June 11, 2018

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - Stupid Watergate II

John Oliver explains how the president and his allies are going full O. J. in order to undermine the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

June 11, 2018

How Lebanon Transformed Anthony Bourdain

In 2006, he found himself in a country falling into war—an experience that forever altered how he would understand people, culture, history, and conflict.

Growing up in Beirut during Lebanon’s 15–year civil war, I wished for someone like Anthony Bourdain to tell the story of my country: a place ripped apart by violence, yes, but also a country where people still drove through militia checkpoints just to gather for big Sunday family lunches, or dodged sniper fire to get to their favorite butcher across town to sample some fresh, raw liver for breakfast. Bourdain, the legendary roving chef and master storyteller who committed suicide on Friday in France at the age of 61, would have approved of such excursions in search of the perfect morsel—he probably would have come along.

Coming of age during conflict made me want to become a journalist. I hoped to tell the story of my country and the Middle East—a place rife with conflicts, sure, but also layered with complexities, a place of diverse peoples full of humanity. In the summer of 2006, I was the BBC’s Beirut correspondent when war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah, the pro-Iran Shia militant group. Hezbollah had kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, triggering the month-long conflict. Within a day, the Israelis had bombed Beirut’s airport out of action. I worked 34 days in a row, 20 hours a day, reporting live on television and radio, alongside dozens of colleagues who’d flown in to help cover the conflict.

I didn’t know it then, but Bourdain was there too, filming an episode of his show No Reservations. And perhaps he didn’t know it then, but Lebanon would change him forever. In the episode, he talked about how he had come to Beirut to make a happy show about food and culture in a city that was regaining its reputation as the party capital of the Middle East. Instead, he found himself filming a country that had tipped into war overnight. Filming on the day the violence broke out, he managed to capture that split second where people’s faces fell as they realized their lives had been upended.

After a few days in Beirut itself, Bourdain and his team moved to a hotel just north of the capital, closer to their eventual evacuation spot. By then, Israeli jets were bombing not only areas with a Hezbollah presence, but bridges and power plants across the country. Yet the show never became about the experience of a terrorized American stranded in a scary place. Bourdain never made it about Bourdain—Lebanon was the story. And even during the dramatic scene of his departure, on a ship surrounded by Marines and hundreds of other evacuees—Americans and dual citizens—his focus remained on Lebanon and the distraught faces of its people, leaving behind country and family, uncertain of whether they’d ever return.


More: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/how-lebanon-transformed-anthony-bourdain/562484/



Anthony Bourdain at the 2015 Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California. DANNY MOLOSHOK / REUTERS

June 9, 2018

Main Customer of Arizona Coal Plant Goes Green, Ignoring Interior Department

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main buyer of electricity from an Arizona coal plant on the verge of closure said on Friday it will instead source its electricity largely from a solar power project, ignoring an appeal by the U.S. Interior Department to buy more power from the plant to keep it open.

The Trump administration has been waging a broad effort to keep aging coal and nuclear plants from retirement, arguing that their closure would constitute a threat to national energy security.

On Friday, the board of the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a major electricity consumer that supplies water to a large swath of Arizona, voted to sign a 20-year agreement to buy power from a solar project and also agreed to a five-year power deal with utility Salt River Project for electricity from a variety of sources.

The vote came despite a plea from the head of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, who last Friday wrote to board members to say that a 1968 law gives Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke power to require the CAP to buy energy from the Navajo Generating Station, or NGS, a 2,250-MW coal-fired power plant that is scheduled to close in 2019.


More: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2018-06-08/main-customer-of-arizona-coal-plant-goes-green-ignoring-interior-department

June 9, 2018

Everybody hates Trump's coal and nuclear bailout plan

Except the president's favorite coal industry executive and a bankrupt nuke company.

President Donald Trump’s fixation on bailing out the coal and nuclear power industries has proved confounding to renewable energy advocates and climate activists. But other sectors of the energy industry, including one that Trump purportedly wants to help, are also questioning the need for the radical intervention in energy markets proposed last week.

The White House issued a statement last Friday that said Trump has directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to “prepare immediate steps to stop the loss” of what the administration described as “fuel-secure power facilities,” a thinly veiled reference to coal and nuclear power plants. Also last Friday, Bloomberg News released a leaked draft proposal from the Energy Department that cited national security concerns as a reason for allowing Trump to require regional grid operators or electric utilities to purchase enough power from coal and nuclear plants to prevent them from closing.

