame and power, and someone who already voiced support for Trump in the past. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

The publicist was also worried that a number of Kanye’s tweets about thought police and his inability to be managed would confuse and even alienate a public who knew the rapper to be straightforward, clear, and modest.

https://entertainment.theonion.com/publicist-worried-kanye-west-s-support-of-trump-will-da-1825566028

It was a phone call between two of the world’s most powerful men, a conversation of such consequence that even the portrait of Andrew Jackson leaned in to listen, or so it seemed inside the Oval Office on that momentous Saturday afternoon.

When Donald Trump’s first presidential discussion with Russian leader Vladimir Putin took place on Jan. 28, 2017 only a select few of his most-trusted men stood before him at the historic Resolute desk, among them being Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and advisor so influential it was not deemed necessary he wear a tie during high-level meetings impacting global affairs.

At roughly the same time that day, in striking contrast to the Trump-Putin phone call Bannon was witnessing, a different conversation was occurring in the semi-circular driveway of a home on Casey Key Road, a narrow lane of hidden paradise in south Sarasota County that meanders between opulent tropical mansions and transitory views of the turquoise-tinted Gulf.

It was there that a 53-year-old man in cargo shorts was explaining to a Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy that he was not involved in the theft of two antique clay pots from his neighbor, never mind the complainant’s statement in a report that the man’s house “has some shady individuals inside and may have something to do with the theft.”

http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180424/behind-casey-key-address-steve-bannon-used-questionable-associate

You are known by the company you keep.

Nothing but a bunch of liars, crooks, and grifters controlling the levers of government and influencing the direction of domestic and foreign policy. How low this country has fallen.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Americans who were watching television on Wednesday morning witnessed the startling spectacle of an English-speaking President, viewers have confirmed.

All of the major cable news networks interrupted their regularly scheduled programs to cover the phenomenon, as a man who was identified as “President” spoke in complete, grammatically correct English sentences with no visible sign of strain or discomfort.

Just minutes into the telecast, thousands of viewers called the networks to inquire if they were witnessing a hoax. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Carol Foyler, a viewer in Akron, Ohio, said. “It had to be special effects or something.”

While the spectacle might have appeared jarring to many, cable news insiders reported that the networks had in fact aired several hundred speeches by an English-speaking President between the years 2009 and 2017.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/americans-startled-by-spectacle-of-president-who-can-speak-english

David Chase, the creator of "The Sopranos," the long-running HBO series about the New Jersey mob, once explained to me the uncanny brilliance of the show.

"Everything that everybody says is untrue. Complete falsehoods, self-justifications, rationalizations, outright lies, fantasies and miscommunication," he said. "There's always sort of a joke going on, which is that these people aren't communicating at all."

With that guiding philosophy, Chase might have scripted our current presidential administration. And not just because he'd get the chronic fibbing right — but because he would, once again, be writing about a bumbling, brutal, bargain-basement mob.

In a widely circulated excerpt from "A Higher Loyalty," former FBI director James B. Comey's meditation on leadership — it really is a book about leadership, not merely an effort to extenuate his mistakes in the 2016 election — the mob is represented as both metaphor and model for the Trump syndicate.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-comey-trump-mob-20180421-story.html