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It's a debate playing out across America. Should statues and memorials of Confederate soldiers and officers remain standing, or should they be removed. Those in favor of removing the statues say the statues represent racism. Those who want the statues to remain complain that removing the statues would be an attempt to get rid of history. What do you think? Should cities and states get rid of Confederate statues and memorials?

Depraved ISIS thugs are little more than serial rapists who claim sex assault is a byproduct of implementing teachings of the Qur’an. The grisly details are laid out in a new report by Nikita Malik called, “ Trafficking Terror: How Modern Slavery and Sexual Violence Fund Terrorism.” In it, a Yazidi survivor describes how ISIS henchman would line up young girls against walls before groping their chests. “If they had breasts, they could be raped; if not, they would wait three months to check again,” Victim 1 said, according to an interview cited in the report. The girls – many of them minors – were raped together in rooms as children looked on, she said after finally eluding ISIS’ grip. Victim 1 also described how she was raped by six ISIS guards one night after attempting to flee. “She was raped in every place possible," the report reads. "She was forced to do things that were disgusting to her and they kept her without clothes in this room so that anybody could come at any time and rape her.” Yazidi women were told by brainwashed ISIS brides that they needed to be raped to become fully Muslim, according to the report. They were often sold, but lost monetary value the more times they were purchased by men in Iraq and Syria. The report also describes how sexual depravity continues to act as a pull factor for prospective terrorists “Sexual slavery serves as an incentive for new recruits and foreign fighters, with the promise of wives and sex slaves.” writes Malik. The Henry Jackson Society reports human trafficking brought Islamic terrorist groups upwards of $30 million last year. It’s believed ISIS could turn to kidnapping and sex slavery as a means to sustain itself as its shrinking caliphate continues to crumble.

A note to Steve Bannon: No matter what your beliefs are, the most dangerous thing you can do is cross Donald Trump. The fallout against the former White House political strategist and Trump confidant is continuing this week, in the wake of his comments appearing in Michael Wolff's tell-all book, "Fire and Fury," and as his political foes are celebrating his perceived demise and his political friends are starting to distance themselves from him. One of Bannon's strongest allies — the Mercer family, which is funding Breitbart — issued a stinging rebuke on Thursday, but limited the scope of their attack to what Bannon said about the president. "I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected," Rebekah Mercer told the Washington Post. "My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements." And CBS reported Friday that Mercer "cut all ties" with Bannon because that's what Trump wanted her to do. . @CBSNews confirms Steve Bannon's longtime benefactor Rebekah Mercer cut *all ties* with him at the request of White House officials in the aftermath of #FireAndFury. pic.twitter.com/8eICjpp6Qw — ryan kadro (@RyanKadro) January 5, 2018 But Mercer is continuing to finance Breitbart, which has not only been Bannon's political agenda, it's been his political essence. Bannon made Roy Moore his candidate in the Alabama special election. When Moore's major flaws were exposed, Bannon dispatched Breitbart's staffers to attack the women who accused Moore of trying to date them when they were teenagers. After the election, Breitbart's editor admitted that they were acting as political operatives in their decision to cover the election. So while Breitbart's funders are wondering whether or not to cut ties with Steve Bannon, it's important to realize that Bannon's legacy will certainly live on. It will just be more Trump-friendly.

“Bigger than Watergate!” Donald Trump exulted about the discovery of new emails from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Sure, they could be. They could also be pleas from Clinton that Huma Abedin fetch her a skinny latte from Starbucks. We don’t know. And the horrifying thing is that the F.B.I. director, James Comey, didn’t seem to know, either, even as he disclosed their existence to the world. How strange but how fitting. This entire election is being conducted in the key of hysteria, and Comey just found a way to amplify that ugly music. Listen, Clinton made an awful decision in setting up a private email server, then compounded that error by dragging her feet through defensive non-apologies that gave the story such legs. Now she limps to the finish line when she should be hitting full stride. But Trump is as much of a part and player in this latest chapter of the email saga, because of the one-syllable grenade that he keeps lobbing at the body politic, his furious mantra over these final weeks. “Rigged,” “rigged,” “rigged.” Many Americans have come to believe that. Many others are rightly determined to prove to that group how wrong they are, or at least not to add accelerant to the wildfire. And so all of us, including Comey, operate in a befouled atmosphere, tailoring our actions to it. Comey obviously felt that he was in a bind and clearly believed that by disclosing the emails as soon as possible — and not, say, delaying until he had some sense of what the F.B.I. was dealing with — he had the best chance of avoiding any possible charges of a cover-up later, and was acting with the cleanest conscience. But his desire to be a Boy Scout may have eclipsed sound judgment here, and rectitude is a quaint, shortsighted notion in an election this rife with accusations of bias, this primed for scandal, this frenzied. Were the emails in question sent to or from Clinton? Comey didn’t and perhaps couldn’t say. What about them warranted inspection? Again, he had nothing to offer. He told F.B.I. employees in a memo that he was hoping, with his announcement, not “to create a misleading impression” of some hugely significant discovery. But that’s exactly and predictably what he did. Most Democrats were outraged. “Mr. Comey said he was duty bound to inform Congress,” Bob Kerrey, the former senator and governor, told me. “Quite the opposite is the case. He was duty bound to make an announcement after he completes his examination of the emails.