Lauer Out At NBC in Kharmic Payback

NBC announced that longtime “Today” host Matt Lauer has been fired following allegations of workplace misconduct. The termination reminded many of Lauer’s relationship with former co-host Curry and the role he played in her departure from the show in 2012.

According to the New York Magazine, the two former morning co-hosts did not get along. Lauer apparently did not like Curry and didn’t put any real effort into improving their awkward on-air interactions.

According to The New York Times, Curry also felt a “boys’ club atmosphere behind the scenes at ‘Today’ undermined her from the start.” She told those close to her that her last few months at the job felt like “professional torture.”

Curry was allegedly fired from “Today” because the show’s ratings had fallen behind rival “Good Morning America.” But in reality, internal research found that when the two were onscreen together, it was Lauer who was less appealing to viewers, not Curry.  “He was looking aloof, a little bit holier-than-thou, and pompous,” a former NBC executive who viewed the research told New York Magazine at the time.  When Curry eventually announced her departure on air, she openly wept and turned away from Lauer. 

It was a moment etched in many viewers’ memories.

In response to Lauer’s firing, Curry said earlier today, “I’m still really processing it.”  Before Curry could release a fuller public statement, people on Twitter began imagining her reaction to the news of Lauer’s firing, with many using the phrase “Somewhere, Ann Curry ...” to express their own karma-is-a-bitch fantasies.

Gun Fail

The top five states by accidental shooting deaths of kids under age 15, so far this year:

1. Tennessee: 13
2. Texas: 12
3. Florida: 10
4. Missouri: 9
5. Mississippi: 9

Notice anything about these states?

The two most populous states NOT on this list-- California and New York-- had only one death each.  Wanna know how these two states are different from the above five?  Three guesses-- G, O and P.

My Nomination for Person of the Year

Erosion of Constitutional Rights Continues Under Trump

The Trump administration is using a diabolical Catch-22 to deny an American citizen due process and is holding him incommunicado on an indefinite basis.

Justice Department attorneys fighting off an attempt by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to challenge the seven-week-old detention of the citizen argued in a federal court that the ACLU lacks the right to challenge the detention because it is not representing him.

The reason the ACLU doesn’t have a “significant relationship” with the detainee is a Catch-22: The Trump administration refuses to name him, thereby hindering him or a proxy from hiring an attorney. He is currently detained in Iraq and is unable to challenge his detention before a judge-- either in Iraq or in the U.S.

Sexual Harrassment Claim Against Peyton Manning Resurfaces

Dr Jamie Naughright, a former athletic trainer who accused NFL legend Peyton Manning of sexually assaulting her during his college days is speaking out 20 years later in her first TV interview.

Manning has previously admitted to 'mooning' his teammate while Naughright was treating him but has always denied the trainer's sex assault allegations in the various lawsuits she had brought against him.

Of the retired quarterback's denial, Naughright said: 'That's a lie.'

'I felt something on my face and Peyton had pulled his shorts down and sat his anus and his testicles on my face,' Naughright told the program.

'So I pushed him up and out. He turned around, pulled his shorts back up.

'I was repulsed. I was scared. I was intimidated. It was definitely a predator - intimidating, anger, violent eyes that he had.'

Member Of The Mile-High Club

A U.S. Navy pilot used his plane to draw a penis in the sky above the town of Okanogan, Washington,  and has been grounded, the U.S. Navy said.

An electronic warfare plane from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in western Washington state created sky writings in the shape of male genitals in the skies over the rural community.  One local wrote on Twitter: “The most monumental thing to happen in Omak. A penis in the sky.”  But the Navy was not amused.

“The actions of this aircrew are wholly unacceptable and antithetical to Navy core values” said a statement issued on Friday by NAS Whidbey Island.  “We have grounded the aircrew and are conducting a thorough investigation,” the statement said, “and we will hold those responsible accountable for their actions. The Navy apologizes for this irresponsible and immature act, and anyone who was offended by this unacceptable action,” the statement said.

