A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
Oliver had two comments about Paramount purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery, but the first one didn't get uploaded to YouTube and the second is buried deep inside last night's main story. I'll embed that after the season premiere, ICE & DHS.
John Oliver discusses ICE’s repeated atrocities over the past months and explores the massive entity overseeing it all: the Department of Homeland Security. How it started, who runs it, and how many hats Kristi Noem owns.
I knew DHS was big, but I didn't know it was the third largest federal government department by number of employees behind the Department of Defense (not War, not until Congress acts) and Department of Veterans Affairs. By size of budget, DHS is sixth behind Health and Human Services, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, and Transportation. Welcome to the US government being an insurance company with an army. That's still a lot of money. As the graphic below shows, ICE alone has a budget larger than militaries of Turkey, Spain, and the Netherlands and just smaller than Canada's.
All of those are facts I didn't know before watching this segment, which meant that I learned three new things, making today a good day.
Now for the sequel, last night's Police Body Cameras. Watch carefully for the remark about Paramount; blink and you'll miss it.
John Oliver discusses why police body cameras can be useful, or useless, depending on whether they’re used properly, and yeah, he also discusses what it looks like to arrest a giant mouse. Because of course he does.
In theory, body cameras are a good thing, but we should be careful, if not downright vigilant, about how police use them in practice. This includes review of body camera footage, the equivalent of which Oliver seems to be daring Paramount to do to his show. Looks like he will have an even more hostile relationship with Paramount than he had with AT&T. That should be entertaining.
Congratulations! May the new ownership keep Oliver around for the awards the show wins, although that didn't save Stephen Colbert. Then again, Paramount renewed The Daily Show, so there's hope.
Democrats express their outrage over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, with Chuck Schumer calling Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller "f**king liars" and Hakeem Jeffries on accidental mute. Plus, Desi Lydic plunges into the world of Melania ahead of her documentary debut, which was produced by Jeff Bezos, directed by disgraced filmmaker Brett Ratner, and created by a crew too ashamed to have their names in the credits.
As for the Melania documentary itself, it's pretty transparently an attempt by Jeff Bezos and Amazon to curry favor with Hoover Harding Cleveland and a cash grab plus PR opportunity for the Trump family, as Michael Kosta and Ronny Chieng point out. Just for that, I hope it fails as PR/propaganda as well as at the box office, and earns a Razzie nomination or two next year.
Seth addresses Melania Trump's documentary Melania opening worldwide and more in his monologue for Thursday, January 29, before taking a closer look at Trump spreading lies after Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar was attacked at a town hall event.
Hoover Harding Cleveland telling self-serving lies and insane takes on the news? What a surprise — not! Time to remind my readers that the voices in his head are not reliable sources. This includes Pam Bondi deceiving herself about all "the creative and correctly spelled signs" being a sign of outside influence. No, she's just dealing with a well-educated population in Minnesota, along with Democrats writing better than Republicans.
We are once again staring at another government shutdown, Trump has a new celebrity friend in Nicki Minaj, she is now in possession of a Trump Gold Card which she claims she got for free, Trump had another cabinet meeting today where he ranted about windmills and extolled the virtues of coal, Trump’s FBI has been raiding the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia as part of an investigation into “voter fraud” in the 2020 election, Tulsi Gabbard showed up to watch which isn’t suspicious at all, Border Czar Tom Homan is in Minneapolis doing his best to right the ship, a smattering of Republicans have stepped forward to criticize the damaged brains behind this operation, tonight was the much hyped premiere of Melania’s documentary, she has been doing rounds of press to promote it, and we ask folks passing by a movie theater what they think of it even though they haven’t seen it yet.
Jimmy K is right; gold card visas are actually issued by the government, not Hoover Harding Cleveland himself. The man has the worst case of "L'État, c'est moi" I've ever seen. As far as he's concerned, he is the country! At least when he says "boom," he doesn't sound like Crazy Frog.