“ Indeed, he broke with the longstanding F.B.I. policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations. He also defied the wishes of senior officials in the Department of Justice, according to various news reports early Saturday afternoon. And he frustrated everyone — conservatives, liberals, Trump, Clinton — because his disclosure was all questions, no answers. Regardless, the media went nuts, declaring that the development could bend the shape of the race and assuming damage to Clinton without any polling or other evidence to back that up. “We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell,” the journalist Carl Bernstein said in a phone interview on CNN on Friday, adding: “It is unthinkable that the director of the F.B.I. would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified emails and call it to the attention of Congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation.” A viewer couldn’t see him licking his chops but could hear it. Even the many news organizations that stressed the possible innocuousness of the emails and emphasized how very little we knew contradicted that caution with the length, number and front-and-center placement of their stories about this development. Why? The Politico writer Glenn Thrush had a thought, expressed in this tweet: How is this supposed to play out? If, a few days from now, the F.B.I. determines and announces that none of the emails contain classified information or anything else of concern, will Trump and Clinton’s other enemies conceivably believe that? Hah! They’ll be shouting “rigged” all over again. They’ll be shouting it louder than ever. It wouldn’t be normal practice for the F.B.I., in an effort to buttress its determination, to release the emails, many of which are presumably private communications of Abedin’s. And those might be too intimate for her to make public herself. But now that Comey has flagged the whole batch of them, suspicion will never die. And if the emails are fresh cause for concern, will that be knowable, and digestible, before Nov. 8? On this point, too, we’re all in the dark. What a steaming mess, and that’s a comment partly on this specific situation but also on this election, which has devolved into a junkyard of innuendo, lies and conspiracy theories. Trump doesn’t bear all the blame for that, but he bears an ample share of it. On the subject of conspiracy theories, I can offer some comic relief, noting that he and Rush Limbaugh couldn’t get on the same page about the new emails on Friday. Even as Trump was praising Comey and saying that the election might not be quite as rigged as he’d feared, Limbaugh was telling his listeners that Comey was “just doing this to take everybody’s attention off of the WikiLeaks email dump” that was embarrassing Clinton and her aides. “The cynical view,” he said, “is that Comey is still carrying water for Clinton and is trying to get everybody to stop paying attention on the WikiLeaks dump because it’s starting to have an impact.” Let me get this straight: The crooked F.B.I. and the corrupt media throw just enough dirt at Clinton so that she’s sure to track it into the Oval Office? Thank God for Limbaugh. God help the rest of us.

BERKELEY, Calif. (KCRA) — Several fights broke out during largely-peaceful protests in Berkeley Sunday afternoon when about 4,000 people converged on the city, police said. Thirteen people who ranged in ages from 20 to 47 years old, were arrested for "various violations” including assault with a deadly weapon and felony assault during the events, Berkeley police said. Of the people arrested during the protests, several were wearing masks while others were connected to assaults. Two men were arrested after exchanging blows. The SFGate reported they were quickly swept up by officers inside Civic Center Park. Police detained Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson at the protests. The SFGate reported he was handcuffed after being chased by a mob of demonstrators who took swings at him and pepper sprayed him. Police said Gibson was actually "rescued" and was not arrested or charged. The crowd began to diminish around 3:30 p.m., six hours after a march led to the protests. The event was one of several rallies that had been called for Sunday in Berkeley, a day after a controversial freedom rally planned by Gibson in San Francisco fizzled amid throngs of counterprotesters. Hundreds of people gathered on the UC Berkeley campus around 10 a.m. Sunday. They then marched to Civic Center Park, where police had set up barricades and secured the area with bomb sniffing dogs. The march was part of the Bay Area Rally Against Hate Rally. In a statement early Sunday, the group said "we fully intend to move forward with (the Rally Against Hate)" on the campus despite calls by the university police department for people to stay away for safety reasons. The rally was held in response to the planned right-wing protest "No To Marxism in America." However, organizer Amber Cummings canceled the protest on Friday, saying Berkeley officials and left-wing extremists made it impossible to hold the event and she would be the sole attendee. Despite the cancellation, hundreds of ring-wing protesters showed up to the park. Around 1 p.m., police reported the crowd had grown to several thousand. A skirmish broke out between several dozen left-wing demonstrators and a handful of right-wing supporters. The skirmish was tense but ended quickly. The left-wing protesters surrounded the small number of right-wing supporters, then shouted at them and pushed them. The right-wing protesters sought protection from police and were escorted away. Before the unpermitted events, Berkeley police put into place several rules in response the protests, stating, "To ensure the peaceful expression of free speech, the City of Berkeley will be prohibiting sticks, pipes, poles and anything else that can be used for a 'riot' at Civic Center Park." Other banned items include explosives, pepper spray, axes, dogs (except for service animals), eggs, torches and more. Police also said anything that "covers or partially covers the face and shields the wearer's face from view, or partially from view, is prohibited." However, protesters with an anarchist group arrived at the park wearing masks and hoods that covered their faces. The group of more than 100 hooded protesters, with shields emblazoned with the words "no hate" and waving a flag identifying themselves as anarchist, broke through police lines, avoiding security checks by officers to take away possible weapons. Then the group blended in with the rest of the crowd. The group pushed their way past police barricades and into