Without fail, every year as Christmas approaches, something will happen that gets some people in a snit over some absurdly trivial matter. I always fear whether anything can top the previous year’s silliness and luckily, I am never disappointed. Larry Wilmore looks at this year’s big issue and that is the Starbucks cup controversy.
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Take a look at a graph created by Dara Lind using official prison statistics about the number of prisoners in the US per 100,000 adult US residents. The rates now are nearly seven times what they were for nearly an entire century, from 1880 to 1970, when it suddenly shot up when ‘law and order’ and ‘get tough on crime’ became the way to win votes.
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I found this clip from back in 2009 where the late comedian talked to Tavis Smiley about how the country really works. He points out that by limiting the number of actual choices that people have about the major things that affect their lives, they can be more easily controlled. And they are aided in this by the collusion of the media, the politicians, and the legal system.
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On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looks at why the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is still being published and the greater mystery of why it is so popular. With the internet providing such easy access to photographs of naked women, why are the newsstand sales of this issue still so high and can it last? Or will it soon suffer the same fate as Playboy?
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Lincoln Chafee has announced that he will follow Jim Webb and drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination. His poll and fund-raising numbers were low and his debate performance did nothing to improve his chances, especially since the pundits were ruthless in the way they ridiculed him.
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Bernie Sanders has been frequently compared to the actor Larry David so when Saturday Night Live did a parody of the Democratic debate, they got David to play him and he did an excellent job. Alec Baldwin also did well as Jim Webb.
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He was pretty good in stating his case for why he should be president. He was clear and articulate in stating his vision for what he wanted to achieve. He is a candidate that I could see myself voting for enthusiastically. His main weakness was that while mayor of Baltimore, he was swept up in the tough-on-crime, lock-up-everyone mentality that was prevalent at the time and which we now realize was far too harsh.
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Beetle Bailey is a long running comic strip that began in 1950 about an army base where the soldiers are never actually called upon to fight in any wars. Its title character is a private who is a total slacker and tries to shirk his duties whenever he can. The rest of his troop also consists of misfits who have no interest in fighting and for whom the army seems to be a sinecure. The camp is overseen by an alcoholic general whose main interest is playing golf.
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Today is election day in Canada where voters have the chance to throw prime minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party out of office. The NDP started out the unusually long campaign (all of 78 days!) favored to win, reaching its high point in late August but then faded steadily and is now in third place. Currently the Liberal Party is in the lead, though it is not clear that it will get enough seats (170) to form the government by itself. The latest polling is here. First results are due around 9:30 tonight.
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