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Oregon Militiamen Receive Fitting Nickname: 'YallQaeda'

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With the domestic terrorism situation that’s currently under way in Oregon being almost entirely ignored by local and federal law enforcement, the people have taken to the social media airwaves to call a spade a spade.

While #OregonUnderAttack was trending for most of the day on Sunday, another tag soon followed as a way to combat the reluctance to call a bunch of white men waving around guns at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge terrorists: #YallQaeda. The tag is dumb, yes, but so are these people.

Meanwhile, the standoff, which was sparked by the arson conviction of two men over cattle grazing rights, continues. Earlier this weekend, the men were joined by the sons of noted anti-federalist and racist Cliven Bundy, and told media that they would be willing to kill or be killed if it comes to that.

The Oregonian reports that the police, however have been keeping a low profile:

During Saturday’s rally, not a police officer was visible. And so far law enforcement agencies have not approached the refuge or blocked access to the territory.

Maybe, in the year 2016, we’re all just allowed to wave rifles in the air and take over federal buildings whenever we want to! Maybe this has nothing to do with the gaping disparity between the way black and white people with guns (or without guns) are treated in the U.S. On second thought, maybe not.


Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.


Bills Fan Sets Himself On Fire

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Bills Fan Sets Himself On Fire

All good things must come to an end, by which I mean: the Buffalo Bills are playing their last home game of the season today. It was a hell of a run, featuring barfing, furniture wrestling, butts, and doin’ it in the parking lot. Today, we bring you a tale of two tables.

First, our young enterprising friend here set himself on fire leaping through a burning table. His compatriots then put him out with beers only after he returned to the scene of the crime.

In another part of the parking lot, a fan caught a free sled ride on a fallen table.

Fantastic. We had a good run, Bills fans. As always, send more noteworthy videos and/or photos to us at tips@deadspin.com.

Screenshot via; h/t Josh & Mike.

Stop Tweeting 

Like Everyone Else, Bernie Sanders Isn't Interested in Bill Clinton's Sex Life 

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Like Everyone Else, Bernie Sanders Isn't Interested in Bill Clinton's Sex Life 

In an interview this morning with CNN’s Dana Bash, Bernie Sanders took the highest and grumpiest road he could find when asked about Bill Clinton’s sex life.

Bash asked Sanders whether or not former President Clinton’s “sexual history” should be fair game as Donald Trump has suddenly insisted that it is. Sanders responded that he disagreed with Trump on many issues, from global warming to raising the minimum wage, before adding, “Maybe Trump should worry about those issues rather than Bill Clinton’s sex life.”

Bash, determined to get an answer about important issues facing the nation (i.e. Bill Clinton’s sex life), responded, “Only Bernie Sanders can segue from climate change to Bill Clinton’s sex life. That was impressive. But what is the answer?” Sanders replied, “I think we have more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton’s sex life.”

The line of questioning was in response to Trump’s recent turn towards promoting pay equity and gender equality, a turn that he took after being accused of misogyny. The Republican candidate has continued to beat the drum of Hillary Clinton’s sexism, what he calls “playing the woman card,” part and parcel of which is her marriage to Bill. In a Sunday morning interview with Meet the Press, Trump said:

“It hasn’t been a very pretty picture for her or for Bill. Because I’m the only one that’s willing to talk about his problems. I mean, what he did and what he has gone through I think is frankly terrible, especially if she wants to play the woman card.”

And the presidential primaries continue apace. Only 309 days until our shared national misery is over.

Image via AP.

Mexican Mayor Shot to Death Less Than One Day After Taking Office

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Mexican Mayor Shot to Death Less Than One Day After Taking Office

Just a day after assuming her new position, Mayor Gisela Mota of the city of Temixco in Morelos, Mexico, was shot and killed at her house on Saturday.

According to The New York Times, two suspects were killed in the shooting, while three others were detained by police. The governor of the state of Morelos, Graco Ramirez, said that the shooting was connected to organized crime, adding that there “would be no impunity” in the case of her death.

Mexican Mayor Shot to Death Less Than One Day After Taking Office

The Democratic Revolution Party, to which Mota belonged, released a statement calling the mayor “a strong and brave woman who on taking office as mayor, declared that her fight against crime would be frontal and direct.”

[Images via AP]


Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

Two-Year-Old Boy Is the First Known Victim of the Refugee Crisis in 2016

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Two-Year-Old Boy Is the First Known Victim of the Refugee Crisis in 2016

According to a report from the charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), a two-year-old boy has sadly become the first known victim of the refugee crisis in the new year. Buzzfeed reports that the toddler—whose name and national origin are currently unknown—was on board a small dinghy with his family and more than 30 other refugees.

The dinghy crashed on the rocks of the Agathonisi, a relatively remote island in the Aegean, on Saturday. MOAS charity worked to pull survivors from the wreckage after local fishermen alerted the Greek coastguard.

Via Buzzfeed:

MOAS said 11 people were injured upon the sharp island rocks among the “wet, bleeding refugees,” while a three-month-old boy was suffering from hypothermia.

The AFP news agency said the toddler who died was two, and that his mother was among those who survived. AFP said 39 people survived the dinghy capsizing while MOAS said 35 people had been rescued.