Civic Center Park. They assaulted at least five people by punching and kicking them. Gibson was one of the people assaulted by the group. Police broke up the fights, using what appeared to be a smoke grenade to stop one scuffle. The three people who were attacked ran behind police lines to escape. Then around 2:30 p.m., more than 1,000 people left the park and began marching north Martin Luther King Way. An hour later, the crowd had diminished and many roads reopened. ---- The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Permission Details DMCA US President Trump's threats this week to shut down critical news media is an ominous sign of how fragile American democratic rights have become. For Donald Trump to impugn media freedom -- albeit in his usual whimsical, boorish fashion -- nevertheless shows how far democracy has been eroded in the "land of the free." The latest furore followed a report this week by NBC in which Trump purportedly harangued his top Pentagon advisers for a 10-fold increase in the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump's outlandish demand was reportedly made during a high-level national security meeting back in July. It was the same meeting during which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have scoffed at Trump's antics and called him a "moron." Trump has reacted angrily to the reports, dismissing them with his characteristic jargon as "fake news." But, adding to the furore, the president also went on to question whether the broadcasting license of NBC and other networks should be cancelled because of what Trump views as "fake news." That is, the president is speculating on shutting down media outlets. Such a move by a president would be legally unviable, according to US laws. But it shows the kind of slippery slope that US media and democratic rights are on. Trump's latest musing about shutting down NBC and other channels drew predictable outcry from US media, who rightly to a degree, deplored his attack on democratic rights. The irony is, however, that the attack on American democratic rights has already been underway before Trump entered the White House, and without much protest from the same media outlets who are now railing against Trump over this rant. We can point to the increasing surveillance powers of federal intelligence agencies which have steadily encroached since the September 2001 terror incidents in New York and Washington DC. Media freedom in the US has been under assault for a long time. Trump's latest outburst is not a one-off anomaly. In recent weeks, the US government has moved to severely restrict the freedom of Russia-based news media operating in the country. A move that has so far not been reciprocated by Moscow on US media operating in Russia. Russian state-owned news channel RT has been forced to register as a "foreign agent" which will curtail how it carries out normal journalistic functions. Sputnik, another Russian state-owned channel, is also under investigation by US authorities over allegations of destabilizing American politics with "fake news." The crimping of Russian news media is part of a wider campaign to suppress all alternative media outlets, including US-based websites, which are being labelled as agents of "foreign interests" because of merely posting articles sourced from RT and Sputnik. The willing participation of US internet companies, Google, Twitter and Facebook, in blocking news sources that are designated "fake" or "interfering in US politics" is another troubling sign of how citizens' access to information is being curtailed. These gatekeepers of information are openly moving to restrict access to "authoritative," "respectable" media outlets. Many of these "respectable" news outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, have in the past been guilty of purveying outrageously fake news, like the "weapons of mass destruction" claims which led to the 2003 US war in Iraq that killed over a million people and unleashed on the world the ongoing scourge of jihadist terrorism. There is absolutely no credible evidence that Russian news media or alternative US-based sites are systematically engaged in an "influence campaign" to destabilize American democracy. Sure, there is plenty of false information on the internet available through platforms like Facebook, which most Americans now rely on for their news feed. But to lay the blame for this on Russian media is preposterous scapegoating. What really is the issue here is that US authorities and established media companies simply can't abide rival outlets that are providing an alternative, critical perspective. For example, Russia's RT and Sputnik have given much critical coverage on the war in Syria, as well as conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. Both channels have reported, with documentary evidence, on how the US government and its NATO and regional allies have been complicit in an illegal, covert war for regime change in Syria involving support for extremist militant groups. This is a critical perspective with grave legal and political implications for Washington and its allies. Just because the US government does not like this kind of unflattering coverage does not legitimize its opprobrium of "fake news." The latter charge is brazenly being used as a pretext to censor discomfiting information. There are many other international issues where Russian media are giving a valid, alternative viewpoint. And because official US interests are offended by this critical perspective, the authorities are moving to ostracize Russian media with the spurious allegation of "foreign agents" and "undermining American democracy." But the paramount issue here is that this is an audacious attack on American democratic rights of free media and freedom of speech, as supposedly enshrined in the US Constitution's First Amendment. All of the US established news media have propagated the bogus narrative of "Russian influence" and "Russian fake news." This narrative plays well for political opponents of President Trump, primarily in the Democrat party. On this issue, Trump is right when he denounces as "fake news" the campaign to pillory Russia and to allege that the Kremlin directed state-owned media to influence the November presidential election in Trump's favor. There is simply no evidence that Russian news media were or are engaged in anything nefarious to destabilize US democracy. Russian media have and do give critical news coverage. If that "destabilizes" Washington's illicit activities in overseas' wars then that's what responsible journalism should be