The Daily Show had fun with Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that he speaks for all Jews and the rapturous reception he got from the US Congress, saying “It was the State of the Union speech the Republicans wanted delivered by the leader they wished they had.” He also highlighted all the previous times that Netanyahu has cried wolf about Iran’s nuclear threat.
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To follow up on the discussion on this blog two days ago on the need to end the practice of clock shifting twice a year and stick with one time setting, John Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight uses his regular segment How is this still a thing? to look at the history of this practice and argue that it is high time we got rid of it.
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Bill Maher had a good segment on the deep strain of jingosim in America that demands that one should never say anything negative about its past or present actions. The problem with such a stance should be obvious. If you think that your country can do no wrong and has never done anything wrong, then you are going to continue doing those wrong things. Politicians of the major parties relentlessly pander to this way of thinking, making it worse. Obama panders a lot too but not enough for some people because he has the audacity to say that maybe not everything was always great.
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The Daily Show looks at how governments treat whistleblowers, starting with the case of the UK-based megabank HSBC where a whistleblower accused his employer of helping its clients avoid taxes in their home countries. Of course the people who take advantage of these kinds of sophisticated tax avoidance schemes are the very wealthy and well-connected and includes the HSBC chief so you can guess how they were punished, and what happened to the person who revealed it.
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Jon Oliver has another excellent investigative report, this time on the way that America’s leaders act so cavalierly about the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The American public of course thinks that raising money to pay for repairs and maintenance is a sign that godless Communists are taking over by taxing the rich of their hard-earned dollars when that money could be used to buy yachts. They seem to think that elves will magically appear in the night and repair things for free.
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Jon Stewart is at his best when responding to Fox News attacks on him. His announcement that he was leaving the show sometime later this year led them to reflect on his influence and argue that he brought little to the national political conversation except lies, snarkiness, selective editing, and unfair characterization of them and the Republican party. It is clear that, as one of the major media figures who consistently outs their deceitful propaganda, he has got under their skin.
In responding, he gives an excellent analysis of what they stand for, why they are so successful at driving home their damaging message, and how we should respond.
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As is often the case, when a single thread of a boastful egomaniac’s credibility gets pulled, the whole fabric starts to get unraveled pretty quickly as people start looking more closely at all their statements. This is happening with lightning speed with Fox News bloviator Bill O’Reilly.
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Sesame Street has come out with another clever parody of a popular TV show. This time it is House of Cards on Netflix, that was based on an extremely good British series.
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One of the things that shocked me when I first came to the US was the practice of electing judges. While I can understand that appointing judges can lead to insider cronyism, it should be possible to find a way to ensure that competent and reasonably impartial people can be found to serve as judges without putting them through the inherently corrupting process of raising money for elections and then pandering to low-information voters.
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