MOAS founder, Christopher Catrambone said: “Today we came face to face with one of the youngest victims of this ongoing refugee crisis. It is a tragic reminder of the thousands of people who have died trying to reach safety in miserable conditions.”

Despite the danger, Syrian refugees, in particular, continue to make the five-hour crossing across the ocean and into Greece. The New York Times estimates that more than 200,000 people have been killed in the country’s four-and-a-half year civil war.

Migrants on a dinghy arrive at the southeastern island of Kos, Greece, after crossing from Turkey, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015. Image via AP.

Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy With Fire Bombs After Execution of Nonviolent Cleric

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Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy With Fire Bombs After Execution of Nonviolent Cleric

In the wake of the execution of a popular Shiite cleric, angry protesters in Iran set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday night. Fire bombs were thrown, furniture was smashed, and glass was broken, according to The New York Times.

The blaze came after the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, was killed along with 46 other prisoners in a single day in Saudi Arabia, all of whom were accused of terrorism by the government. Shiite politicians, clerics in Iraq and humanitarian organizations condemned the cleric’s execution, saying that al-Nimr had preached nonviolence and never carried weapons. Al-Nimr had gained notoriety for criticizing the powerful Saudi monarchy.

Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy With Fire Bombs After Execution of Nonviolent Cleric

In Tehran, crowds were reportedly heard shouting “Death to the Al Saud family,” the monarchy that rules Saudi Arabia. Some 40 people have been arrested so far, according to the Associated Press. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the death of Al-Nimr, but also called the attack on the embassy “unjustifiable.”

Protesters Ransack Saudi Embassy With Fire Bombs After Execution of Nonviolent Cleric

Protesters have also been gathering in Mashhad, Beirut, and in Bahrain in the wake of al-Nimr’s death.


Contact the author at melissa.cronin@gawker.com.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 344: Myspace Rumors

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 344: Myspace Rumors

Former Laguna Beach Season 2 star Kristin Cavallari now posts original (and not-so-original) content on a variety of online platforms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and of course, the Official Kristin Cavallari App for iPhone and Android. But, as the essential blog Pop Culture Died In 2009 pointed out yesterday, she wasn’t always so Internet-savvy:

According to an Oh No They Didn’t! report from the time, Kristin posted this stunning photo on a friend’s Myspace account in 2007. Whoever started the vicious rumor that prompted this statement remains anonymous to this day.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]


Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

A popular ab roller, a cheap 4K TV, and $5 Scott Pilgrim volumes highlight today’s best deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.

Editor’s note: Some of you will be thrilled, and others will be outraged to learn that we’re going to start merging media deals and gaming deals back into this main post. We’ll still highlight all of the best deals at the top, and on our Kinja Deals homepage. Happy New Year!

More Deals

Today’s Best App Deals

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Today’s Best Apparel Deals

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Top Deals


Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

$7 Hanes sweatpants? $7 Hanes sweatpants! [$7 Hanes Sweatpants, $7]

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

If you didn’t upgrade your TV over Black Friday, there are still some great deals to be had on well-reviewed 4K sets.

Samsung Curved 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2015 Model) ($998) | Amazon

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The Nintendo 2DS is your economy class ticket to the 3DS’s deep game library, and you can score a refurb on eBay today for just $60, direct from Nintendo’s warehouse. [Refurb Nintendo 2DS, $60]

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We know you guys like Velcro cable ties, but if you’re interested in a different option for keeping your wires organized, these neoprene zip-up sleeves seem like a great deal. [5-Pack Sumsonic 20” Neoprene Cable Management Sleeves, $12 with code J9AR6PMM]

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

It’s highly likely that six bottles of Suave men’s shampoo could last you through to 2017, so stock up for $9 while you can. [6-Pack Suave Men’s Shampoo, $9 after 20% coupon]

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Note: You’ll need to clip the 20% off coupon and use Amazon Subscribe & Save to get the deal. After your first delivery, you can always cancel the subscription if you don’t want any more.


Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

Here’s your chance to score 20 critically-acclaimed Fox Searchlight Blu-rays in one $70 package. There’s no filler in here either; the films were all popular and well-received by critics. Highlights include:

  • (500) Days of Summer
  • Black Swan
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We’ve posted this before at $100, so $70 really is a steal. Unfortunately, it’s currently backordered, so don’t start making popcorn just yet. [Fox Searchlight Pictures 20th Anniversary Collection (21 Discs), $70]

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

If your new year’s resolutions included strengthening your core, Amazon’s here to help with all-time low prices on two pieces of ab workout equipment.

The $25 Perfect Fitness Ab Carver Pro has a stellar 4.5 star review average from over 2,600 customers, and unlike some other rollers, actually adds resistance as you roll it further away.

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If you like to do crunches, Perfect Fitness’s Ab Arch is also on sale today. The Arch supports your back and encourages better form, and today’s $20 price is $10 off its MSRP.

