Oh No He Didn't!

John Oliver was covering the coal industry, and its rather silly PR efforts on his show, and a famously litigious coal company CEO sent a cease and desist to prevent the show from mocking him. Much hilarity ensues:T

This past weekend on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, he took on the issue of "coal" and some politicians' obsession with coal jobs as the only true "American" jobs. The whole segment is interesting, but obviously not the kind of thing we'd normally write up. What we do frequently write about, however, is censorious threats, often from wealthy execs, designed to try to silence people from commenting on issues regarding those doing the threatening. And, it appears that's exactly what happened with coal exec Bob Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, when he found out that John Oliver was doing a segment that included some bits about Murray.

I recommend watching the whole thing, but the parts about Murray include a brief bit around 4:45 in the video and then a much longer section starting around 12:30 in the video, where Oliver notes:

I'm going to need to be careful here, because when we contacted Murray Energy for this piece, they sent us a letter instructing us to "cease and desist from any effort to defame, harass, or otherwise injure Mr. Murray or Murray Energy" and telling us that "failure to do so will result in immediate litigation..."

This is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and John Oliver decides to put the spurs to Mr. Murray.

He goes full talking squirrel (just watch the video) on Robert Murray's flabby white ass:



Righteous!

Badass of the Day

Patty Lupone: (Warning, F-Bomb dropped)



Needless to say, she has been added to the order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

Colbert on O'Reilly's Firing

Tonight! Late Show host Stephen Colbert reacts to #BillOReilly's dismissal from Fox News. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/4pAIBJ9aGJ

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 20, 2017

As I have noted many times, Colbert is on my list of, "People I Do Not Want to Piss Off." for a very good reason.

Jon Stewart Opens up a Can of Whup-Ass on the Media

He tunnels into Colbert's show, and offers advice to the media.

Specifically, he suggests that Trump just isn't that into them, and that they should take up a hobby ……… Perhaps journalism might fill the void.

I Couldn't Watch This Last Night

Last night Trevor Noah had right wing conservative Tomi Lahren.

It was a very polite conversation, and since Lahren is basically a blond shapley Rush Limbaugh without the charm, I got frustrated with the genial tenor, and watched Alton Brown macerate squashes or suchlike.

Today, I read glowing reviews of how thoroughly he destroyed her.

He really did. It kind of sneaks up on you, it's like watching Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, setting the witness at ease before making them confess to murder.

The first 5 minutes are hard, but it is worth it.

M

Elizabeth Warren Gets Added to My List of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off

Oh, Snap

Wells Fargo has been coercing low level employees to create accounts without customer's knowledge.

Wells has fired over 5000 low level employees over the criminogenic environment created by upper management.

They mandated cross-selling 8 accounts per customer when the industry norm is less than 3 accounts per customer

The manager of the division, Carrie Tolstedt, was allowed to retire with a $125 million wet kiss from the bank.

Well, the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, was called before the Senate Banking Committee, and Elizabeth Warren gutted him like an overfed mackerel:

The Senate Banking Committee conducted a hearing Tuesday about the massive scandal currently engulfing Wells Fargo. The word "fraud" was used repeatedly by senators on both sides of the aisle when describing the bank's creation of millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts for existing customers.

………

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a longtime advocate for more stringent regulation of Wall Street—tore into Stumpf, describing the unauthorized accounts as a "massive, years long scam." She asked Stumpf what he has done to take responsibility for his bank's actions. "You have said repeatedly, 'I am accountable,'" she said. "But what have you done to actually hold yourself accountable? Have you resigned?"

Stumpf avoided answering the question directly, prompting Warren to repeat her question, her voice rising, at least three times.

Warren proceeded to pummel Stumpf with more questions. "Have you returned one nickel of the money you earned while this scam was going on?" she asked. Stumpf evaded the question several times. (Stumpf said earlier in the hearing that he earned $19.3 million last year.) Finally, an exasperated Warren said, "I'll take that as a 'no.'"

She then asked if he'd fired any members of his senior management. Stumpf initially began by describing the firing of regional branch managers, but Warren stopped him, emphasizing that her question was not about low-level leadership but about the people at the top. Again, Stumpf's answer was no.

She then went on to note that Stumpf had earned an additional $200 million in stock options from the stock appreciation largely driven by their absurdly high cross-selling numbers.

She really took the bark off that asshole, and it is a true thing of beauty.

Watch ……… the ……… Video.

Ouch

John Oliver gets into charter school fraud.

