The housing related financial crisis caused devastation on a major scale and sent many people into homelessness and ruin. As a result, it has spawned a number of excellent films, both documentary (Requiem for the American Dream (2015), Inside Job (2010)) and feature (The Big Short (2015), Margin Call (2011)) that have sought to understand the causes and pin the blame.
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Today is independence day in the US. John Oliver takes a moment to remind Americans what they gave up when they broke their bonds with England. I can do without almost everything he lists but the one thing that I regret not being able to find in the US are the savory pastries. In the US, pastries tend to be very sticky and sweet, like doughnuts and Danishes.
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Right wing columnist and Fox News commentator George Will has left the Republican party because of their choice of Donald Trump as presidential nominee. He has also urged that people not provide him with any financial support and that they should work to ensure his defeat at the general election in November, brace themselves for four more years of a Democratic presidency, and seek to return to power with a more acceptable nominee in 2020.
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While her clip was as funny as it usually is, she also shows the young woman who says that she regrets her vote to leave the EU because she did not realize the consequences and that if she had to do it again, she would vote to remain. Bee also shows the interview with the man who said that although he wanted the UK to remain in the EU, he voted to leave as a protest vote because he thought that the Remain vote would win.
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Here is a clip from the comedy Another Period set in the Gilded Age in which an argument between two family members on whether it is advisable to have hatchets lying around the house sounds awfully familiar.
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With the retirement of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from their comedy shows, many of us feared the loss of sharp political satire. But while The Daily Show itself has struggled to find its footing with its new host, alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, and also Seth Meyers, have been terrific in picking up the mantle. Of the three, Bee is the most consistently funny but all are analytical and informative.
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She looks at how the NRA has managed to get so much power that they strangled even the minor attempts at some form of gun control. Unfortunately, you have to see once again the repulsive Ted Cruz, who had seemed to mercifully have disappeared from view after getting humiliated by Donald Trump.
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On Thursday, the United Kingdom votes to see if it continues to be part of the European Union or leaves, the latter position being known as ‘Brexit’, a neologism that is a combination of ‘Britain’ and ‘exit’. I don’t really know much about the pros and cons of the issue except that the worst elements of British politics like the political party UKIP want a vote in favor of Brexit.
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