So Entertainment reporter Sam Rubin confused Samuel L. Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne, and Mr. Jackson was not amused.
As I have seen his performance as Jules in Pulp Fiction a number of times, I’m kind of surprised that I had not already put him on the list.
Maddow is all over how NC Governor Pat McCrory’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources Department of Environment and Natural Resources is aggressively protecting lawbreaking polluters like Duke Energy, by aggressively preventing private actions against the firm, as opposed to actually enforcing the law:
North Carolina regulators’ penchant for seemingly protecting Gov. Pat McCrory’s (R) former employers from repeated lawsuits over their environmental practices was only stopped following a devastatingly toxic spill, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported on Monday.
On two prior occasions, Maddow said, officials at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) invoked a provision in the federal Clean Water Act allowing them to step in as plaintiffs against Duke Energy when Duke was being sued by environmental activists over the toxic coal ash ponds at its facilities. The state reached settlements worth a collective $99,000 for those incidents.
But Monday night, she explained, a third such settlement was delayed in the wake of a pond spill that produced up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water — the third-biggest spill of its’ kind in U.S. history.
And despite not making any statement about the Feb. 3 disaster until four days after it happened, McCrory — who worked with the company for 28 years — used the first two DENR settlements to boast that his administration took “legal action” against Duke Energy.
“Right,” Maddow said skeptically. “By stepping in and blocking other peoples’ lawsuits against the company, and then settling with the company for nearly no money, and, importantly, [requiring] no promise from Duke Energy that they would fix what they were doing wrong.”
Talk about a cheap date. Even the Department of Justice requests a lie from the offenders to refrain from future wrongdoing.
When Metallica discovered that their music was being used to torture inmates at Guantanamo, they send a cease and desist letter.
Canadian electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy went a different route, and have sent an invoice demanding payment:
By now we’re all familiar with the U.S. government’s practice of using heavy metal to torture detainees. We’ve all seen “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Homeland”—we get the drill. Usually metal music is used for its general unpleasantness. It’s impossible to sleep through and just all-around unnerving.
Except Canadian band Skinny Puppy had no idea their music was being used in the service of the U.S. military.
………
The Independent points out Friday that when Metallica learned their music was being used as a torture device at Guantanamo they sent the the government a cease and desist. Skinny Puppy, on the other hand, went the other way and just sent an invoice.
“We heard that our music was used on at least four occasions,” Evin Key said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the U.S. government for musical services.”
Asked how he felt about his music being used to torture people, he said, “Not too good. We never supported those types of scenarios. Because we make unsettling music, we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn’t sit right with us.”
It doesn’t sit right with anyone who values the idea of rule of law and civil rights, Evin.
I would remind you thought that the statutory damages for such a use, it is clearly a public performance, are on the order of $150,000 per infraction.
It might be more worth your while to sue.
After the State of the Union Address, a NY1reporter Michael Scotto asked Congressman Michael Grimm about his fundraising scandal.
Grimm, expecting questions about the SOTU address, was upset and walked off.
Then he walked back, and threatened to break reporter Scotto in half and throw him off of the Congressional Balcony.
This does make the persisistent rumors of anabolic steroid abuse more credible.
But he picked the wrong reporter to threaten.
You see Michael Scotto is the nephew of Anthony Scotto, a former head of the Brooklyn longshoremen’s union and a former boss in the Gambino crime family.
Grim went postal, and, to my non-lawyer eyes, it was technically assault, on the nephew of a Gambino crime bus.
Sucks to be you.
BTW, before he was a Congressman, he was an FBI agent, and I have to agree with Alex Pareene when he says, “We shouldn’t let people like him have badges and guns.”
The only thing worse than a goon is a goon with a gun and a badge.
Vladimir Putin has a problem, and ain’t the Chechen terrorists, and it ain’t the ghey, it’s Lewis Black.
This is the most epic take-down I’ve EVER seen Lewis Black deliver, and that is saying something.