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Just remember that these are both part of a Gold Box deal, meaning these prices are only available today, or until swoled out. [Perfect Fitness Gold Box]


Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

Shark might be best known for its steam mops, but its Navigator vacuum cleaner has a 4.5 star review average from over 3,000 customers, and Amazon will sell you one for $100 today, an all-time low price. [Shark Navigator Vacuum, $100]

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

The LG Watch Urbane is absolutely one of the best looking Android Wear watches on the market, and you can get your own for $200 today on eBay. That’s $150 less than its original selling price, and a match for the best deal we’ve seen. If you’re on the fence, be sure to check out Gizmodo’s impressions. [LG Watch Urbane, $200]

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Normally, we’re big proponents of cheap, monochrome laser printers (like this one!). But if you really need to print in color, this Xerox Phaser is a fantastic deal. [Xerox Phaser 6022/NI Wireless Color Laser Photo Printer, $135]

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There are two three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and never having enough power outlets. We can’t help you with the first two, but this affordable surge protector can alleviate the third. It even includes USB charging ports for your mobile devices. [ORICO Desktop 6 Outlets Surge Protector with USB Charging Ports Black/White, $18 with code 8ZXTMLFF]

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

If you can’t find the time to go to the gym every day, this under-desk elliptical lets you squeeze in some light exercise while you fill out your TPS reports. This sells for nearly $50 more on Amazon, where it enjoys a 4.4 star review average. [Under Desk Elliptical by FitDesk, $105]

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This cheaper alternative doesn’t include a foot massager or a distance tracker for your desk, but if you want to save about $20, it’s also a good option.

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Today's Best Deals: Ab Workouts, 4K TVs, Scott Pilgrim Collections, and More

Need a little push to get off the couch and fulfill your new year’s resolutions? The Fitbit Charge HR is the best fitness tracker for most people, and you can get one for just $110 today, which is a match for the best deal we’ve seen on the heart rate-tracking model. [Fitbit Charge HR, $110]

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Don’t care about tracking your heart rate? The standard Charge is also marked down to $90.

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For all those that bow before the altar of Uniqlo’s pantone-inspired creations, you’re in luck: Just about everything is on sale. Running the gamut from cashmere coats to selvedge denim, the sale is perfectly primed for winter hibernation.

Uniqlo’s sweaters, a thing of beauty, are made with 100% merino wool and don’t pill in the wash (truly!). You can find them on sale for both men and women, while denim options are also deeply discounted. And, here’s the best part: If you spend $150, Uniqlo will shave off $20 with the code YOUWIN. We’ve assembled a few of our picks over in this post, but you can just head over to Uniqlo and find your own favorites. [Uniqlo Sale]

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Mpow’s ultra-cheap Swift Bluetooth headphones dominated 2015, and their sequels are on sale and ready to ship for 2016.

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If you shop at GameStop, this gift card deal is basically $5 for free. [$25 GameStop Gift Card + $5 Code, $25]

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Grab a friend and rekindle your Guitar Hero glory days for just $100 on PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U. This deal was available during Black Friday, but if you missed out, or just didn’t get it under the tree like you were hoping, here’s another chance. [Guitar Hero Live 2-Pack Bundle, $100]

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If you’ve never read Scott Pilgrim, you can fix that today for just $5 per (digital) book. The entire series only spans six volumes, and I recommend buying all of them while they’re this cheap. [Scott Pilgrim Kindle/Comixology Books, $5 each]

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If your home movies give you motion sickness, this well-reviewed StayblCam stabilizer is designed specifically for action cams and smartphones, and the results (seen above) speak for themselves. [StayblCam Smartphone Video Stabilizer for Smartphones and Action Cams, $64]

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We’ve seen a handful of sub-$20 Bluetooth speakers, but not many of them can join you in the shower. The Omaker M4 can do just that thanks to its IP54-rated splash resistance, and still deliver up to 12 hours of playtime on a single charge. That’s perfect if you like to sing in the shower, or just need to catch up on your podcast queue. [Omaker M4 Water Resistant Portable Bluetooth 4.0 Speaker, $19 with code M4OMAEKR]

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While it’s obviously no substitute for getting your knives professionally sharpened, this tiny KitchenIQ sharpener can help them maintain their edge for longer. I use this exact model on my beloved Victorinox Fibrox, and I really like it. [KitchenIQ Edge Grip 2 Stage Knife Sharpener, $6]

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Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker

Bratton and Kelly’s Ridiculous NYPD Feud Is All About Ego

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Bratton and Kelly’s Ridiculous NYPD Feud Is All About Ego

The ultimate joke of Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton’s blustery war over the manipulation of crime statistics is that both men have done it. That isn’t speculation: the NYPD under Kelly and the LAPD under Bratton were both shown, through rigorous reporting, to have massaged stats with the presumable intent of making their cities look safer. But if the fight isn’t really about the stats, what could it possibly be about?

On New Year’s Day, the New York Times published a lengthy examination of the rivalry between NYPD commissioner Bratton and former NYPD commissioner Kelly. As it turns out, the bad blood goes back to far earlier than last month, when Kelly publicly accused Bratton of stats manipulation and Bratton told him to “be a big man” in response.

In understanding why the men have been taking shots at each other, it’s helpful to remember their intertwined histories. When Kelly first took the helm of the NYPD in 1992, Bratton was on the short list of candidates for the job and missed out. When Bratton first became commissioner in ’94, Kelly was his direct predecessor. Later, Kelly was commissioner under Bloomberg from 2002 to 2013, and again Bratton is his successor.