doing. To curb this journalism because it offends geopolitical interests is, frankly, censorship and the actions of a tyrant. Trump's latest threats to shut down the American news channel NBC over alleged "fake news" are indeed menacing. The NBC report on Trump's nuclear weapons ranting appear to be credible in any case. But the outcry from US media over Trump's boorish threats are hypocritical. Their concern seems to be based on a superficial contempt for Trump as a loathsome individual -- as opposed to a principled defense of democratic rights, and media freedom in particular. The US media outlets that are piously railing against Trump over his "assault on the Fourth Estate" are the same outlets which have piled on the pressure to suppress alternative media outlets like Russia's RT and Sputnik, as well as other US-based independent information sources that are being demonized in McCarthyite fashion as "foreign agents." And, again, much of this hostility towards alternative media is motivated by the fact that these alternative media have admirably exposed the hypocrisy and criminality of US authorities. Also exposed is the aiding and abetting by the servile establishment media who have long covered up for the US authorities and their illicit activities in overseas' wars and against citizens at home. American democratic rights are indeed on thin ice. But that was the case long before the elephantine Trump arrived on the scene. His clumsy lurching is merely serving to illustrate how treacherously thin the ice has become upon which US democracy now stands. Permission Details DMCA US President Trump's threats this week to shut down critical news media is an ominous sign of how fragile American democratic rights have become. For Donald Trump to impugn media freedom -- albeit in his usual whimsical, boorish fashion -- nevertheless shows how far democracy has been eroded in the "land of the free." The latest furore followed a report this week by NBC in which Trump purportedly harangued his top Pentagon advisers for a 10-fold increase in the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump's outlandish demand was reportedly made during a high-level national security meeting back in July. It was the same meeting during which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is said to have scoffed at Trump's antics and called him a "moron." Trump has reacted angrily to the reports, dismissing them with his characteristic jargon as "fake news." But, adding to the furore, the president also went on to question whether the broadcasting license of NBC and other networks should be cancelled because of what Trump views as "fake news." That is, the president is speculating on shutting down media outlets. Such a move by a president would be legally unviable, according to US laws. But it shows the kind of slippery slope that US media and democratic rights are on. Trump's latest musing about shutting down NBC and other channels drew predictable outcry from US media, who rightly to a degree, deplored his attack on democratic rights. The irony is, however, that the attack on American democratic rights has already been underway before Trump entered the White House, and without much protest from the same media outlets who are now railing against Trump over this rant. We can point to the increasing surveillance powers of federal intelligence agencies which have steadily encroached since the September 2001 terror incidents in New York and Washington DC. Media freedom in the US has been under assault for a long time. Trump's latest outburst is not a one-off anomaly. In recent weeks, the US government has moved to severely restrict the freedom of Russia-based news media operating in the country. A move that has so far not been reciprocated by Moscow on US media operating in Russia. Russian state-owned news channel RT has been forced to register as a "foreign agent" which will curtail how it carries out normal journalistic functions. Sputnik, another Russian state-owned channel, is also under investigation by US authorities over allegations of destabilizing American politics with "fake news." The crimping of Russian news media is part of a wider campaign to suppress all alternative media outlets, including US-based websites, which are being labelled as agents of "foreign interests" because of merely posting articles sourced from RT and Sputnik. The willing participation of US internet companies, Google, Twitter and Facebook, in blocking news sources that are designated "fake" or "interfering in US politics" is another troubling sign of how citizens' access to information is being curtailed. These gatekeepers of information are openly moving to restrict access to "authoritative," "respectable" media outlets. Many of these "respectable" news outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, have in the past been guilty of purveying outrageously fake news, like the "weapons of mass destruction" claims which led to the 2003 US war in Iraq that killed over a million people and unleashed on the world the ongoing scourge of jihadist terrorism.

A Republican student association at San Diego State University is facing backlash for sending a letter demanding Muslim students condemn last week’s terror attacks in Barcelona. The Republican Club at San Diego State University wrote to the Muslim Student Association, claiming that the campus community could not move forward creating ‘an inclusive environment for all students’ until radical terrorism was “disavowed”. The letter said if no condemnation was forthcoming, the leaders of the student group should be forced to resign. The letter, signed by SDSU College Republicans Chairman Brandon Jones, stated in part that “until radical Islamic terrorism is disavowed by the Muslim Student Organization at SDSU, we cannot move forward in creating an inclusive environment for all students on campus.” It added the Muslim Student Association’s leadership should resign if they do not disavow Islamic terrorism. The national Muslim Student Association expressed support for the San Diego State chapter for “their solidarity, strength and perseverance in the face of ignorance and hate.” The Young Democratic Socialists of SDSU responded by declaring: “We condemn the San Diego State College Republicans’ disgraceful statement towards the SDSU Muslim Student Association and the SDSU Muslim community. Retract and apologize now.” The Transfronterizo Alliance Student Organization, which describes itself as working to create an “inclusive campus environment for SDSU students who live a transborder lifestyle,” joined the chorus.