He doesn't discuss the merits, he just details the extensive history of fraud.

It is beautuful:

Samantha Bee is Kicking Some Major Ass

Asking tough questions, like why everyone hates 
Ted Cruz with a white hot burning passion

She just unloaded on Ted Cruz, and it was a thing of beauty.

Watch it.

I am now adding Ms. Bee to the most sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

I think that this is the first Canadian on the list.

I'm Really Enjoying Trevor Noah on The Daily Show

Case in point, his latest skewering of police whingeing about the fact that they might be recorded when the break the law and violate the constitution:

The police are just trying to make a basic point: People are treating them unfairly just because of who they are and how they look. People keep following them around with cameras, watching everything they do, suspicious that they're always about to break the law, leaving police afraid to even get out of their cars for fear that someone might whip out a phone and brutally film them. Who can imagine how that must feel? And if you listen carefully, all the police are saying is "phones down, don't shoot."

It is a brutal take-down of police complaints about the fact that law enforcement agents might now be held accountable for breaking the law.

What people like New York Police Union president Patrick Lynch and FBI director James Comey are suggesting is that we must structure our society so that police are able to operate with impunity, and without accountability, all while operating in secrecy.

This is quite literally the definition of a police state.

So, to Be Clear, Your Fake Penis Isn't OK, but Your Over-Compensation Penis Is

Larry Wilmore makes some very amusing points about the Texas "More Guns at Schools" law:



He then juxtaposes it quite cleverly with the UT Austin dildo gun protest.

And Now, the Video Evidence

Last night, night, I declared that Trevor Noah's monologue on Donald Trump was brilliant, and that he is a worthy successor to Jon Stewart.

Tonight, I can show you the video:

Trevor Noah is Going to Do Quite Well

On The Daily Show this evening, Trevor Noah has an AMAZING opening monologue.

Not to spoil it too much, but he argued that Donald Trump was quite presidential, only the presidency in question was an African one, like Muammar Qaddafi, Idi Amin, and Robert Mugabe.

It was brilliant.

I am now adding Mr. Noah to the most sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

Don't Make Larry Wilmore Angry, You Wouldn't Like It When He's Angry

In Texas, it appears that if you are Muslim, and you bring a project to show your engineering teacher, they will cuff you and haul you off to jail:

Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.

As a result, a 14-year-old freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., who is partial to tinkering, technology and NASA T-shirts and wants to go to M.I.T., found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nation’s charged debates on Islam, immigration and ethnicity.

“Cool clock, Ahmed,” President Obama said on Twitter. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.” Mr. Obama’s staff invited Ahmed to the White House for Astronomy Night on Oct. 19, an event bringing together scientists, engineers, astronauts, teachers and students to spend a night stargazing from the South Lawn.

The president’s spokesman said the episode was a case study in unreasoned prejudice in an era when the country is fighting Islamic terrorism at home and in the Middle East.

“This episode is a good illustration of how pernicious stereotypes can prevent even good-hearted people who have dedicated their lives to educating young people from doing the good work that they set out to do,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

These are not good-hearted people, and Irving is not a good-hearted place.

Their mayor, Beth Van Duyne, has successfully run on a platform of religious bigotry for years now, and I do not expect anything resembling an apology from her.

Of course, now it's blown up into a major sh%$ storm with POTUS got into the game on Twitter:

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

I really hope that Irving will spend the next few years as the butt of "dumb hick" jokes on the late night shows.

I always knew that Irving was a center of evil, it was the Dallas Cowboys home field until 2008,^* but this takes to a whole new (low) level.

If we cannot give all of Texas back to Mexico, can we give Irving back?

Please?


^*They now play in Arlington, TX, the largest city in the US without a mass transit system.

Jon Stewart Just Hurt Me

You can see the many hairstyles of Bernie at Buzzfeed

He is, of course, in reruns now, but he was doing his monologue, and I had had not heard it before.

And then he said:

Sure, Bernie Sanders is drawing crowds in the thousands, but for some reason the 'media' has decided you can't be a serious candidate if your hair looks like your dick got caught in an electrical socket.

I started laughing, and I just had to share this with Sharon.^*

So, laughing hysterically, I started up the stairs, but I could not catch my breath I was laughing so hard, and ended up falling down the stairs.

Thankfully, nothing but some bruising minor bruising, and a majorly freaked out wife.

Actually, it freaked out my cats too.

As I lay at the bottom of the stairs, giggling, Destructo was staring at me with obvious concern.

