US elections are absurdly long and ridiculously expensive. People in other countries cannot believe what an absurd system we have in which one has to be either a multimillionaire or beholden to multimillionaires merely in order to be even considered as a serious candidate. Not only that, it is the GRAGGS issues (guns, race, abortion, gays, god, sex) that generate the most attention.
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Texas senator Ted Cruz, one of the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, is one of the most obnoxious people around. Even his colleagues in his own party seem disgusted with his arrogant, preening, headline-hogging antics. So that raises the question as to whether it would be ever possible for him to come off as a sympathetic figure in an exchange with anyone.
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I was at a party some time ago and the hosts brought out some photographs from a previous party and there was some amusement because I was wearing the same sweater on both occasions. This did not bother me because I like that sweater and wear it as often as I can. In fact, my policy concerning clothes is to buy a few that I like and wear them over and over until they get frayed and have holes in them, and then I wear them around the house. In fact, as I write this, my shirt has a hole in the right elbow that is hidden by a sweater.
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The results of American elections are usually easy to predict. It is almost always the case that the candidate who can raise the most money wins, as depicted in this cartoon, with any role for actual voters quickly eliminated very early in the process.
In another excellent piece on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver makes the point that the public veneration of motherhood in the US is really a sham because we and Papua New Guinea are the only countries that do not offer paid time off for having a child, and he describes the kinds of extraordinary measures that women have to do to cobble together the necessary time off after giving birth. The email that Tesla founder Elon Musk sent to an employee who merely missed one event in order to witness the birth of his child shows how little we actually value parenting.
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The only interesting thing about the Republican primary process will be to see how extreme the candidates’ rhetoric will get before they get eliminated one by one and to predict who will be next to get the hook and be yanked off the stage. But of course, many of them will not see this as a humiliation. They are likely in this just to feed their egos, increase their public profile, and enhance their speaking fees. They probably see this a no-lose proposition.
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This cartoon is from Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine (2002) that looked at America’s obsession with guns. Given the recent spate of killings in the US and the rise of heavily-armed militias that seem to be seeking to confront the government, this may be a good time to re-release the film.
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She has left The Daily Show and gone on to other ventures. Here are some of her field pieces for the show. Here is her first piece for the show from back in 2003. She was good from the get-go and I will miss her.
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Jon Stewart had a lot of fun pointing out the absurdity of the hypotheticals that some justices raised as possible objections to allowing marriage to include same-sex couples. As Jon Stewart pointed out, these objections reeked of desperation since they could be easily countered. He seemed to think that this signified that June would bring in a verdict in favor of same-sex marriage. I hope he is right though I am not as hopeful that it will be a clear-cut one.
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Once again, a comedy show comes up with a pretty good analysis of the events in Baltimore. Jon Stewart points out that these kinds of eruptions have occurred time and time again because the conditions that trigger them are never addressed and that the way that such disturbances are viewed depends on the kinds of people doing the rioting.
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