What has happened to our country, that we will nominate a man for president who has bullied, bad-mouthed and intimidated the public for decades? What has happened to our moral values? What are we teaching our children and grandchildren? How can the Republican Party accept this hateful, racist, sexual predator who has lied, cheated people and paid no taxes? Donald Trump does not care about the Constitution and shows his ignorance about it every day. He is threatening people who do not support him, even within his own party. He has incited violence and says if he wins he’ll put his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in jail. He has encouraged his supporters to intimidate voters at the polls, and now they are threatening a revolution. These are people like the Bundys — if they don’t get their way, they threaten their opponents with weapons. Trump has spread conspiracy theories that the election is rigged to help anger his base, which includes the KKK, the mentally unstable and those who hate immigrants. Trump and his supporters will not accept defeat. Are citizens ready to live in a lawless nation? He wants to be king. It’s frightening to consider that he supports Vladimir Putin and has encouraged Russian hacking. Trump is unstable and unfit to represent this nation. Clinton may have some baggage, but she does not hold a candle to Trump. Trump is not running against Bill Clinton, so stop blaming Hillary for Bill’s mistakes. If you don’t like Clinton you have other reasonable choices, but please, never Trump. We cannot let our nation fall to a racist dictator. President Obama has more dignity in his little finger than Trump has in his whole body. Pam Wixom West Haven

Councilor Mike Gaffney Quotes Voltaire About Free Speech, Failed Reporter Buttmunch Billy Shaner Says He Was Quoting A White Supremacist Want to advertise with Turtleboy? Email us at Turtleboysports@gmail.com for more information. Yesterday Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney wrote a letter to Turtleboy about his disgust towards Worcester Magazine Editor Walter Bird for the way Bird sexually harasses and tries to hook up with women who he has business dealings with. But why did Councilor Gaffney wait until now to release this damning information? Well, he was probably mad that Buttmunch Billy Shaner, his newest minimum wage reporter, insinuated in the recent copy of their free newspaper that Councilor Gaffney subscribed to white nationalist ideology: YIKES: Quoting a white supremacist is not the best look, especially after one of them rammed a car into a group of people, killing one and injuring 19. With that in mind, I bring you a recent article in the Worcester Independent Leader by City Councilor At-Large Mike Gaffney blasting city leadership for policies that favor big business and development. While I felt the article did a fine job portraying his perspective, a friend pointed out something worrying toward the bottom. Just before the last sentence, there’s a quote overlaying an image attributed to Voltaire. The quote reads: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” It is often attributed to Voltaire, although it has been disputed as to whether he, in fact, said it. A prominent and supremely controversial white supremacist named Kevin Alfred Strom did, however.. Among other things, Strom has denied the Holocaust, advocated for a Neo-Nazi party and pleaded guilty to child pornography possession charge. The quote kind of takes a different meaning in proper context, I think. So let me get this straight. Gaffney gives a completely applicable quote about the dangers of censoring free speech, which he and most other people attribute to Voltaire – the philosopher whose writings most historians agree was a driving force in the American Revolution. And what does Billy do? He goes out of his way to turn this into Gaffney quoting a white supremacist. For the record, even the far left attributes this quote to Voltaire: Voltaire: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise" #JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/uAK8KF3C6i — Sam Sussex (@SamSussex) January 8, 2015 So do Palestinians who want to criticize Israel: To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.-Voltaire #GazaUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/k3yt6jzHNH — Persia (ر) (@persiatx) August 13, 2014 So did Trump’s lucky sperm: To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.Voltaire — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 25, 2013 This is what you get when you Google image that quote: In other words, everyone thinks Voltaire said this. No one knows for sure if he did or didn’t. All we do know is that a random white supremacist from West Virginia also wrote it here 25 years ago. So obviously Councilor Gaffney has been brushing up on his 25 year old West Virginia white supremacist literature. Either that or he, just like many progressives and conservatives before him, believe this is a Voltaire quote. Anyone with a brain could see what Buttmunch Billy was trying to do here. He doesn’t like Gaffney because he’s a social justice warrior. He tries to play if off like he’s just “reporting the news” but he doesn’t do a very good job hiding it. Keep in mind that the Turtlegram and Gazette called Gaffney a “slave master” two years ago for investigating a fraudulent non-profit that just so happened to be run by a black woman. They act like it’s harmless to throw these labels out there. It’s not. And what I love about Gaffney is that he’s not afraid to fire back at these frauds, which is exactly what he did on his Facebook page last night: Juicy!!! Walter Bird didn’t write the blurb, but his newest employee did. I’m sure Walter appreciates Buttmunch Billy dragging him into a world of shit that is Turtleboy blowback. But what choice did Gaffney have? We’re the only media outlet in town that tells the truth. The rest are clearly against him, so why should he place nice with them any longer? Either way, Walter is the editor. He approved of this. He allowed his newest employee to insinuate that the Vice Chairman of the City Council quotes white supremacists. Buttmunch Billy quickly objected on Gaffney’s Facebook page: Yea Mike. He didn’t actually call you a racist. He just insinuated that you are inspired by white supremacist literature and freely quote them in order to push your agenda in Worcester. What’s the harm? YIKES!! Instead of just apologizing and admitting he fucked up, Buttmunch Billy doubled down and said that he was NOT insinuating any racism on his part: Yea dude, no one believes you. You’re not good at lying. You don’t go out of your way to research a meme’s origins, and then attribute it solely to a white supremacist, unless