With each changing of the guard, the men took swipes at each other. In ’94, Kelly told reporters that any drop in crime they saw should be credited to the groundwork his department laid for Bratton’s; in 2014, Bratton called out his predecessor for leaving him an NYPD that had “awful morale.” When Bratton visited New York as commissioner of the LAPD, Kelly purposefully avoided contact with him, the Times’ sources say. For two decades, they have circled the same job, and each thinks he can do it better than the other.

Before stats came to the fore of their feud, Kelly and Bratton most often traded criticism about stop-and-frisk, and their approaches to that tactic mark the most obvious difference in their respective policing styles. During Kelly’s second term, the department began stopping New Yorkers with unprecedented frequency, and the ensuing backlash greatly influenced the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who appointed Bratton. The latter commissioner all but ended the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk upon assuming the office, instead focusing on so-called “broken windows” policing, a theory which holds that aggressively arresting people for minor crimes will lead to a decline in major crimes.

But even those barbs about a critical policy difference don’t hold up to examination. From the Times:

Mr. Bratton was also critical of what he saw as overuse of the stop-and-frisk tactic under Mr. Kelly, rankling the former commissioner’s supporters. “The rivalry was Bratton’s rivalry,” said Valerie Salembier, a former head of the nonprofit New York City Police Foundation and an admirer of Mr. Kelly. “I felt that when somebody comes into a new job, and they have to make the person who came before them look bad, that comes from a profound insecurity.”

For his part, Mr. Kelly has been saying that constraints placed on stop and frisk are the cause of an uptick in murders. He pointed out that Mr. Bratton made heavy use of the tool when he ran the Los Angeles police force.

“He had a higher stop rate in Los Angeles than we had here,” Mr. Kelly said.

Kelly and Salembier are almost certainly right to some degree: despite his recent disavowal, Bratton was such a vigorous stop-and-frisk supporter during his first term that he’s often cited as the architect of the practice in NYC.

Next time Bratton or Kelly takes a shot at his counterpart in the press, remember that the two commissioners really are much more alike than they are different. Each is jealous and wary of the other. In stop-and-frisk and broken windows, each favors an approach to policing that largely targets people of color and the poor. And when push comes to shove, neither is afraid to muck with the statistics.

Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Which Republican Candidate Hates Obama's Gun-Control Effort the Most?

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Which Republican Candidate Hates Obama's Gun-Control Effort the Most?

President Obama is currently starting one last effort for gun control, in his final year in office. Sometime in the next two weeks, he is expected announce an executive order to require more small gun sellers to do background checks, and he plans to pitch that idea and other gun-control measures to the American public at a CNN-televised town hall Thursday.

None of this is sitting well with our Republican candidates for president—almost all of them decried Obama’s proposed actions this weekend, with varying degrees of cogency.

Leading candidate Donald Trump, as is his custom, said on CNN this morning the thing that will scare the Republican base the most: “Pretty soon, you won’t be able to get guns. I mean, it’s another step in the way of not getting guns.”

Sen. Marco Rubio and Bush son Jeb Bush each performed a slightly more restrained version of Trump’s response. Rubio told New Hampshire supporters yesterday, “All these executive orders [Obama’s] gonna come out with tomorrow that are going to undermine our Second Amendment rights—on my first day in office, they’re gone.” Bush told Fox News, “[Obama’s] first impulse always is to take rights away from law-abiding citizens, and it’s wrong.”

Carly Fiorina offered CNN a word salad that managed to include global warming and ISIS. “It is delusional, dangerous, not to mention unconstitutional, for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to continue talking about climate change and gun control in the wake of a Paris terrorist attack, in the wake of a San Bernardino terrorist attack, instead of how we can defeat ISIS,” she said.

Sen. Ted Cruz is simply offering voters a chance to win a shotgun engraved with his logo.

Finally, Gov. Chris Christie—who is currently polling around 3 percent—offered the most delusional response of all. “Now his president wants to act as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator,” he told Fox News yesterday. “...This is going to be another illegal executive action, which I’m sure will be rejected by the courts and when I become President will be stricken from executive action by executive action I’ll take.”

(Chris Christie is not going to become president.)


Photo via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

This Stupid Lawsuit Has Nothing To Do With Cliven Bundy

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This Stupid Lawsuit Has Nothing To Do With Cliven Bundy

Racist territorialist Cliven Bundy has done crazy shit, but here is one crazy thing, contrary to a story broken today by Buzzfeed, that he hasn’t done: filed a federal lawsuit claiming, among other things, that Barack Obama threatened Donald Trump.

Buzzfeed somehow discovered a lawsuit filed in federal court in Nevada in 2014 that contains a whole bunch of obviously invented allegations, such as: Obama blackmailed Trump, Obama has ties to Hezbollah, Obama sold “Muslim oils” as a street vendor in disguise, Bill Clinton wore a burqa, Obama fucked his dogs in the White House, etc.