I'm OK, just a bruise on my left radius and wrist.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

I Never Thought That I Would Her to My List of, "People I Do Not Want to Piss Off."

But Taylor Swift has earned her entry into the most noble order of the "People I Do Not Want to Piss Off".

Taylor: 1 — Apple: 0:

Tech oligarchs aren’t supposed to say sorry. And no, Apple hasn’t formally apologized to the music community for demanding that it works for Apple for free, Apple still comes out of it with plenty of credit.

Ten days ago, the contracts for Apple’s new Spotify-ish streaming service leaked out, and they contained an unprecedented request. Apple said artists and rights owners would not be paid for music streamed during the service's first three months. During that time, the service will be offered for free to people, and then rise to something like ten bucks a month.

Typically, streaming pays almost nothing today – fractions of a penny. The segment numbers tens of millions of paying subscribers, and hasn’t achieved scale. But this, from Apple, was genuinely nothing: a big, fat zero. The story flew onto the business pages. Only bottom-feeding pirate websites used artists' work without paying them, and it looked like Apple was diving into the cesspit of file-sharers.

………

Within hours of the world’s biggest pop star weighing in on the side of the indies, Apple caved in. Taylor Swift livened up Sunday with a devastating open letter to Apple, explaining her music wouldn’t be on Apple Music.

By the evening, Apple’s content chief Eddy Cue was tweeting, and phoning reporters, to tell say the no-royalties period was scrapped. Artist will believe it when they see the new contracts arrive: the trial-period royalty may be lower than the regular royalty. But that’s still an epic turnaround – and Apple emerges looking better than anyone expected last week.

Apple clearly wants Apple Music to succeed – and many artists and rights owners want it to succeed, too. This is surprising on the face of it, given that Apple pays barely more than streaming services. (Again, we’ll wait for the first royalty statements before seeing whether this is true.)

 Well played, Ms. Swift.

The Only Donald Worse than Trump

Larry Wilmore, who I had neglected to put on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, (Since corrected) was rather put out by Donald Rumsfeld's rewriting history on Iraq and claiming that he never suggested that he was bringing a stable democracy to Iraq.

Rumsfeld, 2003:

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.

Rumsfeld, 2015:

Over a decade after presiding over the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the country may not have been ready for a democracy.

In an interview with British newspaper the Times, the former Secretary of Defense reflected on America's role in shaping the Middle East, and suggested expecting Iraq to seamlessly transition to a democracy was "unrealistic."

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories," Rumsfeld told the Times. "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

Larry Wilmore rightly said the Rumsfeld is, "The only Donald worse than Trump."

And I am saying that Larry Willmore is a part of the sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

Tweet of the Day

In response to a misogynist tweet about the UK elections directed at her, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling responded:

.@sjosiah0 The Internet doesn’t just offer opportunities for misogynistic abuse, you know. Penis enlargers can also be bought discreetly.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 8, 2015

That is brilliant, and I place Ms. Rowling in my most sacred order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.

H/t Vox.

This is F%$#ing Brutal

Part 1


Part 2

Jon Stewart interviewed Judith Miller, one of the most egregious propagandists in American journalism, and he took her apart.

You need to watch the whole thing, but Stewart's statement to towards the end of the interview gives one a sense of how Stewart gave Miller a bad time:

We’re obviously never going to see eye-to-eye on itI appreciate you coming on the program. These discussions always make me incredibly sad because they point to institutional failure at the highest levels and no one will take responsibility for it, and they pass the buck to every individual but themselves. It’s sad.

Miller came off as pathetic and evasive, which pretty much matches her career as a "Journalist".

I Now Understand Why Jon Stewart is Leaving The Daily Show

After many years of commenting on cable TV wankitude, he can no longer handle watching Fox News anymore:

………

My biggest objection to Fox News, I say, is not the scaremongering, it’s the way it’s reshaped the Republican party. It will misrepresent social and economic issues, and promote the more extreme elements of the party, politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, in a way that is hugely detrimental to American politics. (For the record, Rupert Murdoch disagrees, and last year claimed that Fox News “absolutely saved” the Republican party.) “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” says Stewart. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”

Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realize, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”

OK, I get it now.

If I had to watch Fox News for a living, I'd be ……… I'd be ………

Hell, I need a full fifth of Jack and a bong full of Maui Wowie to even consider it.

Tweet of the Day

Cruz, Paul and Rubio, all running for President. Hey, I thought I was supposed to write the horror stories.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 16, 2015

It appears that I must add Stephen King to the noble and honorable order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.