you’re trying to tie Gaffney to that particular white supremacist. We’re not as stupid as you are. Plus, who cares? Yea, there’s no consequences to being tied to a controversial white supremacist just a couple days after one of them murdered a woman with his car. It’s not like Joe Petty and his mindless followers will use that against him. Oh wait….. “Councilor Gaffney quotes white supremacist.” That’s the story now. That’s how it will be told from this point forward. Buttmunch Billy knew this, which is why he wrote it in the first place. But it’s not his fault: “It’s not on me the way partisans choose to use my reporting.” See? He was just reporting the facts by going out of his way to suggest that Gaffney quoted a Nazi. Not his fault how people react to that. Kind of like how people like Billy don’t blame Trump when his supporters do fucked up shit. Many accused him of racebaiting, but Buttmunch Billy once again disagreed: Yea, totally not race-baiting. White supremacy has nothing do with race. Then things got even juicier: Busted!!! Apparently Billy was texting Gaffney wanting to know why a post from one of his trolls named Eric Malouin was deleted: Notice the face he forgot to crop out after he screenshotted: Oh I see now – it was a group effort from Worcester Magazine. No wonder Gaffney wanted to spill the bins on their boss – they conspire to make him look bad and they got caught in the act. Nice going Billy. So that means Lyford was watching this all go down, started screenshotting his boy Eric’s troll comments, and then cried about it to Buttmunch Billy when Gaffney blocked him. Because Josh was too much of a pussy to confront Gaffney himself. Sad. It looks as if the local African-American community was not impressed with their race baiting: Boom. Roasted. Once Gaffney threatened to spill the bins on Walter’s sexting scandal, Billy realized he fucked up. He’s only been on the job a couple months and his childish vendetta was about to lead to the public humiliation of his boss. So he was all like, “Why not focus on my behavior?” Because Walter allowed this to happen. What you write reflects upon him. When South Shore Turtlegirl offends large groups of people they go after the brand, not the blogger. We all own it together. It’s OK though, because “Worcesteria” is “irreverent.” Yea, it’s just a joke Mike!! So I called you a white supremacist. Big deal snowflake!! His “friend” thought it was funny: At least he understands that without doing stuff like this no one would actually read his columns: I hate to even give Buttmunch Billy attention he so dearly craves. He writes about us EVERY SINGLE WEEK. Or so I’m told, I don’t read it myself. My grandmother calls me about it on her landline. He’s baiting for us to write about him because he’s smart enough to realize that becoming a Turtleboy villain will at least make him somewhat relevant. But now he’s finally got our attention. Unfortunately for him he was completely exposed for being the fraud that he is, and his boss might lose his job. We urge you to support the following local businesses.

Alex Jones delivered one of his all-time wildest rants against MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, whom he compared to demons, parasites and disease. The InfoWars host attacked the “Morning Joe” co-hosts Tuesday in a crazed tirade that included a bug-eyed, tongue-lolling impersonation of a demonic Brzezinski, reported Right Wing Watch. “They’re both like horrible foot-long tapeworms, man, I’m telling you,” Jones said. “Tapeworms that we vomited out and crapped out and they’re just trying to force-feed themselves back into our lives. They’re like gonorrhea or syphilis, I mean they are just — they’re like HIV, they’re like cancer. They are just — I mean, you have to understand, folks, they literally want to destroy you. God, they’re evil. Do you realize how evil these people are?” He promised the friends-turned-critics of President Donald Trump would be “removed” once Jones and his followers triumphed over their enemies, and then launched into a frenzied spasm of unholy gibberish. “They’re like from upside-down world, folks,” Jones said, making a reference to the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” “You have to understand. They’ve broken into this dimension. They want to destroy us.”

The Columbia University Law School professor and confidant of former FBI Director James Comey refuted a charge by President Donald Trump and his advocates in the media Monday: that Comey shared classified information with journalists. Daniel Richman, with whom Comey shared at least one memo -- the contents of which Richman shared with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt -- said President Trump was simply wrong. "No memo was given to me that was marked 'classified,'" Daniel Richman told CNN. "No memo was passed on to the Times." Richman did share the contents of one memo, he said, but "the substance of the memo passed on to the Times was not marked classified and to my knowledge remains unclassified." During Senate testimony in June, in which he said he gave memos to someone he described as a Columbia University professor, Comey said he specifically wrote the memos to avoid including classified information. "My thinking was, if I write it in such a way that I don't include anything that would trigger a classification, that'll make it easier for us to discuss, within the FBI and the government, and to -- to hold on to it in a way that makes it accessible to us," Comey told senators. On Sunday, writing in The Hill, John Solomon reported that, "More than half of the memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents." CNN has not independently verified The Hill's report. The Hill's reporting raised "the possibility," Solomon reported, that "Comey broke his own agency's rules and ignored the same security protocol" that Comey criticized Hillary Clinton for disregarding. Solomon did not report that the possible breaking of FBI rules was determined to have happened, nor did he report that this would be a violation of the law. Yet that is how President Trump depicted it in a tweet Monday morning: "James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!" One of the issues at play may have to do with whether any contents of the Comey memos have since been upgraded to classified, although that has not been definitively reported by CNN. The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Most of the country condemned Kathy Griffin’s now-infamous photo shoot holding a fake severed head of President Trump. The shocking photo shoot prompted a nationwide outrage and sparked debate over whether or not Griffin should be investigated as a threat to national security. As the Trump family reacted