An immediate thing to wonder when processing this information is why Cliven Bundy would file a lawsuit in his home state via the longform handwriting of a prisoner in Pennsylvania. Indeed, the lawsuit was not filed by Bundy. It was instead filed by an inmate in Pennsylvania named David Rothrock, with Bundy’s name attached. Phillip Bump of the Washington Post, an immediate skeptic of the story, noted on Twitter that Bundy’s signature seemed obviously forged:

Others responded to that tweet noting that Rothrock had filed a similarly nonsensical lawsuit against several athletes also in 2014, which included Minnesota Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, whose “P.O. box” in that suit was the same as the one listed for Bundy.

This Stupid Lawsuit Has Nothing To Do With Cliven Bundy

Buzzfeed quickly changed the wording of their headline from “Cliven Bundy Claims Obama Threatened Donald Trump In Bizarre Hand-Written Lawsuit” (as seen above) to “Bizarre Lawsuit Claims Cliven Bundy Accused Obama Of Threatening Donald Trump,” which was at least marginally closer to the truth than the original headline. It now reads: “Bizarre Lawsuit Claims Without Evidence That Cliven Bundy Accused Obama Of Threatening Donald Trump.”

Anyway, the more you know. Or don’t.

[image via Getty]


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Second Amendment Softie Ted Cruz Flip-Flops on Government Tyranny

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Second Amendment Softie Ted Cruz Flip-Flops on Government Tyranny

Nine months ago, Ted Cruz was railing in support of the Second Amendment as the “the ultimate check against governmental tyranny—for the protection of liberty.” Now, as a group of armed men occupies a federal building in Oregon, Cruz says no one should use force to protest the government. What gives, Ted?

If you’re the sort who aggressively supports the Oath Keepers or believes that left-wing martial law is imminent in this country, it’s not unlikely that Cruz is your guy in the upcoming presidential election. In April, he sent a fundraising email to supporters touting his record of fighting for gun rights “tooth and nail.”

The email read in part (emphasis in original):

The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t just for protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice.

It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny—for the protection of liberty.

When elected President—I will ensure your Constitutional right to keep and bear arms is NOT INFRINGED.

While every Republican candidate offers support for the 2nd Amendment, only the Texas senator had the gall to explicitly connect it to armed insurrection against the government, as right-wing militias of the sort in Oregon often do.

Today, Cruz urged the Oregon protesters to “stand down peaceably,” telling reporters “we don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others.” That statement is objectively correct, of course, and everyone should hope for a peaceable resolution to the conflict. But Cruz shouldn’t be let off the hook for his earlier support of exactly this sort of armed protest.

Without Ted Cruz, who will stand for the revolutionaries now?


Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

The Many Exciting Ways 2016 Could Be Worse Than 2015

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The Many Exciting Ways 2016 Could Be Worse Than 2015

Last year (2015) was by most estimations a “bad year”—when there wasn’t an active shooter on the loose, there was a demagogue riling up xenophobes, a killer cop avoiding indictment, or a new season of True Detective. It was bad. But there’s every reason to believe 2016 will also be bad—if not even worse.

It’s safe to assume that almost everything that made 2015 so bad will persist in 2016, given that we didn’t really “solve” or “address” anything last year. So, with that as a baseline, consider the following dread-boosting factors:

Al Qaeda Is Coming Back

One problem with attacking an abstract thing (Jihadism) with a physical thing (Hellfire missiles) is that it doesn’t really solve the problem, but just sort of shifts around the components. With all the attention (and ordnance) focused on violent Islamists inside a self-declared Caliphate, the New York Times reports that our old enemies from al-Qaeda (remember that??) are resurgent:

Even as the Obama administration scrambles to confront the Islamic State and a resurgent Taliban, an old enemy seems to be reappearing in Afghanistan: Qaeda training camps are sprouting up there, forcing the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies to assess whether they could again become a breeding ground for attacks on the United States.

Most of the handful of camps are not as big as those that Osama bin Laden built before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But had they re-emerged several years ago, they would have rocketed to the top of potential threats presented to President Obama in his daily intelligence briefing. Now, they are just one of many — and perhaps, American officials say, not even the most urgent on the Pentagon’s list in Afghanistan.

You can assume that, should al-Qaeda reemerge as a terrorist power in the region, its priority will still be the destruction of the United States and Decadent Western Culture, as it was previously. They’ll also be extra pissy because of all the buzz ISIS has been getting lately—what’s worse than a terrorist organization with something to prove and a chip on its shoulder?

There’s a Presidential Election

If you thought the rhetoric of hate and fear was bad last year, just imagine how much worse it’s going to get as we approach November and the GOP field becomes increasingly desperate for attention and consideration in the primaries. We’ve barely even started to see Ted Cruz pander to anyone—think about that! The election’s eight months away! No one truly has their back against the wall yet, meaning the national surplus of political ugliness could bulge to unprecedented levels well before Election Day.

Most of all, expect Donald Trump to even more regularly turn the dial on his cynical riling-up of angry white voters eager for something to be riled up about. This could manifest itself in any variety of angry white pastimes, from casual anti-Arab racism to the armed takeover of government buildings.

There Are More Loose Guns than Ever in America

It’s become a fucked up national truism that after every shooting in the news—every gun-based massacre, each new data point on the chart of America’s inadequate gun laws—people go out and buy more guns. Whether it’s because they read on Facebook that Obama is going to take away the guns and hide them under the mosque next to the White House or because they think they need to defend themselves against gun violence with a gun, it happens. Gun sales spiked 11% in June year-over-year, again on Black Friday, and even more after the San Bernardino massacre. The American lust for killing devices is self-accelerating—the more we buy, the more we shoot, and the more we shoot, the more we kill, and the more we kill, the more we buy.