And some biting social satire
Growing up, I remember listening to his album Gazette.
And there was also his lifelong political activism, along with his standing up to the evil bullies of HUAC.
He was, of course, a bit subversive, but art tends to be subversive.
We will not see his like in the foreseeable future.
Stewarts notes that Obama has deliberately created a regime in which the rules are completely dependent on the goodwill of the authorities, something which our founders abhorred.
Obama makes an exception for “true emergencies,” and Stewart observes that, “We will totally follow the rules until we determine such time when we will no longer follow the rules, but don’t worry about it. You won’t hear about it, because we’re doing it in secret.”
Once again, with a smile on his face, Stewart reveals the hypocrisy of power.
Just watch an LGBT activists confronting a bigot politician Ron Webb, who has proposed reversing the Shreveport city council’s fairness ordinance forbidding discrimation against the LGBT in employment and housing, by reading Leviticus and offering him a stone so that Webb could kill her as the Bible calls for.
When confronted with the reality of the situation, Councilman Webb fled with his tail between his legs.
As Rachel Maddow is wont to say, it’s the, “Best thing in the world today.”
H/t Americablog.
Chris Christie is a huge fan of the Boss, and Bruce Springsteen just lambasted Jabba the Governor for “Bridgegate” on Jimmy Fallon.
What’s more, he did this to the tune of Born to Run.
Sucks to be you, Chris.
Well, here is the video.
We still don’t have a clue as to why the hell Christie aides, and possibly Christie himself, decided to make the George Washington Bridge the largest parking lot on the Hudson river, but what is presented here is certainly credible.
I really hope that someone rolls on their co-conspirators, because the justification for something this epically stupid will be fascinating.
Part 1
Part Deux
Jon Stewart brought on The Daily Show‘s New Jersey correspondent ……… Jon Stewart, who excoriated Christie on the scandal:
I’m ashamed of the state I grew up. Political payback through traffic congestion? To see New Jersey sink to such a piss-poor, 3rd-rate quality of corruption… this is New Jersey. A state renowned for its piss-rich, first-rate quality of corruption!
Rather surprisingly, he is gentle about all this to Christie, by the standards of Jon Stewart, anyway. (Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?)
Watch both vids. They are some of his best work.
Of rather more interest is Rachael Maddow’s theory of motivation, which has nothing to do with endorsement for the Governor’s race.
Maddow suggests that the issue was actually driven by a conflict over appointing state Supreme Court Judges, and that this was not directed at the mayor, but rather at the Democratic leader of the New Jersey Senate, who represents Fort Lee, was the actual target.
The video is not available yet, but I will try to post it tomorrow.
Needs to be seen
(On Edit)
Sorry for the autoplay.
I did not know that Newsind.com’s videos autoplay. I fixed it by changing “widgetId=1” to “widgetId=2“.
Pope Francis’ condemnations of unbridled capitalism are far too mild.
Kevin Drum muses on the cause of the ever increasing numbers of violent incidents on airlines.
He notes that such incidents have increased by more than1200% since 2007, and then points to a New York Times article, “On Jammed Jets, Sardines Turn on One Another.”
It’s kind of a “Well, Duh!” moment.
“Contestants in a suicidal race,” indeed.
It’s been a busy week for developments in spying by the US state security apparatus.
First, we have the report from the President’s hand picked panel, “Liberty and Security in a Changing World.” (PDF)
From people who know the issues, the reviews have been this weak tea.
The EFF’s conclusion was that, “The reportleft open the door for future mass surveillance and failed to address the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass spying, recently questioned by the D.C. federal court and raised by EFF in its multiple lawsuits.”
Marcy Wheeler, who is has perhaps the most knowledgeable on these sorts of issues, observes that the panel refused to address whether the NSA spying program was illegal. There is simply nothing in the report about this.