to the photo, it was reported that President Trump’s youngest child—11-year-old Barron—had seen the photo while watching the news and became understandably upset. The one thing these so-called artists fail to take into account is the impact their message will have on family members of their targets. It’s incredibly hard to believe that creating images of this violent nature wouldn’t provoke thought into how they will affect families or even the audience. Not only was Griffin’s photo shoot and full admission of wrongdoing completely unacceptable by anyone’s standards, it was disrespectful to victims of terrorism and their families. Radical Islamic terrorists are notorious for beheading innocent people—including Americans—for propaganda videos. By far, the most disgusting social media post came from some guy who apparently won big on Jeopardy over ten years ago. Ken Jennings took to Twitter and decided to campaign for Dirtbag of the Year. “Barron Trump saw a very long necktie on a heap of expired deli meat in a dumpster. He thought it was his dad and his little heart is breaking,” the game show winner from 2004 posted on his Twitter account. He even defended Griffin’s actions, citing—you guessed it—another game show from the ‘90s where he said Griffin was known for holding up severed heads. Barron Trump saw a very long necktie on a heap of expired deli meat in a dumpster. He thought it was his dad & his little heart is breaking — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 31, 2017 This kind of reaction is absolutely reprehensible, especially under the circumstances. CNN has since announced that Kathy Griffin has been fired from her job as a New Year’s Eve announcer for the network alongside Anderson Cooper, who also expressed outrage over the violent photo. With serious reactions to the photo taking place in the United States, opportunists usually crawl out of the woodwork to make a sad attempt at humor. This was a huge fail. Attacking a child who was understandably disturbed by the gruesome image of his father’s mock beheading is a new low in our society. Adding to this creep’s sentiment, Rosie O’Donnell weighed in via her Twitter account, dismissing Barron Trump’s reaction by asking, “Do you think he saw anything about these 2 heroic men who died defending young girls? Hatred promoted by his father?”This was in reference to the two men who were killed in Oregon defending a Muslim girl from an attack. Regarding which, by the way, President Trump released a statement condemning the act as hatred that has no place in the United States. It seems like reactions to disturbing incidents like the Kathy Griffin photo expose the true nature of individuals and separate those with compassion for humans—regardless of political belief—from truly heinous people.

Despite the fact that the Las Vegas shooter would have passed any an all background checks, some on the left still think background checks will somehow solve all of our ills in this country. They’re absolutely convinced that universal background checks will miraculously keep guns out of the hands of not just criminals, but also the man who may someday open fire on an unsuspecting crowd enjoying some music. However, what they think will happen and what actually occurs tends to be rather dissimilar. But such expanded background checks wouldn’t have stopped any of these attacks. Since 2000, all of our mass shooters obtained their weapons without using private transfers. Attacks such as the San Bernardino massacre in California and the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon occurred in states that already have universal background checks. Indeed, mass public shootings have recently occurred in France, Belgium, Norway, Germany and other European countries where these background checks also exist. This hole in their argument is so glaring that even some of the media have noticed it. Last year, ABC News’s Jon Karl asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), “Why are we focusing on things that have nothing to do with the massacres that we are responding to?” Murphy responded, “We can’t get into the trap in which we are forced to defend our proposals simply because it didn’t stop the last tragedy.” But obviously Karl’s question wasn’t just limited to the most recent attack. Research looking at U.S. data has consistently found no evidence that any type of background checks reduce rates of violent crime. Michael Bloomberg’s groups are the source of contrary claims, but they fail to analyze the national data in an academic manner. They compare states with background checks next to those without them. They do not compare states before and after background checks are imposed. The fact is that criminals have a pipeline for inexpensive black market guns that require no background checks either, as was illustrated by CBS in their report on Chicago gun crime. They’re not looking for private sellers who want the best dollar they can get from a prospective buyer. They want a gun, they want it cheap, and they want it now. Let’s also face the fact that criminals are, by definition, lawbreakers. They’re not concerned with whatever laws you pass because they’re already breaking so many, they figure, “What’s one more?” Despite claims by the leftists on social media, no one supports another massacre. No one at all. However, it doesn’t make any sense to make proposals that do nothing except inconvenience and burden law-abiding gun buyers who want to follow the law. While I may disagree with Sen. Feinstein’s bump-fire stock ban proposal, at least that makes some sense in light of what we know from Las Vegas. Universal background checks? Nope. No sense at all. Of course, why should anyone be surprised? These are the same people who still think banning guns will somehow ban violence in general while doing nothing about the underlying causes. Right now, things are no different except they’re also trying to ban things that have no bearing on what happened, just because they figure the public will back it at the moment. And I’ve had people wonder why I call these people ghouls.

(WEYI/WSMH) -- The Michigan State Police out of Detroit took to Twitter reporting the claims of a viral video about human trafficking in a Metro Detroit suburb are not accurate. "It was investigated by law enforcement and not a case of human trafficking. He was right about being vigilant but that’s about it," said the State Police on Twitter. This is the Facebook post where Nick Ahmad claims human trafficking almost happened to his wife and others. The video has been viewed over 650,000 times and shared close to 30,000 times. After an investigation the Michigan State Police took to twitter saying the viral Facebook video is not accurate.

