The greed and savagery of the British monarchy

On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a close look at the British royal family and takes apart the arguments given by those who think that the institution should continue. He also exposes the evasiveness and lack of responsibility taken by them for the horrors, including slavery, committed in their name over the centuries that enriched them and the UK so immensely. He walks us through the gruesome history of how the monarchy acquired their lands and wealth and then passed it down to their descendants. To add insult to injury, they also are exempt from paying most inheritance taxes, so that these layabouts can live a life of luxury on money that they have not worked for.

The verdict is in: Trump’s big announcement was boring

The general consensus about Trump’s speech announcing that he is running again was that it was long and boring. It did not help that he had telegraphed what he was going to say a long time ago. It also did not help that much of it was mostly a rehash of the speech he has been giving at rallies. The difference was that he was very low energy. This may have been deliberate in that he was trying to appear ‘presidential’ and reading from a teleprompter, which is not something that he does well. Or it may be because the audience was not the raucous crowds at his rallies that he seems to relish speaking to.

Even Fox News cut away from the speech and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post had at the bottom of its front page the single line “Florida man makes announcement”. That must sting.

In contrast, the late night talk shows reviewing the speech were pretty funny.

Here is Jimmy Kimmel.

Here is Seth Meyers.

Funny comic strip

As we await the results of today’s election, here is one of the strips from Get Fuzzy, a daily comic strip by Darby Conley that has three main characters who live together in an apartment: a human Rob, a dog Satchel, and a cat Bucky. Rob is a nerdy single guy with apparently no social life who spends his spare time playing video games and is a fan of rugby. Satchel is naive, gullible, lovable but dim, while Bucky is devious, ignorant but thinks of himself as very smart, and is constantly scheming to find ways to make money and also torment Satchel.

I read the strip daily and decided to share this one to introduce it to people who might not have known about it. Sadly, Conley stopped producing new daily strips in 2013 and Sunday ones in 2019 but reruns appear every day and they have mostly a timeless quality and whatever current events that are alluded to that have become dated can be easily understood.

(Get Fuzzy)

John Oliver on the need for bail reform

On the most recent episode of his always excellent show Last Week Tonight, he focuses on the abuses of the cash bail system where people can be held in jail for a long time before trial simply because they do not have the money to post bail. This hurts poor people the most. One of the worst abuses is to use the system to coerce people who have been held in jail for a long time before trial to confess to crimes they did not commit with the promise that the time they have already spent in prison will be sufficient punishment.

I think that people should be released on their personal recognizance unless they are a risk to society or have the means to flee. Most poor people who commit petty offenses can easily be caught if they do not show up for their trial. Bail in such cases is punitive.