Okay, so instead of Tweeting their thoughts, a former NRA employee – the Training Counselor Program Coordinator – wrote an Open Letter to The NRA Board of Directors on Facebook. It wouldn’t fit on Twitter and it just barely fits on Facebook.

Holy damn cow. Turns out that these guys are jackasses who run the NRA solely to make money for themselves.  I know. I’m nonplussed, too.

They are corrupt. Greed – it gets Republicans every time.

I cannot cut and paste this article. Sorry.

If you don’t have a Facebook account, get one. Make up a name and password or I’ll make up one for you.  Hell, use my name. I do not care.

UPDATED: Jaime took pity on the non-Facebook people and sent it to me in Word format.  You can download a PDF here.  Thanks, Jaime!

Ya know when business is slow over at the Dairy Queen when Alfredo spends all his time on the internet machine minding other people’s business.

Little does he know what when I’m desperate for news, I put a small sign out front that says, “Outta pickles. Closed for the remainder of the day.”  I’m not saying I did that this time, but I do know how to spell pickle.

So, we have news today.

First, Paul Manafort is a traveling man.  In less than a week, he has moved to a new prison that has a far superior commissary list for all his comfort needs.  He’s now at FCI Loretto.  Alfredo suspects Manafort will end up at Cumberland as soon as there’s an opening.  Maybe he’ll send you a postcard!

And then …

Ted Cruz, and I know this is going to shock you, has been goofing off with his campaign contributions.  The FCC has 21 pages of questions about his contributions.  I don’t know if that’s a record but it ought to be.

Oh yeah, and then there’s other questions about why some contributions weren’t reported as required right before the election. It makes it look like he’s hiding those contributions until after the election. I’m not saying that’s what Ted did. I’m just saying … oh hell, that’s exactly what he did.

That’s a lot of damn questions.  And this seems like a chronic problem with Ted.

Federal campaign regulators have three times in the last year sent notices to the Cruz campaign – more than any Senator running for re-election this year – for taking tens of thousands of dollars more than legally allowed from dozens of donors. And in another case, a Cruz donor had to file a Federal Election Commission complaint to get the campaign to stop automatically deducting monthly donations from her bank account.

And remember that time he had a scam going that turned your one-time contribution into a monthly one?  Oh, that was cute.

So, Ted decides he might better answer those questions being as how congressional Democrats have an itchy investigation finger right now.  So he does. Holy cow, that’s a whole mess of refunds, Teddy.

Ya gotta hand the boy this – it’s a real cute way to make it look like you’re bringing in more money than you are.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

Today, Christopher Wray, Trump’s own appointee as FBI Director, warned that the Russians were continuing their efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, even announcing that he’s transferred other agents from their normal duties to counter intelligence to stop the effort to meddle.  Wray said in a statement,

“We recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game. So we are very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020.”

Trump has stubbornly and continuously ignored the problem, fearing that acknowledging it would make it obvious that his election in 2016 was illegitimate.  He’s even cut budgets to stop the Russians from interfering.  If anyone has any doubts about Trump’s allegiance to the Russians, one only need listen to and read his words.  He’s not going to do a damn thing to stop the Russians, because he knows that their interference is the only way he has a prayer of winning again in 2020.

It’s hard for me to believe that I’m even typing these words that the Fucking President of the United States is conspiring with a hostile foreign power to cement his own victory to maintain power.  The damage that he has done to our nation (especially our judiciary) will take decades to repair, if we even can.  In the meantime, I have a bottle of champagne set aside that we’re going to crack open when we see this treasonous son of a bitch walked out of the White House, hopefully in handcuffs.

Okay, today’s weekend kickoff story comes to us from Brazil.

In this country, drug dealers often have dogs as a deterrent to police raids. Not in Brazil. A parrot almost foiled a police raid on some drug dealers.

When the green-and-white bird spotted officers Tuesday at its owners’ Teresina home, the parrot squawked “Mama, Police!” in Portuguese, according to the local outlet Oliberal.com.

Despite the bird’s efforts to tip off the owners, a man and woman were arrested, the outlet reports. Drugs, including crack and marijuana, were also found at the property as well as large amounts of money.

Police have reason to believe the parrot was trained to report police in the area. The bird, who reportedly has no name, hasn’t been saying much since he was taken into custody. He’s been transferred to a zoo since there’s no law about singing like a canary in Brazil.

Thanks to Jaime for the heads up.

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Okay, this will not shock you in any fashion.

The clean-cut, bright, up-and-coming young man who was co-founder of the national organization Students for Trump is in trouble.  John Lambert was on national teevee several times urging students to vote for Trump.

The Southern District of New York just charged him with fraud.

John Lambert, 23, was arrested last week and charged by Southern District of New York prosecutors with wire fraud for having invented a lawyer persona named “Eric Pope” that he used to solicit legal work online.

Problem is – Lambert is not a lawyer.

How the hell did he think he could get away with this? When people give you money to be their lawyer, they expect you to do something – file papers, go talk to the prosecutor, get you a will, something.

Nor will it suprise you that he attended a private Christian college in North Carolina.

Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.