After constant attacks from the political and media elites, Steve Bannon has some of the thickest skin in America. Washed up rapper Eminem ripped Bannon during his now infamous BET Hip Hop Awards freestyle. When asked what he thought of the diss, the Breitbart boss offered a classic response. Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon does not “give a shit” about Eminem’s freestyle roast in which he name-checks Bannon in his attempted takedown of President Donald Trump. “On the record: Honey badger don’t give a shit,” Bannon reportedly told Joshua Green, the Bloomberg reporter and author of the best-selling Devil’s Bargain book, on Wednesday evening. At the BET Hip Hop Awards on Tuesday, Eminem appeared in a video in which he attacked Trump and referenced Bannon. As TGP previously reported, Eminen went on a four minute freestyle rap against President Donald Trump. This was very poor poetry. Hip Hop is really hurting these days. Complete with references to Steve Bannon and the KKK. Of course, there is no truth to anything Eminem was rapping about. But what the hell. Meanwhile inner cities across the US continue to suffer and wither away with their drugs, gangs and Democrat politicians. (Warning on Language) Eminem obviously wants to be invited back next year. What a disgrace. Sponsored Sponsored

Donald Trump rose to power by telling disaffected white people that the past represents the right and natural order. Joe Raedle/Getty The rise of President-elect Donald J. Trump is a triumph for white supremacy and misogyny that too many of us believed was impossible in the United States in 2016. Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” is a call to return us to a past in which white men of all classes could expect the government to protect their economic and social dominance relative to racial minorities and women. It’s a harkening back to the “greatness” of a time when programs like the New Deal and the G.I. Bill created a path to a middle-class life through government benefits that were systematically denied to black people. When you didn’t have to let black people live in your white apartment buildings. When it was difficult or dangerous for a person of color to participate in the political process by voting. When only white men were judges. When black men accused of sexual assault were presumed guilty and faced execution, but powerful white men were free to treat women’s bodies as their property without facing legal consequences or even outrage. When men were men, and women knew their value depended on their attractiveness and subservience to those men. When a high school diploma entitled a white man to a good job without competition from people of color, women or robots. Trump rose to power by telling disaffected white people that the past represents the right and natural order, and he can bring it back. He made no secret of who he would take our country back from: minorities, women, immigrants, Muslims, Jews. And despite his open disdain for the rule of law, he often justified his mission by invoking the language the reactionary right has long used to describe their quest to turn back time: “restoring the Constitution.” It is imperative that we stop letting the right own the Constitution. Given that we’re about to have a president with dictatorial aspirations, and both houses of Congress controlled by the Republican Party from which he sprang, the public needs more than ever to understand and demand our constitutional protections. We must be a meaningful check on how much damage these people can do. But for that to happen, liberals are going to have to stop letting the right’s claims to constitutional authority for their preferred social order go unanswered. Too often, liberals and progressives treat the Constitution as an obsolete document written by white men who enslaved black people and treated women as property that has little relevance to our modern battles. In doing so, we’ve ceded the ground to white men longing for the good ol’ days. Yes, the Constitution was written by white guys who got a lot very wrong, and it would indeed be a bankrupt document if it were frozen in time. But while the Founders lacked the empathy or courage to recognize that “We the People” includes people of all colors, religions and genders, they enshrined revolutionary principles of what liberty entails and left room for us to interpret and amend the document to be more in keeping with those principles. Liberals must articulate a vision of the Constitution, because what Americans understand the Constitution to say acts as a constraint on what politicians and courts can do. Historically, we’ve made major strides by getting our fellow citizens to accept evolved interpretations of the Constitution’s text – for example, by arguing that segregation violates the right to equal protection of the law, and that forcing a person to carry a pregnancy to term against her will violates her 14th Amendment right to liberty. The shocking election of Donald Trump tells us we haven’t made nearly as much progress as we thought toward convincing our fellow citizens that all people are created equal and protected by the Constitution. It’s a moment to remember that in the not-so-distant past a suffragette demanding the full rights of citizenship could be imprisoned and force-fed, and even more recently black people doing the same were beaten and lynched. In hindsight, it was somewhat naive to think the country had changed so much and so quickly that it would resoundingly reject Trump’s misogyny, racism and xenophobia. Right now, in the days and weeks and months after Trump’s upset victory, we must articulate a vision of the Constitution to combat the idea that our changed country is a deviation from it. It is deeply unsettling to a large segment of Americans that they can suffer in economic malaise while a black man occupies the highest office, as the country becomes less white and Christian, and as women assume new roles. We need to be clear that there is no going back to when things were “great” just for white men – the changes we’ve seen are the inevitable result of moving closer to the equality the Constitution requires. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re female, we’re black, we’re brown, we’re Jewish and we’re Muslim. As dire as things feel today, Trump, his supporters and the Republicans who bred them will eventually have to get used to it. We must explain to change-resistant white people that an altered country is the inevitable result of adhering to the founding document they claim to revere. But the more concrete and immediate reason we have to start talking about the Constitution is that many of the things Trump wants to do are not only terrible policy, but flagrantly unconstitutional. We just elected a man who has proposed torturing people, making religious discrimination official policy, banning abortion and “loosening up” the First Amendment, along with a Congress full of Republicans who have proven incapable of standing up to him. We cannot let shock and fear and defeatism paralyze us. When Trump proposes something that is off-the-table constitutionally, We the People must tell him early and often and loudly that we’re not going to take it. Donald Trump becomes president-elect of the United States. Watch here.