This means that today there are more guns sitting around, waiting to be shot, than there were last year. It stands to reason that the number of angry and/or crazy people has not meaningfully declined.

The New Kanye Album Might Suck

I mean, I dunno, but it’s still tentatively named SWISH, the only tracks we’ve heard from it are boring, and his most recent offering was extremely bad.

There Could Be Another Big Terrorist Attack? Right?

Sure, maybe. Feels like we’re overdue—at least more coordinated shootings, which are a hell of a lot more cost-effective and easier to plan than, say, a shooting or hijacking.

Junk Bonds Could Trash the American Economy

The market for junk bonds—basically shitty loans that are at a high risk of defaulting—is shitting the bed. The last time some semi-opaque financial assets caused this much anxiety on Wall Street was 2008, and there’s no indication anyone has learned anything since then.

Climate Change Is Still Happening and Still Bad...

Why would it not?

“It looks very likely that globally 2014, 2015 and 2016 will all be amongst the very warmest years ever recorded,” Rowan Sutton of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, which contributed to the report, told journalists.

...Which Could Cause More Natural Disasters

Freakish climate conditions trigger freakish weather patterns, which kill people.

Also, let’s not forget that the entire Pacific Northwest is set to basically explode at any moment.

The Digital Media Industry Could Collapse

The websites you read are facing declining or flattening growth, and even the cash-rich ones will eventually run out of cash to spend on Facebook promotion. Investors don’t want to pour money into websites that are facing declining or even plateauing growth. And the whole display advertising has got to implode eventually. That would put all of your favorite bloggers and Twitter personalities out of work, God, wouldn’t that be awful? Hello? Guys?

Illustration by Jim Cooke


Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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Even Alex “Jade Helm” Jones Thinks the Oregon Militiamen Are Idiots

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There’s almost no freedom-fueled cause that furious truther and conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones won’t cosign, but apparently, even Alex Jones himself can’t get behind the crazed militiamen currently throwing a fit on an Oregon nature trail.

Let’s be clear: The Bundys and others have very legitimate issues with the federal power grab over land outside of law, and people doing controlled burns and being called arsonists, and people being charged. The federal government is power-grabbing everywhere, it’s true... But all that’s coming out, and the establishment is in political trouble right now. So they want to overturn the chess board right now. We need Americans to realize we’re all being played off against each other...

...The timing of this now allows the whole debate to not be about the gun-grab, to not be about all the gun control, to not be about the victim disarmament, but to be about citizens with guns taking over buildings.

Jones goes on to say that while the Bundys did have grazing rights in Nevada the last time they pulled this shit, in this case, the Hammonds (the family actually in the center of this mess) don’t even support what the Bundy family is doing.

Of course, Jones does also say that the whole thing is a race-baiting false flag cooked up by the Obama administration, but in Alex Jones speak, that’s about as close as you can get to calling someone ostensibly on your side (the side of Freedom with a capital “F”) an idiot without actually coming out and saying it.

Either way, when Alex Jones himself is telling you that perhaps you’re taking things a little too far—maybe it’s time to reassess your decision to hold nature hostage.

[h/t Right Wing Watch]


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.


Carly Fiorina Is Trying to Pretend She Didn't Humiliate Herself on Twitter

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Carly Fiorina Is Trying to Pretend She Didn't Humiliate Herself on Twitter

The Rose Bowl, a college football game traditionally played on New Year’s Day, is a celebration of American regionalism. Historically, it pitted the champion of the Midwest’s Big Ten Conference against the champion of the Pacific Coast Conference (or its successors). The arrangement has been modified and undermined by conference realignment and college championship schemes, but most years, the premise still holds: two teams representing separate places with separate histories and cultures, West Coast versus heartland.

This year, the game featured the Stanford Cardinal and the Iowa Hawkeyes. A dilemma about which team to support existed for nearly nobody—except one person who, with the grace of a baby elephant opening a refrigerator, invented such a dilemma. That person was Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina is a Stanford graduate, and a proud one, as her tech-flogging candidacy attests. But she has a vested interest in the state of Iowa, due to the impending state caucuses, at which she will not be chosen to represent the GOP in this year’s presidential race.

So, what to do? A sane person might reply “nothing?” But Carly Fiorina and the people who work for her are not those people. Instead they went with a tweet that pandered so hard it might as well have leaped through the screen and licked you on the face:

People generally don’t believe what politicians tell them, but even by that standard this tweet was recognized as exceptional. Not only was Carly Fiorina telling Iowans she thought they were stupid, she was telling them she thought college football was stupid, too. In an effort to suck up to the sports fans, she made a sham of the loyalty and passion that defines their fandom. You can scroll and scroll and scroll through the responses and not find a single positive reaction.

Yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fiorina had this to say to Dana Bash regarding the tweet:

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Dana — for heaven’s sakes, can’t a girl ever have a little bit of fun?” Fiorina asked. “That was a tongue-in-cheek tweet, which the people of Iowa understand, because I was asked over and over again in Iowa, having attended a Hawkeye tailgate. I was asked. They knew that my heart was torn.”