In addition to blogging about the First Lady for the first time in a while, I'm mentioning Tulsi Gabbard for the first time in months. Despite what Jimmy K said, she does have some domestic jurisdiction, overseeing the FBI Intelligence Branch (IB), Coast Guard Intelligence, Office of National Security Intelligence (Part of the Drug Enforcement Agency), and the Offices of Intelligence and Analysis for both the Department of Homeland Security and Department of the Treasury. Those authorities make her presence even more ominous.
As for the men and women on the street interviews about Melania the documentary, those were hiliarious, even though a lot of them were reading cue cards instead of giving candid reactions.
The Boss dropped a fiery anti-ICE protest song, the people of Milan don't want Trump's DHS thugs to provide security at the Winter Olympics, the president's latest MAGA fundraising email is bizarrely threatening, and no one wants to see the First Lady's movie.
It's hard to protest Amazon by buying stuff on Amazon. Sigh.
Directed by Thom Zimny
Edited by Thom Zimny and Samuel Shapiro
Production Footage: Pam Springsteen and Thom Zimny
That's a wrap for today. I'm returning to awards show coverage tomorrow, because the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films released the Saturn Awards nominations. Stay tuned.
A group of teenagers (Mikey Madison, Sarah Sherman, Ego Nwodim) get added to a group chat with Secretary Pete Hegseth (Andrew Dismukes), Vice President JD Vance (Bowen Yang), Secretary Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) and Editor of the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg (Mikey Day).
Where's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz? Didn't he start the group chat? I guess he's not known, disliked, or funny enough to be parodied in the skit. On the other hand, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is all three, which is one of the reasons both this scandal and Hegseth are called Whiskeyleaks, a nickname alongside Kegseth. Hegseth deserves his own label on this blog and I think I'll use Kegseth.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visiting a Salvadoran prison.
It's obvious that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's visit to El Salvador's brutal Cecot prison was part of the the Trump administration's effort to keep pumping out images of performative machismo in order to appeal to Trump's multi-ethnic, multi-generational coalition of male voters (a "badass" woman in skintight clothing is a familiar trope in male-coded popular culture)...The Trumpers know what boys like.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, like three girls trying to stab [their] mother after she turned off the Wi-Fi.
Will Smith's new album alone qualifies this entry as the Sunday entertainment feature, but so does Jost's rant about Paddington and to a lesser extent, Melania Trump's campaign against deepfake revengeporn plus more over the jump.
Joann (Ashley Padilla) stops by Weekend Update to discuss JOANN Fabric and Crafts announcing store closures.
I wish SNL gave all the casualties of theRetailApocalypse that much attention. Imagine the one of the teens from the cold open bemoaning the loss of Forever 21!
Follow over the jump for more highlights from last night's show plus the top posts from the 14th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News featuring SNL.
Michael Kosta on the tragic Washington D.C. plane crash and Trump's baseless blame of DEI for the catastrophe. Plus, the Best F**kin' News team breaks down which of Trump's nominees was least qualified at their Senate hearings.
Paraphrasing what I wrote in Pete Davidson hosts as 'Saturday Night Live' returns, the crash is not funny, but the reactions to it can be, and Hoover Cleveland's qualifies as worthy of mockery and scorn. It also came right on schedule, as I posted the following on Bluesky yesterday.
Mrs. Betty Bowers missed "National Disability Employment Awareness Month" in her post, but I caught it. I wasn't watching C-SPAN at the time, but I posted that within minutes of Hoover Cleveland making his ableist remarks, so I'm not surprised — appalled, but not surprised.
Seriously, that supposed ideological diversity probably comes from former Democrats Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., who I called cases of failing upwards. I thought I was done with both of them when they dropped out of the 2020 and 2024 Presidential contests, respectively. Instead, I could be writing about them for the next four years. Ugh. At least my readers and I have Randy and others to keep us sane. May they be like Ben Carson AKA Doctor Pyramid, about whom I ended up writing "At least you were too boring to write about for the past four [years]" after Carson's service as HUD Secretary. May we be so lucky with Gabbard and RFK Jr.
I also think that the announcement of Kash Patel's nomination for a position that isn't open yet — Christopher Wray's term doesn't expire for another three years — and Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter are more closely connected than he lets on. Patel might just have gone after Hunter even after he had gone to prison just to please convictedcriminalDonald Trump.