When she looks what is in the report, she sees signs that the NSA is probably functioning as a domestic security agency:
Which is why I’m curious what’s behind the following language, offered in support of the recommendation to clearly designate NSA as a foreign intelligence organization and presented with two other things we know NSA does.
It should not be a domestic security service, a military command, or an information assurance organization.
[…] Like other agencies, there are situations in which NSA does and should provide support to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other law enforcement entities. But it should not assume the lead for programs that are primarily domestic in nature.That seems to suggest that, in addition to supporting DHS, DOJ, and other law enforcement entities (cough, DEA, as well as probably Secret Service in its cyber-role), NSA takes the lead on certain issues that are primarily domestic.I do hope we’ll learn what this refers to. Because if NSA is operating domestically (maybe to police IP?), it will be scandalous news.
Pro Publica notes that one of the more direct recommendations of the panel is that the NSA needs to stop undermining publicly available encryption algorithms:
The National Security Agency should not undermine encryption standards that are designed to protect the privacy of communications, the panel of experts appointed by President Obama to review NSA surveillance recommended in a report released today.
The recommendation, among the strongest of the many suggested changes laid out by the panel, comes several months after ProPublica, the Guardian, and the New York Times reported that the NSA has successfully worked to undercut encryption. The story was based on a set of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Outside of the intelligence review board, we have learned that the NSA paid RSA Security LLC to incorporate insecure encryption in its products:
As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a “back door” in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.
Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.
In total, this explains the flight from services like Google to non-US algernatives.
In a perfect world, all of this might lead the White House, and the intelligence agencies to back off regarding their expansion of power, but you would be wrong.
They are at this time attempting to quash a court ruling on the constitutionality ofits domestic spying program by invoking the state-secrets privilege.
And for your amusement, we have Mark Fiore’s comments on the difference between the data collection by the government and commercial interest.
All of the F%$#ing Duck Dynasty.
I do not think that I need to know why but this video (completely NSFW) does help illustrate why.
Jon Stewart again, observing that shaking the hands of another world leader with whom we have poor relations at a funeral for a man who invited his own jailer to his inauguration is not Munich.
I am waiting for a politician to realize that the pandering to the delusional demands of the right wing of the Cuban-American is neither good policy nor good politics, and to tell them to go pound sand.
It’s been 55 years since Castro took over Cuba, get over it.
It looks like Jon Stewart has finally had enough with the continuous lies about spying on all of us, as evidenced by last night’s segment, “That Thing They Said They’re Not Doing? They’re Totally Doing.”
This is absolutely brutal.
On a number of occasions, I have noted that it has been illegal to take out insurance on something in which one does not have an interest in its continued existence.
So, it’s illegal to take out a policy on your neighbor’s house, because otherwise, you would have an interested in burning it down.
This problem was first addressed, in the UK at least in the by the Marine Insurance Act of 1746.
The proximate cause was people who would buy insurance on a merchant ship, and then leak the manifests and schedules to the French, who were at war with the British at the time, and they would collect the insurance payouts.
It has been the law for longer then there has been the United States.
Only in the late 1990s, they decided that it did not apply to credit default swaps, and so the ripe-for-abuse “naked” CDS was born.
Well, the Daily Show found a story on Bloomberg about how the private equity firm Blackstone Group purchased a naked CDS on a 3rd party loan to the Spanish gaming company Codere.
Blackstone then made a loan to Codere that was conditional to their making their making a payment late on the aforementioned 3rd party loan, which was a “credit event” which netted the investment firm a $15,000,000.00 payout.
What I do not understand how this isn’t insurance fraud, except, of course, a CDS isn’t insurance, except, of course, that it is.
But besides the Bloomberg article there has been crickets from the financial press, which Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee discussed last night.
Brutal
Here is the trailer for Kidnapped for Christ:
You know if you told me that I would ever endorse a media effort by a member of ‘N Sync a few days ago, I would have said that you were nuts.
We live in strange times.