Vice admiral Mike Shoemaker, the commander of Naval Air Forces, said in a statement: “Sophomoric and immature antics of a sexual nature have no place in Naval aviation today. We will investigate this incident to get all the facts and act accordingly.”

The aircraft involved was an E/A-18 Growler assigned to Whidbey Island, the Navy said. The carrier-based plane carries a two-person crew.  The plane flew over the small town in a pattern “that left a condensed air trail resembling an obscene image to observers on the ground,” the Navy said.  The names of the air crew were not released.

The Ire Of Texas Is Upon You

A Texas sheriff has issued a "Facebook bounty", triggering a hunt by Fort Bend County police for a local man whose abrasively worded pickup sticker has set tongues wagging.

Sheriff Troy Nehls posted a photo on Facebook of a pickup truck with a decal reading 'Fuck Trump and fuck you for voting for him' on its back window.

In the post, the misguided Sheriff said, "Our prosecutor has informed us she would accept Disorderly Conduct charges regarding this incident,"

Nehls seemed to hope that his post might bear fruit-- but instead, it bore the brunt of a lot of angry Facebook posters.

'Your prosecutor should concentrate on real crime,' wrote Antonio Herrera, while Alissa Nguyen said: 'What A Joke. Love Seeing our law enforcement wasting time and energy on pointless shit.'

And Kasey Rose-Hodge remarked: 'If I had to explain what "grab them by the pussy" meant to my kids, you can explain "Fuck Trump" to yours.'

In an attempt to bolster his point of view in the face of widespread condemnation,  Nehls later posted the definition of disorderly conduct (according to local law), saying that it includes 'abusive, indecent, profane, or vulgar language in a public place' that 'tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace'.

However, should the prosecutor attempt to press charges, he or she may find themselves hitting a Supreme Court-shaped brick wall.  In 1971, in the case Cohen v California, the Supreme Court overturned a conviction against a 19-year-old Paul Robert Cohen for wearing a jacket reading 'Fuck the draft' in a courthouse.

In Theaters Now

St. Louis Still Mired In Racist Heritage

A federal judge has placed restrictions on the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, saying their conduct during recent protests had violated demonstrators’ constitutional rights.

The protests  took place in September, following a “not guilty” verdict in the murder trial of Jason Stockley, a white (and former) police officer who in 2011 shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith, who was black.

Perry found sufficient evidence that police arbitrarily declared an assembly unlawful even when there was no violence, and that there was “no credible threat of force or violence to officers or property” when police rounded up citizens, including journalists, two months ago After those arrests, the head of the St. Louis MPD arrogantly declared that his department had “owned” the night, while his officers mocked protesters by chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!”

It turns out the protesters and free speech had the final word, however.  Judge Perry said that officers had clearly retaliated against protected First Amendment speech because they didn’t like being criticized, and used chemical weapons to suppress speech they didn’t like.

Perry said police cannot declare an unlawful assembly unless there’s a clear and present threat, and cannot use the law to punish people engaged in protected activity. She also said chemical agents can’t be used unless there is probable cause to arrest a person, and that police can’t threaten to use chemical agents against anyone engaged in expressive, nonviolent activity.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Anthony Rothert declared that “pepper spray is the new fire hose,” and said officers were using pepper spray “arbitrarily, gratuitously and without warning.”

Back To Work After Asian Trip

Pro-America / Anti-Trump

More Confirmation That Roy Moore Is A Scumbag

GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore was banned from a mall in the early 1980s after he repeatedly attempted to pick up teenage girls, former mall employees and local police told reporters.

Other locals also confirmed that Moore was known for prowling the mall. Moore, whom five women have accused of making advances on them or molesting them when they were teenagers, allegedly had a reputation for hanging around the Gadsden Mall, in Gadsden, Alabama, in pursuit of high school-age girls.

One former mall employee said that a security guard asked mall employees to be on the lookout for Moore, who was “banned from the mall.” Blake Usry, who was a teenager in town at the time, said Moore was known to "flirt with all the young girls," and would hang out at the mall on weekends "like the kids did." Other locals said that Moore's penchant for flirting with teens was common knowledge in town.

