A Trump to be dumped

The Bellend of the Month for March 2017 is Donald Trump, who as you should all know is the orange toddler who has been in charge of America for 70 days as of 12 noon Eastern. It is an important reminder that, even if Trump was able to read a speech without screwing it up, he’s still the same despicable liar, petulant child-man, dictator-wannabe he has always been. We gave Donald Trump a chance and then he:

1. Restarted the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.

2. Instituted a federal hiring freeze that blocked 2,000 vital, new positions at the VA, and indefinitely suspended Army childcare programs for vets.

3. Approved a raid in Yemen that killed 30 people including at least 10 civilians, many of whom were women and children, as well as U.S. Navy Seal Ryan Owens.

4. Reinstated and strengthened the global gag rule thereby pulling all world-wide federal funding from any institutions that even attempt to educate patients about abortion.

5. Rescinded federal bathroom protections for trans students.

6. Used the office of the presidency to criticize Nordstrom, a private company, for no longer selling his daughter’s clothing line.

7. Didn’t fully divest from his businesses and has transferred many of his companies to his sons opening the door for a litany of potential conflicts of interest.

8. Didn’t release his tax returns like he promised, and has no plans to do so.

9. Demonized and repeatedly attacked the free press in order to build a propaganda machine.

10. Signed a bill reversing the Stream Protection Rule making it far easier for coal companies to dump mining waste in rivers, lakes, and streams.

11. Announced plans to sign executive orders lifting a coal mining ban on federal land, and lifting or limiting restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from utility companies.

12. Signed an executive order, later ruled to be unconstitutional, barring immigrants and travelers from 7 Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S.

13. Lied about inauguration crowd size.

14. Lied about the size of his electoral college victory.

15. Lied about attacks in Sweden, yet never mentioned attacks in Kansas or Quebec perpetrated by white men on people of color.

16. Lied about being solely responsible for Lockheed Martin cutting $700 million from the F-35 program.

17. Lied about the New York Times failing.

18. Lied about Chris Cuomo never asking Senator Blumenthal about misrepresenting his service in Vietnam.

19. Lied about major news organizations intentionally ignoring terrorist attacks.

20. Lied about the murder rate being the highest its been in 47 years.

21. Lied about Philadelphia’s murder rate increasing.

22. Lied about people being killed at Obama’s farewell address.

23. Lied about Obamacare covering “very few people.”

24. Lied about the media being less trusted than congress.

25. Lied about sanctuary cities being hotbeds of crime.

26. Said “Any negative polls are fake news.”

27. Berated the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

28. Threatened to send U.S. troops into Mexico.

29. Used the National Prayer breakfast to throw shade at Arnold Schwarzenegger.

30. Said he would “get rid of and totally destroy” the Johnson amendment, which was designed to keep religion out of politics.

31. Appointed Betsy Devos, a billionaire GOP donor with no public school experience to run our public school system.

32. Appointed fossil-fuel-shill and climate change-denier Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. He’s sued the EPA 13 times.

33. Appointed Jeff Sessions, a man whose racist comments cost him a federal judgeship in 1986, as the attorney general.

34. Appointed Rex Tillerson, a former Exxon CEO with no military or government experience as secretary of state.

35. Appointed Rick Perry, a man with who once forgot the Department of Energy existed, flunked organic chemistry, and received Cs and Ds in other science courses to run the Department of Energy.

36. Appointed Ben Carson, a man with no government, housing or management experience to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Two weeks prior to being nominated, Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams said “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”

37. Appointed former Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn to head the National Economic Council.

38. Appointed former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin to head the Treasury Department.

39. Appointed Alt-right hero and former Breitbart Editor Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and later elevated him to the National Security Council.

40. Continued to criticize Hillary Clinton, without ever criticizing Vladimir Putin.

41. Threatened Chicago with martial law.

42. Threatened to take away funding from all sanctuary cities.

43. Announced plans to repeal Dodd-Frank and fiduciary rule.

44. Plans to make major cuts to the EPA while dramatically increasing military spending.

45. Demeaned our court system and questioned a federal judge’s credentials.

46. Continued to push evidence-less claims of voter fraud.

47. Tweeted “I’LL SEE YOU IN COURT” to a court.

48. Cost taxpayers serious money in travel expenses. Estimates by the Washington Post show that his first month in office has cost nearly as much as Obama’s first year.

49. Set his sons out to travel the globe, growing the Trump brand with secret service in tow while taxpayers are footing the bill.

50. Nominated Neil Gorsuch, an originalist, for the open supreme court seat.

51. Hired hateful, loony creationist Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead a higher education task force.

