Colbert on McCutcheon

Stephen Colbert had two segments that explained clearly how the US Supreme Court decision last week in McCutcheon v. FEC has pushed the US further along the road to where just a handful of people will be able to purchase the government. This ruling said that while a contributor was still limited to donating $5,200 to individual candidates, there should be no limit to the total amount they can give to all candidates in an election cycle, which used to be $123,200 before this ruling. Only about 600 people bumped up against this cap in the past.
[Read more…]

Christie and the Adelson audition

The Daily Show has some commentary on Chris Christie, starting with the investigation that he commissioned that (surprise!) cleared him of any involvement with the closing of the lanes on the George Washington Bridge and then moving on to join the parade of Republican presidential hopefuls who groveled before Sheldon Adelson in what has been dubbed ‘the Adelson primary’.
[Read more…]

TV news is even worse than I thought

Since I don’t have cable, I do not watch the 24/7 cable news networks and from the clips that I do see on the internet, I know I am not missing much. While I do own a TV and can get the broadcast channels, I stopped watching those news shows a long time ago. The morning news shows especially were a wasteland, with inane chatter and frequent commercial breaks.
[Read more…]

Uproar over Stephen Colbert parody

Stephen Colbert did a bit where he satirized Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington football team, for his ham-handed efforts to sanitize his use of an offensive name for the team. Colbert did this the way he usually does, by taking what the target of his humor did and carrying it to the extreme. Of course, it was to be expected that some would get angry at that satire and Anthony Zurcher explains what the fuss was about.
[Read more…]

Knowledge is power

In a speech given to the SXSW meeting, Julian Assange makes the point of how information is used to accrue wealth.

Assange also described what he sees as an “unprecedented theft of wealth from the majority of the population to those people who already have a lot of power … doing that in part by stealing information from all of us. Knowledge is power, and as a result they’re getting more power.”
[Read more…]

Humorists take aim at TV coverage of missing plane

It looks like there is a long line of comedians who are taking shots at the cable news networks and CNN particularly for obsessively and ridiculously covering the Malaysian Airlines plane disappearance. The bad news is that CNN almost doubled its ratings during this period among the much-coveted 25-54 age group, making Fox News jealous. So next time around, you can be sure that the coverage will be even worse.
[Read more…]