But—do they really understand? Does Fiorina understand what they understand?

Iowa lost 45-16.


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Megyn Kelly Is a Horrible Person

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Megyn Kelly Is a Horrible Person

What if, a recent piece of speculative fiction in Vanity Fair wonders aloud, Megyn Kelly isn’t a poisonous bigot and shameless cable news demagogue, but a complex, flawed icon of modern feminism? Like most science fiction, this is a pack of lies meant for babies. Megyn Kelly is just as racist—or cynically willing to play the part—as every man she works with at Fox News.

http://gawker.com/5861688/its-a-...

Here are some very nice things that the deeply fawning profile says about Megyn Kelly, a racist, or at least a woman who plays a racist on TV:

The brightest star at Fox News, Megyn Kelly is a newly minted role model for women who sees her gender as irrelevant, and a conservative champion who transcends politics with her skillful skewering of windbags of both parties

Unnerving would-be leaders, blowhards, and didacts from both parties has become Kelly’s specialty, as the world learned in August.

And yet … it’s not uncommon for the casual left-of-center viewer to say, in spite of himself, I kind of like her. In Kelly’s hands, these right-wing red-meat stories are presented with a varying degree of balance and often treated with humanity and wit. She’ll muster outrage at political correctness, but it feels rooted in common sense, not just derived from talking points.

Whatever the case, Kelly has become a feminist icon of sorts—the sort who won’t actually call herself a feminist. Perhaps this is because Kelly works at Fox News, where “feminists” are in the same scary category as “liberals” who wage war on Christmas each year.

She won’t sell her soul for a ratings bonanza.

You’d have to own a soul to sell one; she likely found time for that transaction some time before the 2013 segment in which she railed against the notion that Santa Claus could be black.

The Vanity Fair piece paints Kelly as a straight-shooter, a folksy iconoclast who won’t talk down to her audience, despite the fact that Kelly has essentially made her living condescending to the sorts of people she knows make up her audience (when she isn’t pandering to gullible liberal media elites who should know better, obviously). On Fox, Kelly makes sure to discuss the world with the same blunt, unsophisticated perspective as the spooked whites who watch her. Her career has been one long, low, racist dogwhistle.

http://gawker.com/5587578/why-is...

Kelly arguably made a name for herself with her obsessive coverage of the New Black Panther Party, a small, irrelevant fringe group she repeatedly used as a stand-in for the entirety of Black America, for the purposes of frightening Fox News’s old, white audience. Dave Weigel’s equation of Kelly’s wall-to-wall NBPP coverage with “minstrelsy” was spot-on.

When a 2015 video surfaced showing white police forcibly shutting down a pool party attended by black children in Texas (tackling one and drawing a gun on another), Kelly noted that the girl at the center of the clip “was no saint.” In another segment, Kelly asked a guest “What is the evidence that what happened to Eric Garner, or what happened to Michael Brown, has anything to do with race?” (Kelly of course despises the Black Lives Matter movement, preferring her black activism cartoonish or nonexistent.)

Just listen to her talk about Erykah Badu, exuding the kind of racist energy that makes one stutter and trip over their words, half zeal and half hatred. Whether it’s sincere or a show she puts on is irrelevant; it has the intended effect of putting Angry Black Faces on the screens of Fox viewers, and making an issue as simple as its most immediate, dumbest racial component. When a black person is killed by a cop, Megyn Kelly cites the “anti-cop, thug mentality” of “black communities.” When protestors organized at the University of Missouri, Kelly dismissed them as “a small group of angry black students.” To Megyn Kelly, black rage is pervasive when she wants you scared, insignificant when she wants you ignorant.

The Vanity Fair profile is willing to peek at and pay lip-service to Kelly’s “contradictions” without saying what’s behind them: garden variety cynicism. Posturing as Less Crazy than Glenn Beck, Less Mean than Bill O’Reilly, and Less All-Around Awful than Sean Hannity isn’t brave, contradictory, or even interesting. It’s just savvy. Kelly’s ability to articulately shout about any triviality or black misdeed with the conviction of a TV lawyer (which she actually is) means she excels at her job—her ratings are fantastic—but doesn’t mean her job is anything other than helping Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch profit from the exploitating of white racial resentment and unease. Doing so while telling Vanity Fair “every so often, as all [women] know, you have to stop and slap somebody around a little bit who doesn’t understand that we are actually equals and not second-class citizens” doesn’t make Megyn Kelly an icon, or an iconoclast, or a contradiction. It makes her a showman and a grifter. “I’m a soulless lawyer,” Kelly once told The Daily Beast. “Give me any opinion and I can argue it.”

Trading in race-baiting (sincere or not) each night while making the occasional, perfunctory nod toward gender equality doesn’t make Megyn Kelly complex, it just makes her bad. Just because she’s willing to tell Donald Trump that he’s a sexist doesn’t mean she herself isn’t toxic in many of the exact same ways Trump is. And while she’s eager to position herself (or let the press position her) as the refreshing female alternative to the stodgy male Hannity/O’Reilly Fraternity, she’s no less the irresponsible race-baiter than they. Is the best alternative to the Angry Racist Old Men of Fox News really just an Angry Racist Young Woman of Fox News?


Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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The 12 Best Video Games Of 2015

Those Jamokes In Oregon Aren't Terrorists, They're Jamokes

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Those Jamokes In Oregon Aren't Terrorists, They're Jamokes

The American political lexicon has an appropriate word for the armed men conspicuously loitering in part of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge instead of going home. It is not terrorist or militia or occupation or revolution or movement or front or army or resistance. The word is jamoke. “Get a load of these sad jamokes!” is the thing you say about them.

Maybe when they are done annexing this remote administrative office’s supply of free park maps and permit application forms, they will liberate rural Oregon’s port-a-johns next. Some of the port-a-johns are heavily fortified with locking doors and hand sanitizer pumps. Surely this will call for siege weaponry.

Imagine the grade of sad, stunted halfwit who decks himself out in paramilitary regalia and lethal weaponry to stage a sit-in at what is for all intents and purposes a remote wildlife park’s visitor’s center. Okay, men, when I kick in the door, you three move on the 74-year-old v0lunteer who shows the birdwatching slideshow to elementary-school field trip groups; if she makes a move, be ready to take her down with force. The rest of us will establish a defensive position behind the cardboard beaver. If bigger goobers than these exist on our planet, you identify them by the bruises from where they poked themselves in the eye while trying to pick their noses.

BREAKING: White Men Enter Building In Rural Oregon, Act Like They Run The Place. Here is a question: At which rural Oregon building isn’t that true? That shit happens at 9:00 in the morning literally every day at literally every building in rural and suburban America. It is called the start of the workday. Maybe these shit-for-brains jamokes can push a broom around while they’re there, or take the recycling to the curb. Make yourselves useful, clowns!

A tragicomic thing happens, though, when a handful of slow-witted white dorks in their best Sunday camo decide to take their guns and their entitled, useless, cosmically unserious day-to-day dull-eyed skulking to a minor government shack and pretend it’s some sort of insurrection against tyranny. Liberal internet users’ latent frustration at the disproportionality and unfairness of the way American law enforcement and media treat different kinds of people tips over into a mild derangement that has us likening these shit-for-brains dinguses to friggin’ ISIS. This is understandable! We’re just about a week from an Ohio grand jury deciding that summary execution is a fair consequence for 12-year-old kids who play with toys outdoors; by that standard, the entire state of Oregon should be a radioactive desert right now. This seems a fair thing to point out.

Still, hang on. First, watch this nimrod tearfully explain to his family that he had to miss Christmas and New Year’s Eve because his solemn duty to the Constitution required him to go to a wildlife park’s empty administrative building and hang out there for a while in the desperate hope that someone outside his brotherhood of blinkered morons would decide this makes him Andrew Pickens:

All together now: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hey Jon, pick up some toilet paper and fruit roll-ups on the way home, wouldja?

Here is the thing. These men are not frightening. They are jamokes. They are exactly jamokes. Their guns, on the other hand, are very frightening—for precisely and entirely the same reason and to absolutely the same degree that those same guns would be frightening in the hands of toddlers. Not because the people holding those guns are serious, but because the people holding those guns are not serious.

This, my good buddies, is the entire American pro-gun argument made (embarrassing, oh my God so fucking embarrassing) flesh. A big scary gun lends a degree of real power even to the variety of sad, corny-ass loser who invades and occupies what is essentially a fancy birdhouse in the name of ending tyranny. That is the whole reason to have a big scary gun. Not as a safeguard against home invaders or the totalitarian state, but as a safeguard against a clear-eyed reckoning with plain reality. A gun is—or at least these jamokes hope it is—a Get Out Of Getting Laughed At Free card. When you call these horse’s asses “terrorists,” you are not only dignifying their ridiculous, impotent actions, you are doing them the biggest favor for which they can hope.

Here is what this is: it’s the moment the gun-humping right pantsed itself for all the world to see. Look at these sad cowards! The smallness of their acting-out; the transparency of their bullshit; the fraudulence of their anti-authoritarian pose; the convenience of the fact that their active search for a tyranny against which to rebel—it wasn’t coming to take their guns away, you see—led them to an unoccupied building of zero value in the middle of nowhere, where the most aggressive response they’ll muster from the government they so eagerly pretend to fear is an irritated phone call from a Bureau of Land Management flack. There’s no reason to join them in the collective fantasy that they represent a threat to anything other than the urine-free status of this random building’s bathroom sink.

Some morons decided to take a vacation from reality. They brought their guns along. The rest of the world actually does not have to join them! Eventually they will get bored of waiting for tyranny to come certify their jagoff fantasy. Maybe they will leave a bag of flaming crap on tyranny’s doorstep on their way back home.

Top photo via AP


Contact the author at albert.burneko@deadspin.com or on Twitter @albertburneko.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 345: Perfection 

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 345: Perfection 

Kristin Cavallari—designer of shoes, “refined boho” jewelry, and God knows what’s next—is having a great start to her year. One Twitter user thinks Kristin’s shoe line is “perfection.” This person said so, publicly, of her own accord (it seems).

Kristin was moved.

Thank you.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

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