See if you can guess what happened next!

Shot

Buried in amendments to the Interior Dept. Gov funding bill, is a stipulation that the Kennedy Center Opera House must be renamed the ‘First Lady Melania Trump Opera House’ in order to receive federal funds.

Chaser:

The House Appropriations Committee has voted to rename the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C., after First Lady Melania Trump — a move tucked into a broader government funding bill aimed at avoiding a potential shutdown in late September.

While no Republicans voted against it, one Democrat, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), a moderate and co-chair of the Blue Dog Caucus, voted in favor of the amendment. The final vote was 33-25.

While I will defer to my more knowledgeable FPers from the lumberjack and Nike corner of the United States on this question, I somehow doubt that Rep. Perez will pull many votes from Washington state’s not at all crazy Republican voters as a result of this heartwarming bipartisan gesture.

Speaking of heartwarming bipartisanship, Barack Obama has responded to that whole “you committed treason by investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, of which there was none, and by none we mean ‘a certain amount.'”

 “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.

“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

I’ll free ride on Karen’s expertise in regard to what totally not bought and paid for fascist mouthpiece Matt Taibbi has to say about this, as he’s been spending the last few weeks pumping this particular lie/hallucination.

The post Trump demands Kennedy Center Opera House be named after his current wife, or lose all federal funding appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

thesnadger:

Being a Jew in America right now is so bizarre. The president’s right hand man endorses a far-right German party that wants to remove Holocaust memorials and ban the sale of kosher meat, members of the ruling party are doing nazi salutes at rallies, and standing members of congress openly repeat conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and Jewish space lasers. Then you see a news article about antisemitism and it’s like “we need to do something about all these college students protesting mass killings.”

I went to Dubai wrongheaded. I learnt nothing and left nauseated. I had thought it would be fun -- funny, even -- to experience the disorientation of standing at the pivot point between two world systems. Instead, it was merely disorientating -- sickeningly so. There are hells on earth and Dubai is one: an infernal creation born of the worst of human tendencies. Its hellishness cannot be laid solely at the feet of the oligarchs, whose wealth it attracts, nor the violent organised criminals who relocate there to avoid prosecution. It is hellish because, as the self-appointed showtown of free trade, it provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world -- and not be blamed openly for this desire -- visit Dubai. But know that you will not be blameless for doing so. Every Instagram post, every TikTok video, every gloating WhatsApp message sent from its luxury is an abomination. A PR campaign run by those who have already bought the product, and now want only to show you that they can afford it. [...]

If you try to humanise the place you will lose your mind. If you ask yourself what the woman at the hair-braiding stand left behind to be here, and why, you will lose your mind. If you accept the kindness of the staff with whom you make a paltry effort to speak each morning as they clear your dirty breakfast plate, you will lose your mind, because your tip is the only kindness you can meaningfully offer in return. Trying to attend to your own towel by the pool might cause the man who stands for hours in the ferocious sun to do so for you to lose his job. Being served makes us cruel infants. It demeans us all.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Psychological thriller shows enthrall us and often feature mind games, plot twists, and characters with dark personality traits that keep us hooked. Here are the nine best psychological thriller tv shows of all time and where to stream them.

You

Hello, you. Joe Goldberg is just your typical creepy, stalkerish neighborhood psychopathic serial killer looking for love in all the wrong places (or perhaps the right ones, with all the wrong motives).  In You, Penn Badgley gives one of the eeriest performances in TV show history. In four seasons, we see Joe become obsessed with and kill the women he stalks and claims to love, fall in love with a woman (Love Quinn) who has similar predilections, only to not even be able to handle meeting someone like him, and even go to England as a fugitive on the run, manipulating students as a professor.

Mindhunter

FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench and psychologist Wendy Carr lead the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit as they start to interview imprisoned serial killers so they can better understand the mindset and motives of criminals who commit sadistic and violent crimes. The show features serial killers like the BTK Killer, Edmund Kemper, and Richard Speck.

Tell Me Your Secrets

It’s hard when your former lover turns out to be a psychopathic serial killer, and even more difficult when you can’t remember whether you also committed crimes alongside him. Lily Rabe stars as Karen Miller in Tell Me Your Secrets, the ex-partner of notorious serial killer Kit Parker. After she finds out about Kit’s horrific crimes against women, Karen is forced to relive her romantic history with Kit while being hunted down by one of the mothers of Kit’s victims. However, all is not what it seems and the real psychopaths in sheep’s clothing are yet to be discovered.

Behind Her Eyes

What seems like your typical “husband has affair” television show has one of the biggest plot twists of all time in Behind Your Eyes, a mind-bending psychological thriller about Louise, single mother who begins a love affair with her new boss David, and a strangely alluring friendship with his wife. However, the relationship between David and his wife holds deeper, darker secrets that no one could have ever imagined. This is one television show we can confidently say has a surprise ending you will never see coming.

The Stranger

Harlan Corben’s The Stranger stars Richard Armitage as Adam Price. When Adam is approached by a mysterious stranger in a baseball hat claiming to know secrets about his wife, Corinne, Corinne disappears and Adam is forced to grapple with the true nature of the people he loves the most. The Stranger is a suspenseful tv thriller that also has a surprise plot twist ending no one could have foreseen.

Clickbait

A father goes missing, and his loved ones are sent a viral video where he holds up a sign saying he abuses women, and he will die if the video receives five million views. Zoe Kazan stars as Pia Brewer in this psychological thriller drama, Nick’s younger sister who helps to uncover the truth of what really happened the night Nick Brewer disappeared and investigates whether Nick is really the predator he is being painted as or if his kidnappers have darker motives.

Bates Motel

Freddie Highmore plays a younger version of Norman Bates, a contemporary retelling and prequel to Hitchcock’s film, Psycho. Bates Motel explores the terrifyingly enmeshed relationship between Norman and his mother as Norman becomes more and more dangerous.

Dexter

Dexter is just your friendly neighborhood sociopath, a blood splatter analyst by day and a serial killer of serial killers by night. He only kills the “bad guys” but occasionally makes mistakes too. As viewers follow Dexter through his journey as a killer who tries to flee detection and capture and cleans up the scenes of his own crimes, we also get a horrifying look into how he became the killer that he is, and how his “extracurricular activities” affect his romantic relationships and ability to live a normal life.

The Fall

A detective, Stella Gibson, hunts down a serial killer who targets young professional women and lives a double life as a family man while confronting the demons of her own past. The Fall is a suspenseful tv thriller about psychopaths that will keep you on your toes.