CrankyYank Vol. 58: Introducing TrumpTicker™ | EXCLUSIVE: Chechnya Atrocities | Eating Boob Implants & More

“When you laugh, you are not afraid anymore.
Dictators are afraid of jokers. Laughing in the face of tyranny and fear
disarms them in front of their supporters.” — Basseem Youssef

Turns out hypocritical politicians are an expensive date.

Donald Trump—who mercilessly mocked President Obama for golfing too much—is on track to out-links him in a dramatic way.

To date, Donald has played golf at least 13 times in his first 100 days, compared to President Obama playing 1 round in the same period.

All politicians lie, but some are better at it than others. Many politicians go back on their word and contradict themselves—but in the case of golfing, specifically, no president* in American history has mocked his predecessor so much and then gone and committed the exact thing he railed against.

Which brings me to a new effort we call the TrumpTicker™. With a h/t to John Fugelsang for inspiring the idea, frequent collaborator Rob O’Connor and I will soon launch a ticker that shows a running Trump travel and security tab (much like the debt clock) that we can compare to his predecessors. Already he’s on track to shatter the amount spent by Obama—that is, if he actually completes his first term.

RELATED: TRUMP CALLED PRESIDENT OBAMA A ‘HABITUAL VACATIONER‘

We need your help in aggregating, prioritizing and fact-checking our data, so please consider joining the TrumpTicker™ project. In the coming days and weeks I’ll be promoting and tweeting about it so we can get some cool people on board. Please e-mail us if you’re interested.

Meantime, bookmark the TrumpTicker™ page and check back often for updates.

Trump’s excursions seem hypocritical given the way he lambasted Obama for his golf habit on the campaign trail. — (GOOD Magazine)

 

“Some have returned home barely alive from the beatings they’ve gotten.”

Reporting on news and global affairs can be a joy, and other times it makes my stomach turn. This falls in the latter category: Chechnya has reportedly created a secret prison—also described as a “concentration camp”—in the town of Argun.

After the horror of the Holocaust, and widespread understanding of never allowing it to occur again, it leaves me speechless that the U.S. mainstream media has dedicated so little ink in covering this story.

Maria Sjodin, deputy executive director of OutRight International, said in an e-mail to me that Russia has been conspicuously silent on the issue—despite loud calls for an investigation from notable world leaders.

“So far several United Nations experts, many groups in the European Parliament and a number of government officials have made statements calling on Russia to intervene,” she says. “Even though there has been a significant response from the international community, so far no investigations into the detention of gay men in Chechnya have yet been started.”

Sadly Chechnya is only one of many examples of LGBTQ+ people being marginalized or physically harmed around the world. “The brutal violence in Chechnya is extreme in the number of people targeted by authorities in a short amount of time, but we all know that LGBTIQ communities worldwide are not safe and suffer violence and persecutions,” Sjodin adds. “OutRight fights for LGBTIQ people globally since 1990 and we know this work will keep us busy for decades.”

Take action: Sign up for the OutRight mailing list; follow them on Twitter and Facebook; and make a donation through Give Out Day and your funds will be doubled.

 

I’m very pro on anything innovative that works to reduce our reliance on plastic water bottles. According to HuffPo Canada, a new start-up company has introduced a consumable blob of water made of “calcium chloride and brown algae extract”—all of which is natural and biodegradable.

There’s one catch: not everybody is wild about the consistency and taste. From the article:

“The membrane is not appealing to everyone. In an interview in 2014 with Smithsonian magazine, co-creator Rodrigo García González noted, ‘Not all of the reactions were positive. Some people say [they taste like] breast implants or jellyfish.’

But the creators have been working on fixes and it still could be better than the alternative.”

If you’re worried about the rise of “purity tests” among progressive activists, you’re not alone (ExtraNewsFeed)… Peter Quinn was killed off on Homeland (Showtime), which caps off more than 2 seasons of writers and showrunners beating the crap out of him. Here’s to hoping he gets his own spin-off series in pre-quel form; I’ve covered this season and others regularly on CrankYank and will ramp it up again for Season 7 (Variety)… Twitter tells Trump to go fuck himself with his demand of revealing an anti-Orange Resistance account (RawStory).

 

After the kind of week we’ve had, we need a Cure Your Crankies more than ever. I submit to you the time-lapse photography of Shane Black—an award winning videographer and photographer whose travels to some of our most treasured landmarks come to life.

National Geographic has a wonderful write up on YouTube about him, including the fact that he made a life change to dedicate himself to his craft.

After quitting a comfortable day job, Black spent two months on the road shooting time-lapses of some of America’s most beautiful spots. His ‘Adventure Is Calling’ video is the mesmerizing result, made from 10,000 of the photos he took.

Make sure to like him on Facebook and check out his website. 🔵

 

That’s a wrap guys! Please join me again next Thursday at 2 p.m.

---

Will Pollock is an Atlanta-based freelance multimedia journalist focusing on pop-culture, politics, journalism & media, retail, real estate, travel, politics, and human-interest stories. 

He is the author of two books (Pizza for Good & Leaving Triscuit), with more on the way. Sign up for the mailing list, follow on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram—and check out the book links below.

Make sure to comment often—cranky loves company. If you enjoy CrankyYank, please consider telling your friends to read, like and subscribe. 🙂

Support independent authors, writers, artists, journalists, reporters and professionals. Buy a book, leave a review, start a discussion. Thank a reporter if you like a story you see or read. Our success as a nation depends on your engagementand involvement at every level.