52. Tapped vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head a commission on vaccine safety.

53. Gave a belligerent 57 minute press conference in which he attacked the media and lied about numerous inconsequential things.

54. Made a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day and never mentioned Jewish people.

55. Fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for saying the travel ban was unconstitutional. A few weeks later, the travel ban was ruled unconstitutional in federal court.

56. Supported his newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to rescind Obama-era efforts and build up the private prison system once again.

57. Showed that he shakes people’s hands like a frustrated, socially-awkward baboon.

Holy shot indeed

 

Just Vunter Slaush being Vunter Slaush

Vunter Sloush Kapu-Sh-kuh, Shpealer in Mein Shoon-ska, Het Vaait Axle Rose-ia, Danka Vunter Slaush-a... 
  

Hearts of Popeye

If an overhyped vegetable existed before marketers coined the term superfood — and long before Oprah Winfrey chatted up acai berries with Dr. Oz — look no further than spinach. (Here’s to Popeye, eating the stuff by the can to inflate his biceps.) Spinach alone, of course, won’t pump anyone up. But it does have a few physical properties of the type that excite biomedical engineers. Spinach grows a network of veins, for instance, that thread through its leaves in a way similar to blood vessels through a human heart. These leafy veins allowed researchers at Massachusetts’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute to give a new meaning to heart-healthy spinach. The tissue engineers, as they reported recently in the journal Biomaterials, stripped green spinach leaves of their cells. The spinach turned translucent. The scientists seeded the gaps that the plant cells left behind with human heart tissue. Heart cells, in clusters, beat for up to three weeks in this unusual environment. The inspiration for the human-plant fusion came over lunch — and, yes, the leafy greens were involved — when WPI bioengineers Glenn Gaudette and Joshua Gershlak began to brainstorm new ways to tackle a deadly medical problem: the lack of donor organs. Of the more than 100,000 people on the donor list, nearly two dozen people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant. And if they try this with other organs, those people's lives could be saved. But the question now: would those people want to be saved? And should they be saved?

Our true horoscopes, everyone

 

Cos some tags are never meant to be cleaned off

 

Time to separate the men from the boys

 

But Vanilla Ice is the best

 

So why 42?

 

Plot twist: they all are

 

Celebrating 30 years of wedded bliss with Mark and Mindy

 

Reds net 600th EPL win

Manchester United returned to winning ways in the Premier League with a hard-fought 3-1 triumph over relegation-threatened Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium, becoming the first club to record 600 Premier League victories in the process. Marouane Fellaini's first-half header was doubled by Jesse Lingard in spectacular fashion just past the hour mark. Substitute Rudy Gestede gave Boro a fighting chance, but Antonio Valencia put the game to bed late on after capitalising on a mistake from Victor Valdes, meaning Jose Mourinho's men move ahead of Arsenal into fifth in the Premier League. But there's still time to go further on the table and improve on LVG's 5th-place finish last year.

Chucky B. Gone

 

That "floor" is supposed to be wet

 

Time to know your clovers boyos!

 

It's Trump's loss - they're worth ditching Melania over

 

Their Big Fat Greek Flag

 

The Complete Guide to Female Endowment

 

Footrot cartoonist now flat

Final Yogi for 2017 goes to the late Murray Ball, who has been smarter than the average cartoonist over not just the past year but all his years drawing Footrot Flats, a comic strip from New Zealand that could hold its own against American stalwarts such as Garfield and Hagar the Horrible. For those who have never seen a Footrot Flats strip, here's a little taster of what you have been missing out on all these years:

 

Voting advice for the next 7 years

Yogi #2 for 2017 will be shared among the third party voters in the presidential election last year, of which there were more than in previous elections. Anyone who votes third party is smarter than the average voter, as this shows just how you feel about the two-party system. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil, and those third party voters knew it. They've all earned this one.

