I did not watch president Obama’s State of the Union speech. These ritualized events are almost entirely political theater with very little substance. The routine is familiar. Obama will give a speech outlining some of his extremely modest goals and the Republicans will bemoan what they claim is his pursuit of a radical agenda and his lack of willingness to engage in dialogue with them and compromise. [Read more…]
Samantha Bee of The Daily Show interviews various people about raising the minimum wage. The rich person she speaks to displays the arrogance, callousness, and cluelessness that have come to typify that class. These people seem to have no sense of the growing anger against them. They seem to feel secure that the power of the state can protect them. They don’t seem to realize that all societies, even the US, have a breaking point. [Read more…]
Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity took umbrage with some remarks made by New York state governor Andrew Cuomo that Hannity interpreted to mean that the governor wanted extreme conservatives to leave the state. We have seen a spate of rich people recently whining about how people are being mean to them and they think it is all very unfair. Tom Perkins is one of the most extreme of the lot, saying that criticisms of the wealthy are similar to Nazi Germany but he is by no means alone. [Read more…]
That Mitchell and Webb Look looks at what happened during the later years of this once unstoppable force in operettas, when the well of creativity threatened to dry up. (The clip is only up to the 3:45 mark and then repeats itself.) [Read more…]
In the US, advertising is everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without being urged to buy stuff. You see them when you are driving, they are there at the gas pump when pumping gas, they are there on the ATM screen when you are getting cash, you hear them when you are put on hold. You simply cannot avoid them. [Read more…]
The Daily Show had a good summary and analysis of president Obama’s speech last Friday on his proposed NSA reforms. Jon Stewart was not impressed. [Read more…]
Comedian Emo Philips writes to express his pleasure that a joke he wrote twenty years ago has been voted the funniest religious joke of all time, even though people have forgotten that he was the creator. I have to admit that I had heard it before but that I had not even heard of Philips. Here is the joke. [Read more…]
The only time I see any of the talk shows on TV is when clips of them appear to show how idiotic they are. So while I have a vague idea of the various shows that are around, I have never actually watched one for any extended time. The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee does a remarkable one-woman performance that looks at the people and dynamics of a program called The Five that appears on Fox News and she shows more of it than I normally see. [Read more…]
Steven Brill has an article in Time describing how some of the very people who would benefit most from the Affordable Care Act have been misled by the virulent anti-Obamacare campaign to think that it is a terrible program and would do nothing for them. He also highlights the way that hospital monopolies and the reluctance of people to change providers prevent a truly competitive system from being created that would lower costs. [Read more…]