But most of the energy industry concedes there’s no emergency that requires the federal government to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power.

Speaking earlier this week at an industry conference, Chris Crane, the CEO of Exelon Corp, the nation’s largest owner of nuclear plants, said the retirement of coal and nuclear plants is not a grid emergency that warrants urgent intervention from the federal government.


More: https://thinkprogress.org/renewable-and-nuclear-companies-oppose-trump-coal-bailout-plan-3bd1aa4fb3cf/


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A TRUCK DELIVERS COAL TO A PACIFICORP'S COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT ON OCTOBER 9, 2017. (CREDIT: GEORGE FREY/GETTY IMAGES)

June 9, 2018

Trump pushes allies away, embraces US adversaries

WASHINGTON (AP) — With enemies like these, who needs friends?

Stepping onto the world stage for a pair of high-profile summits, President Donald Trump is scrambling the usual breakdown of allies and adversaries. In the span of a few days, he’s embraced Russia and North Korea while pushing away America’s closest friends, like France, Canada and Germany.

It’s long been Trump’s modus operandi to keep people on their toes, unable to predict what he’ll do next. But the impulse to pick fights with countries the United States relies on for solidarity around the world is striking many as a step too far.

Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration, said the dual moves were “completely antithetical” to America’s foreign policy objectives. He predicted it would inflict major damage to U.S. standing in the world.

“If Obama had done that, the criticism coming down on him would have been a fusillade, coming from Capitol Hill and congressional Republicans,” said Rubin, who now teaches at Carnegie Mellon University. “But there’s nary a whimper.”


Much more: https://apnews.com/6e8cfa347937456daf4e5cd6ef5afb64

June 9, 2018

Seth Meyers - Guest Anthony Bourdain - 11/1/17

Anthony Bourdain Was Labeled a Mossad Agent by Romanian Newspapers



Anthony Bourdain tells Seth about the difficulties of filming Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and why Romanian newspapers accused him of being a Mossad agent.




Anthony Bourdain Apologized for Perpetuating "Meathead Culture" in Cuisine



Anthony Bourdain talks with Seth about the troubles Puerto Rico faced before and after the hurricane and why he's apologized about perpetuating the oppressive "meathead culture" in cuisine.

June 9, 2018

Stephen Colbert: Guest CBS News Anchor Jeff Glor Is Taking News Into The Digital Age

Jeff Glor's visit forces Stephen to grapple with the fact that he's now older than an anchor of 'CBS Evening News.'

June 9, 2018

Stephen Colbert - Monologue and Opening - 6/8/18

Trump Makes The G7 Summit Awkwaaaard



Many have dubbed the G7 summit the G6 + 1 summit even since Trump increased tension x 100.




A 'Stars Wars' Trailer To Piss Off Hateful Fanboys



There's a special new 'Star Wars' movie for all the angry fans whose racist, misogyny led 'Last Jedi' actress Kelly Marie Tran to leave Instagram.




The Donald Trump Summit Spectacular



Grab 'em by the posse.

June 9, 2018

Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - 6/8/18

Monologue: Turd in the Punchbowl



Bill recaps the top stories of the week, including Trump introducing his trademark drama to the G7 Summit.




Michael Eric Dyson: What Truth Sounds Like



Professor and author Michael Eric Dyson joins Bill to discuss his latest book, "What Truth Sounds Like; RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation about Race in America."




Fareed Zakaria



Fareed Zakaria returns to Real Time to discuss cultural assimilation and Trump's surprise at the complexities of North Korean diplomacy.




New Rule: Crass Dismissed



Bill warns that free speech is under fire from both ends of the political spectrum.




Post-American World, Never-Trumpers, Minority Republicans | Overtime



Bill and his Real Time panelists – Michael Eric Dyson, John Heilemann, Shermichael Singleton, Linda Chavez, and Fareed Zakaria – answer viewer questions after the show.

June 9, 2018

The Daily Show: Team Trump's Above-the-Law Legal Arguments

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation continues, President Trump essentially claims the right to let himself off the hook for any crime.




Scott Pruitt's Spending Gets Weirder - Between the Scenes



Trevor talks about the growing list of small-time ethics scandals surrounding EPA chief Scott Pruitt.




Are We in an Alternate Universe? - Between the Scenes



Trevor revels in the fact that Kim Kardashian got Donald Trump to pardon a convicted great-grandmother.