One former waitress said that Moore made young waitresses uncomfortable by staring at them, then becoming rude if they did not "give him an opening." A police officer said that “general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates” and that Moore may not have received an official ban but was a persona non grata at the mall and had been “run off” from “a number of stores.”

Speaking Ill of the Dead, Part 6

More Hate From Maine Governor

The controversial governor of Maine says that people of color were enemies of his state, and suggested they should be shot.

Talking about Maine's effort to combat drug crime, Governor Paul LePage said that "the enemy right now... are people of color or people of Hispanic origin".

"When you go to war... and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red," he said.

Democrats and political observers are urging him to resign.  LePage made the shocking comments while seeking to clarify remarks he made earlier in the week which were criticized as racist.

On Wednesday,  LePage was asked about a statement he made in which he blamed the state's heroin problem on "guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty" who "come from Connecticut and New York".

"They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave," he said.

He denied it was racist, saying that he had been putting together a binder cataloguing drug arrests in the state, and that "90-plus per cent of those pictures are black and Hispanic people".

Asked by reporters to provide the binder,  LePage replied: "Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers. You ought to look into that."

On Thursday, LePage called Democratic state representative Drew Gattine and, when he was unable to reach him, left him an abusive, expletive-laden voice message.  He later invited reporters to an interview to explain the voice message, and told them he wished he could shoot Gattine in a duel.

"I'd like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825," LePage said.  "And we would have a duel, that's how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you... I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he's been in this legislature to help move the state forward."

On Friday, the Portland Press Herald published FBI statistics which show that 1,211 people were arrested on charges of drug sales or manufacturing in Maine in 2014. Of those, 170 - 14.1% - were black, and almost all the rest were white.

LePage said he was "enormously angry" at being called a racist, but did not try to refute the FBI statistics. 

Speaking Ill of the Dead, Part 5

Renegade Alabam Judge Reportedly A Pedophile

Disgraced Alabama Supreme Court judge Roy Moore, in the midst of a campaign for the state's vacant Senate seat, is now caught up in a new controversy over charges of sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl while he was a 32-year-old district attorney.

14-year-old Leigh Corfman was at the Etowah County courthouse with her mother in 1979. Roy Moore, who was the district attorney at the time, offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.  Alone with the girl, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number.

Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older.

In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations.  Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and a handful of other GOP senators said Moore must step aside if Corfman’s account is true.

Speaking Ill of the Dead, Part 4

Pollution Panic In Dehli

Panic has gripped the Indian capital, Delhi, as residents woke up to a blanket of thick grey smog.  Visibility is poor as pollution levels reached 30 times the World Health Organization's recommended limit in some areas.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) declared "a state of medical emergency" and urged the government to "make every possible effort to curb this menace".

People have been posting dramatic pictures on social media showing the extent of the problem, with most of them complaining of breathing difficulties.

The chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, has asked his education minister to consider shutting down schools for a few days.  The IMA also recommended that the city's half marathon, due to be held on 19 November, should be cancelled.

Delhi sees pollution levels soar in winter due to farmers in neighboring Punjab and Haryana states burning stubble to clear their fields.  Activists say very little has been done to stop the practice despite Delhi facing severe pollution for a number of years.  Low wind speeds, dust from construction sites, rubbish burning in the capital and firecrackers used in festivals also contribute to increasing pollution levels.

The government has made several attempts to deal with the chronic pollution--  various traffic restrictions and the shutdown of a major power plant.  But none of the measures seem to have had much impact.

Enabler of Sexual Harrassment Humiliated in Tokyo

Ivanka Trump spoke to row upon row of empty seats as she gave a women's empowerment speech in Tokyo.   The unfilled rows were starkly reminiscent of the huge gaps in the crowd that occurred at her father's poorly-received inauguration.

Officials had originally claimed that her speech was the most registered talk of the three-day event, but numbers were still pitifully small.   Organizers came up with a novel excuse for the poor turnout, saying that extraordinarily tight security measures meant that many people were unable to make it inside the venue before the doors closed.  However, multiple news outlets reported that there were no lines of people queuing up prior to the start of Ivanka's speech.