Purple wrap tastes like crap

The first Yogi Award for 2017 goes to Whittaker's, who are smarter (and better tasting) than the average chocolate makers. They have been New Zealand-owned and operated for 120 years, they make all their delicious chocolate from bean to bar, and are not going anywhere soon. That's more than can be said for Cadbury. That's right, the river of chocolate that sustained thousands of Dunedin workers (including at one point my father and his current fiancée) over the years looks set to run dry. But while the closure of Cadbury's landmark factory will be a major blow to the southern city, no one is seeing it as a sign of wider problems in the manufacturing sector. Commentators say the writing has been on the wall for a while now, but there was still shock when Cadbury's owner last month announced that it plans to close the factory, leaving some 360 people without jobs. Mondelez International, Cadbury's multi-billion-dollar US parent company, cited increasing costs and distance to its markets as making it untenable to continue the business - even though it is still profitable. Given that more than 70% of Cadbury's New Zealand production is exported, the decision to move production to Australia and close its last manufacturing plant in this country next year was a logical - if tough - decision to make, said Mondelez. Of course the real reason for this is about money, as with anything a for-profit does. Even Sam Neill knows this, as he has come out in support of Cadbury factory workers, asking people to never buy or sell Cadbury products again. In a Twitter post, Neill asked all New Zealanders and Australians to "NEVER sell or buy anything Cadbury EVER again" if Cadbury's owner, American food giant Mondelez International, follows through with the closure of its Dunedin factory. Neill also tweeted Dunedin was his home town and closing the Cadbury factory was, "ripping the guts out of a community and its history". I'm already boycotting them with one exception: they have a Dairy Milk with Oreo Mint out right now, and I've got one which I'm saving up to eat for breakfast or lunch on St Patrick's Day.

So the restaurateur set the record straight

 

So someone wrote this bitchy review last month

 

Silver and Black in the Silver State

The Oakland Raiders have moved into the Red Zone on their quest to relocate to Las Vegas, and the final push over the goal line could happen sooner rather than later. According to multiple high-ranking National Football League sources, the NFL's owner-comprised stadium and finance committees are poised to recommend the Raiders relocation request to Las Vegas be voted on at the league's annual meeting in three weeks in Phoenix. The inclination to make the recommendation is based on two days of meetings in Florida in which the Raiders, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity, presented a strong case for their Las Vegas bid. The most compelling part now is the Raiders securing Bank of America to fill the $650 million funding gap created when Las Vegas Sands head Sheldon Adelson walked away from the deal after he and the Raiders could not come to terms on a partnership deal. I hope Vegas works out for them and also for the Golden Knights NHL team. I'm sure it won't be too big a gamble.

Fuelling the flames of comedy

 

The truth has been spoken

 

A goal apiece for cherry and red

Manchester United were held to a frustrating 1-1 draw by 10-man Bournemouth at Old Trafford as Artur Boruc saved a second-half Zlatan Ibrahimovic penalty to deny the Reds the chance to move into the top four. Marcos Rojo had put United into a first-half lead, before former Red Joshua King levelled from the spot. Andrew Surman was shown a second yellow card moments before the break for pushing Ibrahimovic following an aerial challenge between United's no.9 and Tyrone Mings. But surely the Reds should have been able to beat the Cherries after Surman's indiscretion. They have not won the Premiership since 2013 but will still have a chance at it if they win the rest of their games between now and the end of the season.

Third genders in Trump's America

 

Green light given for Green Light

The wait is over. It’s been nearly four years since Lorde released her debut album, Pure Heroine - and more than two years since her last single, Yellow Flicker Beat off the soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1. But now the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter from New Zealand is back. Green Light is the name of the first single off of her new album, Melodrama, due later this year. The song, co-written by Fun. guitarist - and Lena Dunham's boyfriend - Jack Antonoff, was penned in response to Lorde’s “first major heartache,” she said in an interview with Beats 1. “It’s not something that I really am used to writing about,” she said. “This is that drunk girl at the party dancing around crying about her ex-boyfriend who everyone thinks is a mess. That’s her tonight, and tomorrow she starts to rebuild. And that’s the song for me.” And if you want to see the video for Green Light, here it is:

And so the fallout begins

More developments in the Oscargate affair: the two accountants responsible for muddling up the main award envelopes at Sunday's Oscars ceremony will not be employed to do the job again, the academy president has announced. Cheryl Boone Isaacs said that the relationship with the accountancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) was also under review. Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz were responsible for Sunday's mishap. La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner of the best picture award. The team behind that film were in the middle of their speeches before it was revealed the accolade should have gone to Moonlight. So how did that happen? Here's how: Mr Cullinan mistakenly handed the wrong envelope to the two presenters. He gave Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the back-up envelope for best actress in a leading role - rather than the envelope which contained the name of the winner for the best film. PWC, which counts the votes and organises the envelopes, has apologised for the mix-up. Mr Cullinan tweeted a picture of best actress winner Emma Stone minutes before handing the presenters the wrong envelope, and Ms Boone Isaacs blamed "distraction" for the error. In 89 years of Academy Award history, this is clearly the funniest thing that has ever happened - it's a darn sight funnier than the darkening political climate.

The Pears of Buddha