She spoke to the thin crowd and shared her views on sexual harassment and women's empowerment, without even a hint of irony at being the daughter of the most well-known misogynist in the U.S.

Daylight Saving Time

GOP Tax Plan Is Just a Giveaway To The Rich

The GOP announced its much ballyhooed tax plan this week.  In their talking points, they referred to Americans earning $450,000 a year as “middle-income” — even though that income level would put those taxpayers in the top 0.05% of all individual Americans.  FYI-- the median household income in the United States is $59,039.

Now that the GOP's outrageous "tax reform" bill has been digested by tax experts, it is becoming clearer how the bill benefits the wealthy and screws over the average American.  As written, the bill:
Cuts in HALF the mortgage interest deduction, one of the most popular deductions  used by Americans

Eliminates the inheritance tax, which will benefit the wealthy;

Slashes the corporate income tax rate nearly in half, which benefits corporations, not regular folks like you and me;

Eliminates the alternative minimum tax, which benefits the wealthy;

Kills the state and local income tax deduction, which is used by most every single American;

Ends student loan deductions, which makes it harder for young Americans who are starting off in their professional lives;

Ends the deduction for medical expenses-- making life tougher for folks dealing with health issues;

Eliminates tax credits for elderly and disabled Americans;

Gets rid of tax credits for adoption services;

Eliminates deductions for rare-disease research-- hope you're enjoying muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis!

Keeps the carried-interest loophole, which was exploited by equity managers, venture capitalists and real estate partners (like Trump) to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.  (Trump had promised during the campaign to get rid of that loophole, but by now we all know that a bullshitter like Trump can't be relied upon to keep his promises.)

Most people now think that this tax plan is just a giveaway to the wealthy.

And it's beginning to look like most folks aren't buying the GOP boast that the tax plan will help the economy either.    Nearly 60 percent of people believe corporations won't use their tax windfall to create jobs, according to a CBS poll.

The National Federation of Independent Business said the bill “does not help most small businesses.”

The National Association of Home Builders, noting that about one-third of the homes in California alone would suddenly be stripped of the mortgage interest deduction, went to far as to speculate that the bill will “potentially cause housing recessions.”

Moronic Tweeting Must Run In The Family

Dim-witted Donny Trump Jr.  attempted to make political hay out of a fun holiday and had to exploit his own daughter in the process.  He tweeted a photo of his child in her Halloween costume, with the comment:  "I’m going to take half of Chloe’s candy tonight & give it to some kid who sat at home. It’s never to early to teach her about socialism."

Of course, the stunt backfired spectacularly.  Little Donny was literally roasted by comebacks and critical comments, including the author of Harry Potter herself.  Many focused on his failure to understand the basic concept of socialism. . .but there were so many other witty responses.  Here are some of my favorites:

Conviction-Starved Gitmo Tribunal Turns On It Own

The Guantanamo Bay military tribunals have finally won their first conviction without a plea deal since 2008. Only it wasn’t a terrorist who was convicted – it was a one-star Marine general sticking up for the rights of the accused to have a fair trial.

In defending the principle that attorneys ought to be able to defend their clients free from government surveillance, Brigadier General John Baker was ruled in contempt of court and sentenced to 21 days in confinement. He also must pay a $1000 fine.

The shocking development at Guantanamo, described as a “national disgrace and an embarrassment” by the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, came on the same day President Donald Trump proposed sending accused New York terror suspect Sayfullo Saipovtot Guantanamo.  As a lawful permanent resident, Saipov is ineligible for a war-crimes trial under the 2009 Military Commission Act, which limits the court to  non-Americans,

“The military commissions are willing to put people in jail for defending the rule of law,” Jay Connell, who represents another Guantanamo detainee facing a military commission, told reporters. “If they’re willing to put a Marine general in jail for standing up for a client’s rights, they’re willing to do just anything.”   More details are here.

Speaking Ill of the Dead, Part 2